Pulling out my phone, I dialed my dad’s number only for it to go straight to voicemail.
Grumbling, I hung up and went to Google so I could look up handymen.
I had the money. I would get paid from my new job in a week’s time, so that meant that all the money in my bank account was fair game. All two hundred and eleven dollars of it.
Except, every handyman I called was either busy or didn’t bother answering.
By the fourth ‘I’m sorry, ma’am, I’m not able to get to you’ I had a feeling that Creed was responsible for my not finding someone to fix it. He probably put in a call to all his new club brothers and told them not to work with me.
I kicked at the door with my foot, then decided…fuck it.
“I’ll figure this out on my own,” I snapped as I pushed the heavy armoire across the front door, blocking my one and only exit.
Technically, I had two. However, the back door had a six-foot drop off that used to house a set of stairs before one day they’d just gone missing.
I had a side window I could also use…
I’d call Shade to help me fix it, but he was awful with carpentry. He could break down an engine and rebuild it in a full day, but when it came to fitting wood and screws together, he was a lost cause.
That didn’t mean that he couldn’t give me a ride to the home improvement store, though…
I dialed his number and waited for him to pick up.
“Hey,” he said. “What are you doing?”
“Any way you could drive me to the home improvement store?” I asked.
“Sure.” He paused. “Why?”
“Long story short, I need new locks.”
We got new locks, and I got new pieces of wood that I thought might work around my door.
If it didn’t work, and worse came to worst, I’d just nail the damn thing closed and start using my back door.
At least until Stacy calmed down enough for me to tell him that my front door was broken, anyway.
“You want to grab lunch?” Shade asked.
Not really, but I wasn’t going to argue with him. He’d given me a ride to the store thirty minutes away. Then come in with me where I’d given his father my resignation. It was the least I could do.
“Sure,” I lied.
He pulled into the diner parking lot and parked right up front.
I narrowed my eyes at my family sitting front and center, laughing and carrying on.
I gritted my teeth and got out, telling myself I wasn’t going to cause a scene.
Shade, however…
“Maybe we should go to the coffee shop,” I offered.
“No, I want some actual food. I’ll take you by Mom’s afterward, though, and we can grab a nightcap.”
I didn’t argue with him, and instead walked inside, being very careful not to look at my dad or sisters.
“Two?” the woman at the front greeted us.
