“She’s never gonna give Peck a chance.”
At the sound of his name, Peck walks through the front door. He stops just inside, the glow from the exit sign giving his mop of blond hair a pinkish hue.
Peck makes a beeline for our table, a look etched in the lines on his face that sends a ripple of concern up my spine. After growing up with him and then working with him for the last few years, I can read him like a book. Something is wrong.
“What’s going on?” I ask, scrambling to my feet as he gets closer.
“Walker, man, you need to get outside,” Peck says. “Someone just bashed the front of your truck.”
“What?” I hiss, sure I misheard him. “Someone did fucking what?”
“Yeah, man. You need to get out there.”
Blood ripping through my veins, I plow my way through the bar. Machlan lifts his chin, sensing something is off, but I shake my head as we pass. I know he loves a good fight, but this one is mine.
Lance is on my heels as we make our way through the crowd. “Who did you piss off now?”
“Someone who wants to die, apparently.” My fingers flex against the wood of the door, the warm summer air slamming my face as I hit the sidewalk. “You sure you don’t want to stay inside? I think getting into a street fight is against your teacher code of conduct.”
“Fuck off,” Lance chuckles. “I’ll have Peck hold my glasses and I’m in.”
“You, my brother, are an intelligent heathen.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment. I think.”
The top of my black pickup truck comes into view, sitting beneath one of the few lamps lining Beecher Street. There are two people standing on the sidewalk next to my truck.
“Do we know them?” I ask Peck through gritted teeth.
“I promise you we’ve never seen them before.”
“So it’s not . . .” Lance doesn’t finish his sentence. “Holy shit.”
The two women turn to face us and I think all of our jaws drop. The first is tall with jet black hair and a strong, athletic build. It’s the second one who has me struggling to remember why we’re out here.
Long, blonde hair with faint streaks of purple and the brightest blue eyes I’ve ever seen, she assesses me in the hazy streetlight. She doesn’t make a show of looking me over like most women do, batting their eyelashes like some damsel in distress. There’s something different about her, a quiet confidence that makes her almost unapproachable.
Unapproachable, but still hot as fucking hell.
My gaze drifts down her ample chest, over the white lace fabric of the top that hugs the bends of her body. Cutoff denim jeans cap long, lean legs that only look longer next to the Louisville Slugger half-hidden behind her.
It takes a ton of effort, but my eyes finally tear from her body and to the body of my truck. Sure enough, there’s a rip across the grill and a broken headlight that looks an awful lot like a slam from a baseball bat. It’s nothing that can’t be fixed in my shop, but that’s not the point. The point is the disrespect.
“I’M NOT TAKING YOU to the hospital.”
Peck teeters on the edge of one of Crave’s billiard tables. He sways back and forth, his sneakers squeaking against the cheap wood over the chatter of the patrons of the bar. “You don’t think I can land a back flip off here?”
The truth is I’m pretty sure he could. My cousin has the reflexes of a cat. The problem is he also has nine lives, and I’m sure he’s used up eight of them already.