Wanted: A Bad Boy Romance (18 page)

“Not fighting anymore. I’m done.”
My words aren’t well received that morning, at least I assume so judging by the
look on Kyle’s face when he hears them. “Not getting roped into this shit
anymore. One of your cronies set me up.”

I punch a finger into Kyle’s
shoulder and his face twists.

“I ain’t got nothing to do with
any of this,” he says. “Better be real careful who you go blaming around here.”

“Yeah. Apparently.” I huff.
“Whoever set me up knows I work here. Had a shirt made that looks just like
this.”

I tug on the gray fabric of my
button-down.

“You try telling me I wasn’t set
up,” I say.

“I think you’re overreacting,” he
says. “You were locked up for years. I thought all these attacks were related
or some shit? Couldn’t have been you.”

“Cops don’t know for sure if
they’re interconnected. They just want to pin the crime on someone. Shut the
book. Makes ‘em look good.”

“Well, if you didn’t do it,
you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“I’m done,” I say. “I mean it,
Kyle. I’m done.”

“I’ll fight,” KJ ambles past,
scratching behind his dopey ears.

Kyle lets out a belly laugh, and
for the first time ever I detect a hint of something dark behind KJ’s eyes.

“Maybe if you’d give me a chance
once in a fuckin’ while,” KJ spits.

“Not trying to watch you get your
ass beat,”
Kyle
says.

“Like you give a shit.” KJ shakes
his head, snorting. “You never gave two shits about me. You treated fucking
Thad more like a brother than you ever treated me.”

“Don’t bring him into this.”
Kyle’s lip quivers, but only for a split second.

KJ grabs a dirty air filter
sitting on top of a nearby tool bench and hurls it at Kyle. “Still protecting
him. Ain’t even alive and you still take his side over mine.”

Kyle, in all his douche bag
glory, seems to be in mourning today. KJ, on the other hand, is lit like a
fuse. Ready to explode at any moment. I suppose everyone handles grief
differently.

“KJ, take a walk, man.” Kyle
shakes his head before making his way across the garage. “Show some fucking
respect. He’s fucking family…”

His voice trails, mumbles, and
then becomes inaudible.

The shop is pretty much dead
today. Ever since the local newspaper plastered my likeness and place of
employment all over their front page as a suspect, people seem to be staying
away.

“You okay?” I ask, slipping hand
over Kyle’s bony shoulder. He jerks away from me and reaches for a wrench
before stepping under a hoisted mini van. “All right then.”

Terry pushes through the side
door, making a rare appearance. His face is grief-stricken, but his body is
terse and tight. A balled up shirt is in his hands.

“Somebody wanna tell me what this
was doing in the dumpster behind the shop?”

KJ and I look at each other
before studying the scrunched up shirt. Terry holds up a shirt that matches
mine, right down to the
name tag
.

“Why would you throw away a
perfectly good work shirt?” Terry’s question is directed at me.

My brows furrow. “Uh, my shirts
are all at home. I can go get the other three if you need proof.”

“Other three? You should’ve been
given five.
”
he says. “All my guys get five.”

I shake my head. “I got four.”

Kyle makes his way back from the
far side of the garage, his arms folding as he keeps a safe distance.

“This is your shirt, is it not?” Terry
asks. It’s like he can’t comprehend the fact that I was only given four by one
of his moron sons the first day I started.

“It is not, sir,” I say.

“So who the hell had your fifth
shirt?” he asks.

“Excellent question.” I rotate
behind, throwing a look to Kyle.

His hands protest. “Don’t look at
me.”

The four of us are quiet, and
almost in unison, we glance at KJ. He stands, fidgeting, and staring at the
dirty concrete floor. He chews the inside of his lip, his eyes twitching every
couple seconds.

There’s…no way.

It couldn’t be.

“KJ.” Terry clears his throat,
stepping closer to his youngest son. “What do you know about this shirt?”

Terry was none-to-pleased when
the cops showed up yesterday and hauled me away for questioning, and he was
relieved as hell when I showed back up as a free man with a clean alibi.

But this?
This crumpled up shirt? It’s a game changer.

“Answer me, boy.” His voice
booms, jolting all three of us at once.

KJ says nothing. In his attempt
to leave, his father grabs his shirt and yanks him in, getting in his face.

“It’s you, ain’t it, boy?”
There’s something about hearing a tremble in a grown man’s voice that sends a
quake to your insides. “Why?”

KJ’s thin shoulders fall, and his
father releases him. He looks to his older brother,
then
to me, the man he set up to take the fall after attempts to set up his brother
fell through.

It all makes sense. KJ telling me
he thought it was Kyle.
The attacker wearing one of my
shirts.

I push past the three Rasmussens
and head toward the front desk.

“Where you going?” Kyle calls
out.

As much as I’d like to beat the
living shit out of KJ for setting me up…for hurting people…for fucking
murdering people…

I’m not about to go back to
prison.

He’s not worth it.

I don’t answer Kyle. Instead, I
rip off my work shirt and let it fall to the floor before exiting out the front
door.

The second I’m my
truck,
I speed away and call the cops.

“So what’s next?” I lay across
his chest that night, tracing his bare skin with a polished fingertip. “Huh,
Titan? What’s next for us.”

He smiles a rare, tepid smile.

“How can you smile right now?” I
ask. “You quit your job. I lost my internship. We don’t have any money. My mom
won’t speak to me right now.”

“You think you’re at an all time
low?” he asks, raking his ringers through my hair. They get snarled in my curls
but he leaves them anyway.

