Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 70488 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70488 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
True.
I could’ve done way worse.
Like piercing the gas tank with one of my forks, trailing gasoline throughout the store, and accidentally setting it on fire.
But that was the bane of a chronic overthinker’s existence. Worst-case scenarios and me were BFFs.
Harvey and Hux walked to the bike and got it standing again.
Luckily, it didn’t look worse for wear.
“Sorry,” I repeated for the fourteenth time.
Hux snorted and walked back into his shop, slammed the door closed, and locked it.
I looked at JohnBoy. “Okay, let’s finish this.”
“I think maybe you should stack the things over there, away from Hux’s bike,” Harvey admitted.
“I can’t,” I grumbled. “Because there’s a shit ton of stuff over there, which she asked me to go through before I came to ask y’all for help. There’s nowhere else for all this stuff to go.”
“I thought she hired you to work inside the store?” JohnBoy asked.
“She did,” I grumbled.
“Then why are you out here?” he asked.
“Good freakin’ question,” I said. “I told her that I couldn’t do anything physically exerting when I took this job.” I patted my tightening chest.
Harvey frowned. “What?”
“She has asthma,” JohnBoy informed him.
Harvey looked over at me. “You do?”
I nodded, heart pounding and lungs seconds away from fucking up my entire day.
“Ahh,” he said. “Hop off, let me do the rest.”
I was more than happy to hop off.
When Harvey got on, he drove it like he’d been doing it his entire life.
He rearranged everything in minutes.
Only when he was done and the forklift was stowed did JohnBoy say, “My sister is a complete bitch. Don’t let her run all over you. You’re going to have to stick up for yourself. You have laws on your side.”
That surprised me. “Your sister?”
He nodded.
“Lucky you.”
JohnBoy snorted. “She’s been a bitch all her life.”
I didn’t say anything to that.
He handed me the clipboard with his signature and said, “Remember what I said. Don’t let her run all over you.”
Except, by the end of that day, I was run ragged and still on the verge of an asthma attack.
When I laid down in my bed that night, thirty minutes after I got home, windows wide open because I’d forgotten that there were no blinds, I thought…maybe Creed was right.
Maybe moving here wasn’t the right thing after all.
Six
Forgive and forget? I’m not Jesus, nor do I have Alzheimer’s.
—Hux’s secret thoughts
Hux
I watched her come home in her fancy new truck.
She pulled into her driveway, which was across the street and down a few from my own, then got out and dragged herself inside.
She looked run-ragged.
I felt another twinge of guilt.
I knew what kind of taskmaster my mother could be.
Creed called the moment that she closed herself inside her place.
I could see everything that she did because she had no curtains in her house. Which also meant the assholes across the street from her could also see.
“Hey,” I answered. “Your sister needs some damn curtains. Hubers are salivating.”
Creed cursed. “I was supposed to come over and do that today, but we had some poachers, and I didn’t get around to it.”
“Well, get around to it tomorrow,” I ordered. “Patrick is currently on his front porch watching your sister through her living room window heating up a pizza.”
“Goddammit,” Creed growled. “The sick fucks.”
The Hubers were the freakin’ worst.
I’d been dealing with them my entire life, and each subsequent generation got worse.
Which was impressive because I’d thought Lanny, the father of the two “men,” was awful enough.
“They’re something,” I said. “What’s up?”
“Wanted to call to see if you could tell me if Bernice was there, but you answered that already,” he said. “She called me multiple times today. I got worried, but I was hung up with the poachers and never got a chance to call her back. When I finally did, she didn’t answer.”
“Well,” I said as I watched her eat her pizza as she walked into her bedroom and flicked her light on. “She’s home and eating. Looks like she’s getting ready for bed.”
“Jesus Christ,” he said. “If you can see that well a few houses down, the Hubers probably have a front-row view.”
“That they do,” I agreed.
“I’ll get there tomorrow.” He groaned. “I’m still in Wyoming.”
“Wyoming?” I asked.
“Long story,” he said. “Go put cardboard on her window.”
Before I could say anything more, there were raised voices, and Creed cursed. “Gotta go.”
I hung up and went in search of a cardboard box I could cut up.
By the time I found something to use and walked over, Bernice was passed out fully clothed on her bed, the plate of pizza half finished.
By the time I finished, Harvey and his girlfriend—fiancée?—arrived, Heidi fresh on their heels.
I was halfway to the door when Hampton and his wife, Candice, arrived with my one and only niece.
Polly looked miserable, so I pulled her from her mother’s arms and snuggled her close. “How’s my Polly?”