She’d been the one to insist that I had to decorate in the first place. Her “my kids don’t like it when you don’t decorate” had been for naught, because she had the shits.
“Ohhhh,” she breathed when we got directly in front of the house. “This is…wow.”
I was sad to keep driving, but there was a big ass line of cars behind us that meant I couldn’t linger for long.
She kept her face pressed to the cold glass of the window the entire trip back to the shop.
And I didn’t linger on the feelings that I got when I gave her something pretty to enjoy and what that did to me.
Six
One day you’re young and fun, and the next you’re turning down the radio to see better.
—Text from Calliope to Jasper
CALLIOPE
I was exhausted.
But, surprisingly, that didn’t mean that I wanted to leave where I was.
I was happy with my seat in the shop next to my vehicle that Jasper was working on.
He frowned when he dipped something down into the tank and pulled it out.
He touched the stick with his fingers, and he brought it to his nose so he could smell it.
“Shit,” he grumbled.
“What?”
He looked at me like he didn’t want to tell me what he’d found.
“It’s sugar.”
“What?”
“In your gas tank,” he said. “It’s sugar.”
I blinked. “But, how?”
He pulled out his phone and said, “Give me a second.”
I pulled my legs up in the seat that Jasper had pulled out for me and hugged them to my chest.
I dropped my forehead on my upraised knees and prayed for patience.
How the fuck had this happened?
I parked my truck in the garage at night so…
“You’ll need to hack into the UPS place. I need to see the camera that was on her truck,” Jasper said. “She parks in the garage at home, so there’s no way that it would’ve happened at our place. I have a feeling that it happened there. Thanks.”
He hung up the phone and looked at me. “What?”
“Got any enemies?”
I let out a snort. “I have lots of people that hate me. You, for instance.”
