Shine tilted his head. “You were with Easton. Here. Right?”
I smiled. “Sure.”
Shine’s eye twitched. “I thought that you were going to bring us in on this, so we could plan a little better, so that when the time came, your alibi was airtight. They wouldn’t have even questioned you.”
I shrugged. “Easton is an upstanding member of the law. At least for a few more weeks, until he’s officially ‘retired’ from the FBI. So yes, he’s a great alibi. And Body had a vet checkup that day. So I was officially occupied. The vet verified that I was there, too.”
Body, upon hearing his name, perked his ears up in excitement.
I placed my hand on his head and scratched behind his ears.
“Motherfucker, Haggard. You’re going to fuck up one of these days, and it’s going to come back and bite you in the ass in the form of fuckin’ jail time,” he growled.
I shrugged.
Honestly, I didn’t fuckin’ care.
If it rid this world of a few pieces of shit? Well, then I’d serve my time with a goddamn smile on my face.
“You’re impossible,” he grumbled as he got up. “And how did they even know to look at you? What made them do that?”
I shrugged. “His father, Haylin Smith, is put out that his little moneymaker isn’t there to do his bitch work anymore—i.e., go collect on whatever bullshit business transactions he does—and he pushed the cops in my direction because of my reaction to her getting hurt.”
He knew who ‘her’ was and didn’t comment.
At least, not on that.
He knew, just as well as I did, what kinds of feelings I was harboring for my daughter’s best friend.
It wasn’t something that you could hide, at least not from the people you spent your entire life with.
He did have something to say about Jaylin, though.
“What kind of business?” he asked.
“The kind where he funnels money through a couple of clubs he owns, and when people don’t pay him protection money, he sends his son to rough them up and remind them why they need to pay.” I paused. “He thinks of himself as some sort of mini mafia boss or something. He doesn’t realize that he’s in my territory, though. He won’t win.”
I wouldn’t allow it.
My phone beeped, and I winced as I looked at the readout.
I had to set a fuckin’ reminder on when to leave, so I didn’t forget about this ridiculous date that I planned on going to to find out why a certain woman kept popping up in my life when I didn’t want her there.
“Where’re you going?” Shine asked.
I sighed. “I have a date with the devil.”
The date was worse than expected.
I’d never met a more narcissistic person in my life.
Everything, and I do mean everything, was against her.
My ex-wife, who wanted me to date her.
Sophia, who she honestly thought wanted to be her.
The weather.
The goddamn mayor.
You name it, and she had a reason for that person/thing disliking her in some way, forcing her down.
I’d never wanted to walk out of a date more in my life.
However, it was toward the end when I started to really get my questions answered.
“How did you hear of me?” I finally asked.
At this point, there was nothing to lose.
She’d literally turned everything around that I’d asked and made it about her in some way.
There was nothing more I could do at this point but flat out ask her.
“Oh.” She smiled, and honestly, she was quite beautiful. If you could call someone so full of themselves that they couldn’t see the writing on the wall beautiful. “Well, I met you through Sophia, actually. Or actually heard of you. You brought her friend, Clementine, over. And I asked who you were. Then I met Trista and, well, things just really worked out that way.”
Friend, Clementine.
Jesus.
Was that it? Was that the only way that I’d come into her life? A victim of happenstance?
Shit.
That just…
Blew.
“Well,” I said as I stopped myself from pulling out my wallet when I saw the waiter headed to our table. “That’s unfortunate.”
I inwardly laughed at myself, because that hadn’t been what I’d meant to say at all.
I’d intended to say ‘that’s interesting.’ And instead had gotten ‘that’s unfortunate.’
Just wait until I told Sophia about this.
Shaking my head at my inner monologue, I jerked my chin up at the waiter headed my way, and said, “Check?”
He nodded his head, his hand on the book in his front apron pocket. “Is this on one check, or two?”
Instantly, I said, “Two,” at the same time that Blakely chirped, “one!”
I was already shaking my head. “I’m sorry, darlin’. I only have enough cash for me. I forgot my wallet.”
That was a lie.
My wallet was currently chained to my fucking pants.
But she didn’t need to know that.
“Ohh,” she exhaled. “Umm…”
“We take Apple Pay, Venmo, and…” as the waiter told her the options in which to pay, I started to think about where I was going to stop on the way home. I had to make this ‘date’ up to Sophia, and the only way I knew how to do that was to bring her a fuckin’ cookie.