Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69424 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69424 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
“You’re still going,” he said. “You’re just going to pick Calliope up first.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, knowing that I was going to get grease on my face when I did. But I couldn’t stop myself. “What happened now?”
“Her truck ran out of gas.”
I looked up at the ceiling. “Doesn’t she know what a gas gauge is?”
“One would think.” Webber grinned. “But you know how she is.”
Unfortunately, I did.
I was the one who picked her up the last two times that she’d done this.
“She swears that there’s something wrong with her truck,” Webber explained. “Like swears it. You’ll have to let her explain, though, because Searcy sounded frantic on the phone and I couldn’t hear everything she was saying.”
“Where is she?” I asked.
“Corner of Millington and Main.”
I got into the tow truck, on the off chance—very off—that I was wrong and the truck actually had something wrong with it—and headed her way without a second thought.
When I got there it was to find her exactly where she said, holding a small gas can, and emptying the gas into her tank.
She looked up at me and frowned as I pulled to a stop behind her.
“What are you doing here?” she asked when I got out and headed her way.
“Your sister called and told us you needed gas,” I said.
She looked at me, then at the tow truck, then shrugged. “I got some.”
I gritted my teeth and crossed my arms over my chest, waiting for her to finish up with what she was doing.
“You’ll go straight to the gas station after this, won’t you?” I asked.
“Sure will,” she said as she twisted the top onto the can and put it in the back of her truck.
With another two empty cans.
Jesus Christ.
She got into her truck and started it up.
It sounded like it was going to turn over for a minute but then stalled.
I walked up to her truck window and she rolled the window down.
“I swear, and I swear to you with all that’s in me, that I had gas in this this morning,” she shared. “I have had nothing but bad luck out of this vehicle. I’ve taken it in four separate times because I swear to you, I fill it up. I’m not a complete dumbass. But it’s just…gone. I don’t drive anywhere, Jasper.”
I believed her, even though she was the biggest train wreck I’d ever encountered.
“Get out,” I said. “Go sit in the tow truck.”
She grumbled but got out, heading toward the tow truck where I knew that she’d be safe.
Once I was in it, I tried to start it myself and ended up with the same problem as her.
Instead of questioning it, I headed toward the tow truck and repositioned it so that I was in front of her vehicle. Then I hooked it up and pulled it onto the flatbed trailer.
Once everything was boomed down, I grabbed her purse, wallet and keys out of the center console. Then grabbed the three boxes of cookies that were sitting on her seat.
I headed to the passenger side of the tow truck and held everything up to her.
She took all of it, throwing it all into the back except for one of the boxes of cookies.
“Thanks,” she said as she opened the box and leaned down to take a whiff.
“You get those for the party?” I asked.
“What party?” She frowned.
My brows rose. “The Christmas party tonight with the club.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I wasn’t invited to the Christmas party.”
“I’m sure you were,” I said. “From what I understand, the rest of your family is going to be there.”
She shrugged. “My invitations get lost in the mail a lot.”
I didn’t like the sound of that.
But I was sure it wasn’t because she wasn’t invited.
Her sister and her siblings loved her. Even if it’d taken them a few years to get warmed back up to her.
When I met Calliope, she’d been a hormonal teen with a huge chip on her shoulder. That chip included everyone. Her sister. Her other siblings. And especially her mother.
Needless to say, she wasn’t always the most fun person to be around when I’d first met her.
That’d changed over time, and eventually she’d become someone that people liked to be around once they’d gotten rid of her mother’s influence. Oh, and made it to where they didn’t have to scrape by to fulfill just their most basic of needs.
Hell, when I’d met Calli, she’d had a job that she’d been working her every available moment she wasn’t in school. She’d added cash to the household fund without anyone even knowing it.
Hell, I wasn’t even sure Searcy knew that she’d been helping out. The only reason that I’d known was because she’d been bitching about it to someone on the phone when I’d come up behind her after first meeting her. She’d been telling whomever it was that she’d needed more hours, and she’d take what she could get, because her little brother needed a new instrument.