Page 57 of Lucky Shot

“She’d sneak me chocolate chip cookies. Leave a bag of them by my bike so that I didn’t know it was her. But I saw her one time and I knew. I never got to thank her for that.”

“She had a soft spot for you.”

“Lucky me.”

“Thank you for this, for proving her right, but I can’t take it.” He reaches it back out to me through the bars of the metal screen door.

“No. Please. Keep it.”

“When you get to my age, you have a knack for seeing people for who they are. This is unexpected. Thank you for showing me who you are. Your true colors.” And then his gravelly voice changes to the one that used to scare the shit out of me. “Now you take this check back and get off my lawn so we can pretend like this never happened.”

“But—”

It’s his wink that stops me. His need to withdraw and staunch the overflow of emotions we both feel. I bark out a laugh and nod as I step back. “Nothing did happen, but you’ll have to tear up the check if you don’t want it. Or save it for a rainy day. I like to know my debts are repaid.”

“They have been repaid and then some. Thank you. You . . . made me smile.”

I leave Mr. Macias’s house with a lighter step. Does he have any idea how much that meant for me to be able to do? To honor him and his wife and the grace they extended to me in my time of need?

The footsteps behind me and the unmistakable sound of someone breathing jolt me from my thoughts. I’ve walked these streets a million times so I’m not sure why this time around the sound of someone behind me freaks me out, but it does.

You know as well as me there are some . . . unsavory characters around here that might do bad things to get to it.

I pick up the pace and am not sure if the sound I hear is my own footsteps echoing off the concrete wall beside me or really someone else. But I don’t dare look. I don’t invite the trouble that could come with it.

Almost there.

Almost.

And just as I jog around the corner onto my facility, I run smack dab into somebody.

Actually, a very firm, very bare chest of somebody.

The startled yelp we both emit as hands grab my shoulders cuts through the night and the pounding of my heartbeat in my ears.

“Whoa. Whitney. It’s me.” A pair of gray eyes lower so they are in my line of sight. “You okay?

“Yes.” I shake my head as if I’m trying to get rid of a bad dream. “I’m fine. I thought there was someone . . .” I hook a thumb over my shoulder and dare to look at the empty sidewalk behind me. “But there isn’t. Clearly. I was just being . . . dumb.”

“Hey. It’s okay. You sure you’re okay? I can feel your heartbeat against your skin.”

“Yes.” I plaster a smile on my face as if that will help. “Just fine.”

His eyes say he doesn’t believe me. “What were you doing? Where were you?”

“I was delivering something—it’s fine. I’m fine.”

“No. You’re shaken up. You probably shouldn’t go out in the neighborhood alone. It seems like it’s pretty rough.”

I laugh. “I—” I live in that neighborhood. “It’s not as bad as it seems.”

“Right,” he says sarcastically. “Why’d you go out there again?”

“It’s . . .” He stands to full height and gives me an eyeful of his chiseled chest perfection and a perfect distraction in this conversation. “Do you ever put a shirt on?”

“After all that, that’s what you’re going to say?”

“It is,” I say with a definitive nod and shrug from his grip. I sound stupid and shallow, but it’s my way to control the narrative and direct it away from how I had to repay a neighbor who kept me afloat.