the wall to make sure I hadn’t missed any appointments, and headed out without a backward glance.
• • •
“Please, will you come?”
After my day, I wanted to say no.
I wanted to be like, hell no.
But this was Hastings.
And I’d do anything for Hastings.
“How long do I have to stay?” I asked.
“It’s kind of like a block party between everyone,” she said. “All of us are gathering around, barbequing, and having a good time. Everyone wants you here.”
I tell you what.
If there was anywhere I didn’t want to be, it was out with my brother anywhere in the vicinity.
After him tattle-telling to my father and forcing me to blurt shit out that wasn’t real, the last thing I wanted to do was see him.
But… yeah.
“I’m bringing Axe,” I muttered. “That way I can be like… oh, no. I need to go. Axe is tired.”
Axe was such a good buffer. And he didn’t care when I lied and used him as an excuse.
Hastings snickered. “You do that.”
“When do I have to be there?” I wondered.
“Now,” she said. “Everyone’s already here.”
I sighed. “I’ll be there in however long it takes me to walk there.”
Then I hung up and looked at Axe.
“You want to go for a walk, ol’ buddy?” I asked.
His ears perked up.
Oh, yes. He loved his walks.
Especially the ones through the woods that we’d started taking lately.
Grans had shown me her shortcut when I’d explained that my brother lived in the duplexes not far from her house.
She’d been super excited and had informed me that her grandson lived over there, too.
And now that I knew that her grandson was Malachi, things made a weird sort of sense.
Grans loved talking about her grandson, but every once in a while she got this really sad, defeated look about her when she spoke of him.
Now that I knew who he was, I understood that sad look.
Malachi had been held as a prisoner of war and had been kept that way for quite a long time. Another couple of men that moved to Kilgore, or were from Kilgore originally, had also been part of that group.
They’d healed together once they were back home.
Hayes, another man on the SWAT team, was one of those men. He was very active in a military group based in East Texas to help soldiers just like him and Malachi to overcome whatever they’d suffered over there.
I wonder if Gabriel is also a part of this same group. It would make sense.
But, since we’d made a pact long ago to always keep the really personal stuff just that, personal, I wouldn’t ever ask him.
Though, now that I was thinking about him…
I pulled out my phone and sent a quick text to him, letting him know my misery.
Sierra: I’m about to go to a party that I don’t want to go to. Wish me luck.
Gabriel: Sounds like fun. That’s what I’m doing, too.
Sierra: I’ll send you an emergency text in an hour. You send me one back. Then we’ll both have an excuse to leave.
Gabriel: Deal.
The walk to my brother’s duplexes that were dubbed as ‘Cop Row’ took less time than I’d been hoping, and when I arrived, Hastings was right. The entire party was in full swing.
I spotted Hastings and made a beeline straight for her.
She saw me coming and turned, widening the gap of the small circle that she was standing in with Amelia, Rowen, Avery, Ashe, Ares, Calloway, Dillan, Delanie, and Reggie.
“You came!” Rowen, who belonged to Dax, another member of the SWAT team, cried. “We’ve been talking about you.”
I looked at Hastings, then moved my gaze over to Amelia. “About what?”
“About the fact that you live in Malachi’s grandmother’s house,” Ares, who belonged to Hayes, said.
“Oh, yeah.” I nodded, expecting her to say something about my knocked-upness. “I do.”
Ares snorted. “I’ve always wanted to go see that house. You know he’s like, super-duper rich, right?”
I assumed.
With Grans being an open book about her place, I had no doubt in my mind that she was quite wealthy.
And if Grans was wealthy, that meant that by default, Malachi was wealthy, too.
“I kind of guessed that,” I admitted as my stomach rumbled, making the ones closest to me giggle. “I’m starving. I didn’t even get a chance to eat today thanks to how busy the NICU is.”
“Amen to that,” Reggie grumbled as she patted her own hungry belly. “How about we go snag a weenie or two?”
That sounded like heaven.
“Let’s do it. We’ll be back,” I said to the group as