Ames lived here—I mean how fucking bad could my luck get?—was a punch to the gut.
I mean, seriously. How the fuck, out of all the places in the world, did they end up here?
“Are you actually living in this town?” I asked curiously.
Her eyelid twitched. “No. I live in Bear Bottom. But it’s close enough to here. I have a mail route that I run for this part of the area. And I was here first.”
My eyelids twitched. First the left one. Then the right.
Then I shook my head.
But before I could speak up, Lulu was there.
“Honey,” Lulu said, “you don’t just get to say someone needs to leave. They’re here. You’re here. They’re not leaving. Obviously, you’re not leaving. I honestly don’t see what you hoped to happen by coming here. I mean the man has a business. He’s part of a motorcycle club here. What do you do? Work for the federal government delivering mail? You could leave easier than he could.”
That’s why I loved Lulu. She told it like it was, and she was so blunt sometimes that it hurt.
But for Ames, she really needed to hear the shit that she was spewing.
I mean, would I have come here if I’d known that her and her husband, the asshole, were here? Probably. It wouldn’t have changed anything.
But I surely would’ve warned Blaise first before she followed me to this area.
Ames growled, narrowing her eyes. “I’ll get a restraining order.”
“Go ahead,” I suggested, then narrowed my eyes. “Why do you know that we’re here? Who did you see today?”
I knew who she saw today. I just wanted to see if she would tell me the truth.
I was honestly surprised when she did.
“I run your mail route.” She clenched and unclenched her teeth. “And I saw that woman that started this all.”
I had the urge to laugh at her words.
Instead of doing that, I decided to keep my cool and hope that it would make her leave faster.
“Maybe you should switch that up if you plan on getting a restraining order,” I suggested.
Ames narrowed her eyes. “I was on that route first. Maybe you should move.”
I did nothing but shake my head. “Oh, Ames. You never cease to amaze me.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “What is that supposed to mean?”
I leaned forward then, getting into her space.
“It amazes me,” I said, “that you stayed with a man that would have no problem hurting a woman the way your husband did. He beat the shit out of her. Was in the process of raping her when I came along. Why would you want to have a family with a man like that? What if he did that to your kid?”
Ames flashed me her teeth. “That was all a lie perpetuated by your girlfriend. You went to jail because of this woman’s lies. I feel sorry for you, honestly.”
I shook my head. Same ol’ song and dance.
The fuckin’ shit of it is, Brees had prepared for what he’d done to Blaise.
He’d planned ahead. He had a great alibi—Ames—and he’d made sure to cover his tracks so that it looked like he wasn’t doing what he was actually doing.
Because, an eye witness account—one that held some weight at the base—by Ames made it to where I was the one in the wrong.
And since Blaise couldn’t remember her part in the play, it was Ames and Brees’ word against me.
They’d ‘happened’ upon Blaise in a back alley on the way to a dinner.
They’d stopped to help her, when I’d stumbled along, misinterpreted what had happened, and acted rashly.
I hadn’t acted rashly.
I’d acted honestly.
I’d gone to prison for it.
And the woman standing in front of me was responsible for it.
Maybe she hadn’t done the actual act of hurting Blaise, but she’d definitely played a large part in why I’d gone to prison and lost everything.
Granted, I’d have probably ended up going to prison regardless. You didn’t just beat a man to near death, knowing that he was likely going to fuckin’ die of his injuries, without thinking that you were going to deal with the consequences. But I hadn’t expected what had actually happened.
“Are you even listening to me?” Ames hissed, poking me in the chest with one overly long blue fingernail.
How did she even get anything done, like text on her phone or wipe her ass, with fingernails that long?
Like, seriously. They had to be at least an inch long. They were so long, in fact, that when she started clicking