My hands fell to the waist of her jeans, my thumbs running over her hips as I pulled her closer and breathed her in. “Practically isn’t good enough. Sounds like I need to work harder.”
Her eyes widened before darting around the room. I didn’t know what she was looking for, or if she’d just remembered where she was, but the shrug and smile told me she was beyond caring as she leaned in and pushed up onto her toes. “If you try any harder, I may lose feeling in my legspermanently.”
Not giving her a chance to react, I bent at the knee, wrapping one arm under her legs and one arm around her back as I scooped her up and started to move forward. “Legs are overrated anyway. And it might do me a favor, too. No legs, no running away, no matter how many times I screw up.”
I raised my foot to my office door and tried to kick it open. When it stayed firmly shut, I did the same again, kicking it a little harder to try and make the fucker budge so I could walk Ayda through it like I’d seen all those Hollywood bastards do a thousand times before. Only it didn’t budge an inch, and I was left standing there looking like more of a tool than I actually felt.
“That kinda went a little differently in my head.”
She flashed me a smile, the humor and amusement evident. Reaching behind her, she twisted the handle and winked at me. “Should work now. I promise to be thoroughly impressed.”
“Now I feel used, cheap, and inadequate. I’m so glad you showed up tonight, Ayda. I don’t know how my head would have fit through the door without you.”
Stepping over the threshold, I walked us straight through the office, skipping through the bathroom before heading to my room and standing the two of us over the edge of the bed.
“Inadequate is not a word I would attribute to you.” Her eyes shot to the mattress below her and back up at me, her grin almost cocky. “A bed? What are you planning on doing with me and a bed?”
“I was planning on making you work off some more of your debt.”
“You’re a cheeky bastard.”
“You have no idea.” I growled before I launched her onto the comforter, my own face lighting up the more her laughter rang out around the room. At some point, between me shrugging off my cut, tossing my hoodie to the floor and climbing over to her, it dawned on me that I’d never wanted to make a woman laugh quite like I felt the need to bring a smile to Ayda’s lips.
Despite all the dark clouds that were hanging over my head, she was like that poetic ray of sunshine that I was drawn to, and I knew as long as she was nearby, I’d probably be alright in the end.
Or at least that’s what I hoped, for both our sakes.
Chapter Forty-One
Ayda
The hours I spent with Drew seemed to make time pass like it hadn’t since my days in college. I think a lot of it was getting lost in the life of The Hut with him—the stories he would tell me while drinking beer with one of his buddies, the constant rivalry he had with Slater, and then there was his laugh. I didn’t know if it was because he didn’t do it all that often, or because the caring was taking on a whole new depth, but no matter where I was or who I was talking to, the moment I heard it, my eyes were on him.
My hours at work seemed to pass with just as much speed. Having a better outlook on life seemed to spur me on in every aspect of it. I’d even attempted to run with Tate one morning and almost killed myself trying to keep up. I had never been more thankful that Deeks continued to follow us on his bike, even if Kenny had taken up the challenge and was trying to keep pace with Tate. Even my shifts at the food mart were more entertaining now that Deeks was there. He would get more bored than I would most of the time and wander through the aisles, picking up random things that most people ignored. The last adventure had been the cheapest of the caviar. The look on his face as he spat it out had me laughing aloud,bringing some of the other shelf stackers to the front of the store to see what the commotion was. Deeks sat on the bench, midway into the act of spitting what he had in his mouth into a brown bag I’d been generous enough to throw him.
I’d gone from dreading each day to opening my eyes and wondering what the hell it had in store for me.
Being happier meant Tate was happier, too. I still wasn’t sure about the influence Kenny was having on him, but he was keeping up with football and his school work, so I turned a blind eye to the friendship and rivalry the two of them had going on. It was like having two kid brothers a lot of the time. It was also helping Tate forget that Sloane didn’t want to break her daddy’s rules or fracture her new friendship with her stepmom, who had suddenly taken an interest in her life.
I felt sorry for the girl. It wasn’t like she and I had ever been close, but the mentor she’d chosen for herself was surely going to make her a statistic. Maisey Sutton was the girl you warned your kids about, but was now somehow giving etiquette lessons to her stepdaughter. Truth was, Tate was better off out of it, though I wasn’t thrilled about Kenny’s encouraging pep talk about there being plenty more whores in the doghouse.
All of my financial burdens were still there. They weren’t going anywhere fast, but it was no longer all I thought about. I’d decided to take one day at a time and would just have to deal with the problem if it arose. I couldn’t keep worrying about the future, but I also hadn’t expected for the days to pass by quite so quickly.
“You gonna sit here and stare at the gates all night, kid?” Deeks asked, his elbow coming to rest on top of my car. I had just finished my shift at the diner and wasn’t needed at thefood mart, so I’d come to see Drew. I’d also moved my shifts around indefinitely to fit in football Fridays. Tate was damn good at what he did out on that field, and as his last surviving family member, I owed it to him to be there with him. Although I wasn’t sure how it was going to look when I sat there with Kenny and Deeks on either side of me like sentries. Even though I was pretty sure Kenny was up for seeing Tate put practice into reality.
“I was just thinking.”
“About?” Deeks asked, flicking his cigarette butt across the lot.
“How my two person family is slowly growing, what to do for dinner, and when the last time y’all cleaned out your barbeque pit was.”
“That’s a lot of thoughts.”
“You do take your time.”
He huffed out a laugh and opened my door for me. He wasn’t slow at all; he was thorough. His bike could eat up the distance three times faster than my car could and we both knew it.
We walked into the yard together, following one of the trucks that was towing in a few months old model car that still had the goop from the sticker attached to the window, as though the owner hadn’t had time to remove it. Times were hard in our little town and that was reflected all the more by the litter of almost pristine cars in the yard in front of me. The owner would now be forced to see the local used car dealership, and over pay for a piece of shit with a criminal interest rate. That wasn’t the Hounds’ fault; they were just doing what they could to earn their living.
