I’d first met her when I was getting groceries. She’d been roughly five months pregnant by then, and it had been the first time I’d ever seen her. I’d turned the corner to get some paper towels that day, and she’d been standing there trying to reach a pack on the top shelf while her ex stood texting on his phone, not moving a muscle to help her. I’d seen him the night before all over the town bike called Rita, so seeing what he had at home versus what he was cheating on her with almost made my head explode. I’d reached over her head and picked up the pack she’d been reaching for, nudging him out the way with my shoulder to put them in her cart, and had discretely followed behind them, getting more pissed with everything I heard him saying to her. I had no idea who she was, or even if she was a Piersville resident because we didn’t frequent the same places it seemed, but that all seemed to change after that first meeting. After that, we’d bumped into each other often, all of it purely by accident because I wasn’t a stalker and I didn’t have stalking tendencies, but it seemed like I saw her almost everywhere I went. I’d had a girlfriend for over a year who’d opened my eyes to the fuckery that relationships brought, including mild stalking and invasion of privacy. To make sure I wasn’t cheating on her, if I got up to go to the bathroom or get a beer, she’d unlock my phone and read my messages. How did she get the code for it? Well, she’d watched me out of the corner of her eye when I’d used the code because my thumb print ID thing wasn’t working. Apparently, she did most of her snooping while I was asleep before that by putting my thumb on the screen, but once she knew that code she just went straight on in and read it whenever she could. All of this I found out after she bragged about it to her girlfriends after a couple of drinks one night. I had nothing to hide, but I was a private person, and this had made me feel kinda sick. She also used to get upset if I didn’t tell her constantly that she was beautiful, tried to stop me taking on female clients at the shop, made me feel guilty for not abiding by that demand, would follow me even to the store and watch me get shit I needed for my house. And God forbid if I smiled at a woman or said hello. To me the act of cheating was engaging in either sex, kissing, touching, verbal shit, sexual shit, or falling in love with someone else. There might be other things added into the definition, but fucking smiling at or tattooing another woman? I’m a relaxed guy, I love as shit free of a life as I can get, so all of this was too much for me. When I’d ended it, she’d gone around Piersville telling the residents that I was a cheater and dragged good women’s names through the mud. I’d broken it off around a month after I’d first seen Jose and had been single since then. Because of all of that, I was also neurotic about taking my phone everywhere with me now, except for when I was around Jose. Absolutely nothing had happened between us, but I didn’t even think twice about leaving my phone on the table or couch when we were together. I did that because, although she was using her freedom to grow, I never wanted her to doubt my loyalty or trust. I trusted her to trust me. I trusted her to know that I’d never do that to her. I trusted her to trust that I’d always put her and Olivia first. And I wanted her to trust me badly.
I also wanted her to go out on a date with me badly, too, though, and that’s why I was about to use the information that her sister had let slip today to get that to happen.
However, before I could say anything else, she looked over at DB and shot him a grin. “Sheriff!”
Shaking his head slowly and chuckling, he asked, “You ever gonna call me by my real name again, Josephine?”
“Nope, I even have you saved in my phone like that.”
“I’ve got him saved in mine as DB,” I shared, grinning when he shot me a glare.
Shooting him her own glare, Tabby grumbled, “I’ve got his saved as ‘Asshole with Cuffs’.”
Groaning, he looked down at Olivia and made a funny face at her before looking back up at her mama. “Well, if you continue to do it, she’s going to call me that when she starts talking, too. That would just break my heart, Josephine. You don’t want that to happen, do you?”Oh, he was laying it on thick. “Not falling for it,” Jose replied firmly. “She can call you ‘Uncle Sheriff’ if that’s the issue.”