“Aw hell, Cub, do I have to kill you?” Jake sighed again, looking exhausted. The man needed sleep and he needed it bad.
“It was just words, Jake, from before she left for LA, nothing more, but they kind of got out of hand and she was gone before I could apologize. Chickenshit that I am, I left it at that. I’ll put your mind at rest now and tell you there will be nothing between us ever.”
“She’s sensitive—” Jake yawned again. “—but I’m a dead man if she hears me saying it. And why don’t you want something with my sister?”
“I don’t want something with any woman, period.”
“Why?” Jake put his head to one side like Katie did when she studied him.
“You know why. I’m not the relationship type,” Cubby said, feeling uncomfortable. “Too much of my old man in me.”
“Bull.”
Cubby shrugged. Jake, Buster, and Newman knew some of what he’d gone through, but only the bits they’d dragged out of him when they’d found him crying one day when he was fourteen.
“Leave it, Jake.”
“I won’t leave it because you could never be that asshole. You fucking serve and protect, Cubby, and I’ve never had any doubts in you as a human. It’d be a crime if you didn’t have little Cubbys.”
“Looking at the state you’re in, I’m not sure I want to buy into the whole fatherhood thing.”
“You’re a good man, why is that so hard for you to believe?”
“Aww shucks, that’s about the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.” Cubby tried to make light of his friend’s words, because they were damned uncomfortable.
“I’m right, Cubby, and one day you’ll believe it too,” Jake said before another yawn crept up on him.
“Man, it’s painful watching you bleed to death through those eyes, McBride,” Cubby said, deciding it was time to change the conversation. “Throw your paper on the floor.”
“What? Why?”
“Do it.”
Jake was too tired to argue so he screwed up the notes and threw them at Cubby’s sneakers. It was a pathetic attempt from a man who had once been a pretty handy basketball player.
“Get on your feet and follow me, McBride; I’m arresting you for littering.”
Tucking his friend up in a cell, he closed the door but left it unlocked. Jake was snoring before he’d walked out.
“Jake’s taking a nap in the cells. I’ll be back to wake him, Rick.”
“Sure thing.”
“You charge out per room, Sheriff?” Brady said with a cheeky grin. Ignoring him, Cubby headed out of the Lair.
Pulling out his phone, he put in a call to Branna telling her that Jake was sleeping it off in his cells, which made her hoot with laughter. He promised to send him home soon.
Cubby told himself he was not looking for Katie McBride as he walked around his town and he was definitely not thinking about Jake’s words. He may be a good human in his friend’s eyes, but he’d never really been put to the test in the eyes of a woman, and he’d rather not go there. Look how he’d messed things up with Katie six years ago. No, he was better off alone.
The streets were filling up. A few tourist vans were parked outside shops and the number would increase in the coming days, especially with the annual Howling Hot Foot due to start in a couple of weeks. Everyone would arrive to get in some practice before the start. The town had been running it for ten years now, and people came from all over for the event. The race started here in town, then circled part of the lake before looping up into the redwoods and back into town. Some ran the eight miles in relay teams, others the entire race.
“Sheriff Hawker.”
“Mrs. Roberts Haigh.” Cubby nodded to the woman marching toward him. HRH, as he and his friends called her when she wasn’t around, had tormented them in high school, but unlike the others, he had a reason to respect this woman, a tie that they would never sever. Her family was among the forefathers of Howling, and she took that responsibility damned seriously.
“How was that LA?”
She spat the words out as if they were poison.
