Make Me Your Villain (Battle Crows MC 2)

So she’d be gone all weekend.

That fucking blew.

“Damn,” I grumbled. “But are you sure you don’t want to stay the night with me?”

She laughed. “I wish I could. But I need to pack, wash my uniforms, and feed my animals.”

“Feed your animals?” I asked.

“I have a cat… and an iguana. Polka, my cat, has a continuous feeder, but I’ll still need to fill it up today or he won’t have enough to get him through the weekend,” she admitted. “And my iguana… well, he eats nonstop, but I can stock him up today, and he should be okay.”

I pursed my lips. “Invite me over to yours.”

Her lips turned up into the sweetest smile I’d seen yet. “Callum, do you want to come over to my apartment and spend the night with me?”

Fuck yes, I did.

“Yes.” I hesitated. “Unless it’s going to cause trouble with the ex…”

I wasn’t too sure if it would cause Teller to get pissed off, but more so, I didn’t like the fact that it might cause her any extra grief when she most certainly didn’t need it.

She rolled her eyes. “I think that it’s time to stop worrying about what’ll bother our exes—and me moving on so fast after him definitely will bother him—but I’m done living for someone else. I’m starting a new chapter in life. One that’ll have me focusing on what makes me happy. And that’s you.”

Together, we headed to her house, both of us in our own vehicles.

When I pulled up, the smile that lit my face was comical.

“What?” she asked as she got out of her car.

“Did you ever tell him that I mowed his lawn?” I chuckled. “I had all my guys put out yard signs this week. Look.”

She looked over at the new signs that the yard owners had agreed to display in their yard, then looked back at me.

“I can almost guarantee, with a hundred-percent certainty, that he doesn’t know that you mow this, or he’d refuse to be displaying it in his yard,” she teased. “And no, I didn’t tell him.”

I had a feeling of the same.

“Whatever,” I said. “Do you have to go through the front to get to your place?”

“No,” she pointed to a small side entrance that was paved around the side of the house. “I live in what is called the mother-in-law quarters. It’s off the backyard. Has its own entrance, and even its own privacy fence.”

“When I’d met Teller Kincaid, my ex, I’d done it by renting out his place. Eventually, we’d realized that there was something there that we’d like to explore, and had pursued that mutual attraction. Obviously, I should’ve stayed on my side of the fence.” I put in the access code to get into the backyard. “Had I, I wouldn’t find living in my own home awkward as fuck. Thankfully, I’d only been out of the mother-in-law quarters for a little over three months. Also, thankfully, the previous tenants—the woman had been in the military—had had to leave unexpectedly due to being deployed. Which coincided nicely with the breakup.”

“How long were you with Teller before you broke it off?” I asked.

“A little over five months. I lived on the property for three months before that,” she answered. “I should’ve seen the writing on the wall, to be honest. He was always very nice and sweet, but his job bothered me. And I didn’t like the fact that he was also in such a bad mood from it. I realize that being a cop is hard, but you should really leave that shit at the door. Not bring it inside with you to taint another person.”

I grunted at that.

I could name quite a few days that I’d brought my bad attitude home to Lindy.

“Maybe if you’re with the right person, them having an attitude isn’t something that’s a bad thing,” I interjected as I caught the fence before it slammed into her backside from her sudden halt. “What…”

I looked up to find Teller standing there, a bag of trash in one hand, and what looked like a gun in the other. The flash of silver as he moved that gun to a different position down by his legs confirmed my thoughts.

I immediately maneuvered myself so that I was standing in front of Iris, protecting her with my body.

“You always walk around with a gun out?” I asked, extremely pissed off despite the fact that it wasn’t ever pointed in our direction.

Teller shoved the gun back in the waistband of his shorts and said, “When I hear people coming into my gate when I’m out here, yes.”

“You have a tenant. It’s going to be normal for someone to come back here,” I pointed out.

Teller tossed the full bag into the trash can and said, “Shit’s been bad lately. I’m not taking any chances.”