“Feels like it, yeah.”

“Well, I’m at an all time high,”
he says. “That’s how come I’m smiling right now.”

I press my ear against his chest,
listening to the slow thrum of his heartbeat and breathing him in.

“Do you think KJ killed Jerome?”
I ask.

He’s quiet for a moment, and his
chest rises as he draws in a slow breath.

“I hope so,” he says. “I mean,
only because you and your mom need closure.”

I nod, hooking my arm around his
side and curling up against him. He’s right. Solving Jerome’s murder would be a
miracle, and God knows we need one of those right now.

“Did you ever have any idea it
was KJ?” I ask. “Any signs?”

“No, ma’am. He pulled fast one on
all of us,” he says. “I knew there was tension between KJ and his brother, but
never in a million years did I think a drowned rat like KJ would be some kind
of serial killer preying on drunks in the middle of the night. He’s a goddamn
coward if you ask me.”

“He is.” I kiss his hot skin.
“I’ll be on pins and needles until we find out. Think he’ll confess?”

“We’ll find out soon enough.
Sometimes the DA will make a deal in exchange for a confession, but I don’t
know how much of a deal he’s going to get with that much blood on his hands.”

“I don’t want to talk about him
anymore,” I sigh. “I want to talk about happy things, Titan. Tell me
everything’s going to be okay. Tell me what we’re going to do tomorrow and the
next day, and the next.”

He kisses the top of my head, his
biceps flexing as he runs his hand down my side.

“Tomorrow.” He exhales. “Tomorrow
we’ll take a drive.
A long drive.
Anywhere you want to
go. We don’t even have to do anything, we’ll just drive.”

“Can I control the radio?” I
tease.

“Yes,” he says. “You can control
the radio.”

“And what about the day after
that?”

“The day after tomorrow,” he
says. “We’ll head over to Gareth College and sign me up for classes so I can
finish this goddamn engineering degree. Two more semesters and I’ll be done.”

“You still want to be a civil engineer?”
I have to admit, the thought of a sexy, muscled, tatted up bad boy with brains
to match gets me more hot and bothered than I ever expected.

“I do,” he says. “While I’m
there, why don’t you talk to someone about finishing your degree there? We can
move to Gareth together. Spend a year studying like a couple of sexy-as-fuck
nerds, and when we’re done, we’ll move on like a couple of drifters.”

“Maybe one of these days we’ll
find a nice place to set up camp?” I ask.

“Yeah.” He cocks a half smile.
“One of these days, sure. Not in a hurry. You?”

“No,” I say. “No hurry. Was just
curious if you saw that, you know, as you’re envisioning our future.”

“I see a lot of things, Jordana,”
he says with an air of mischief in his tone.

“Do you now?” I lift my head,
pressing my lips against his and tasting his minty mouth. “Like what?”

“Can’t tell you,” he says. “It’s
like when you make a wish. If you say it, it doesn’t come true.”

“Am I…am I your wish?” I ask with
trepidation.

He pauses before answering.
“Yeah. I guess you are.”

“You don’t strike me as the
wishing kind.”

“I’m not the wishing kind.”

“Apparently you are now,” I say.

“Apparently I’m a lot of things
now.”

“Like?”

“Like two seconds from owning
that fuckable mouth of yours,” he says. “And two seconds from showing you just
how serious I am about taking you with me the second I leave this town.”

“I’d hope so. I want to go with
me.”

“You wouldn’t have a choice in
the matter anyway.”

He pulls me on top of him, my
legs straddling his hips.

“I want you, Jordana,” he says.
“I want you right now. I want you tomorrow. I want you the day after that and
the day after that.”

“I want you too.”

“It’s all fixed up for you.” I
hand Laticia the keys to Jerome’s mustang Saturday morning. She’ll hardly look
me in the eye. It’s all I can do not to apologize for screwing her daughter,
but I’m not about to offer a false apology. I’m not that kind of man. I’m not
sorry at all. I care about Jordana. I could even see myself falling in love
with her. Matter of fact, I feel I’m well on my way down that path and there’s
not a damn thing anyone could do to try and stop it.

“Thank you.” She takes the keys,
clutching them against her chest and staring at the grass beneath her feet.

Jordana’s already inside, packing
up the last of her clothes and things. Dad stands behind Laticia, his hands
shoved in the pockets of his navy slacks. His mouth is firm, his jaw set. His
shoulders are straight and rigid.

“Going back to school,” I tell
him. Not because I care if he’s proud of me or not, but because I want to prove
I’m not a total fuck up.

“Good,” he says. It’s about as
much approval as I’ll ever get out of him.

I head inside, grabbing some
boxes from Jordana’s arms and lugging them out to the trunk of her car. When I
load them, I see a stack of scrapbooks and photo albums in there, ones my
mother made years ago.

Jordana grabbed them for me,
knowing they probably mean more to me than to my father.

“Bye, Mama.” Jordana stands
before her mother, their eyes locking. “I hope someday you’ll understand that
this is just something I had to do. He’s a good man.”

She looks at my father.

“Titan has a good heart,” she
says.

My father says nothing, just
offers a polite nod with a tight expression. He’s never been good with moments
that make him feel anything other than stoic.

We climb in the car, she and I,
and drive away.

Today we’re driving around
aimlessly with no destination in mind because when it comes down to it, we can
plan our futures all we want, and we can anticipate the good and the bad. But
in the end, nobody knows what tomorrow will bring. We only have today.

And today, I just want to be with
her.