My new phone will have to wait. My mum would lecture me into next month if I were to bury myself in messages or tell these lovely ladies that I, in fact, hate red and prefer colors that reflect my dark, hardened heart.
I tip my head and give Cole my brightest and fakest smile to hide the pain eating away at my gut. “My darling, self-righteous, forsaken man. If a fight is what you want, the years have only sharpened my sword—it’s deadlier than ever. The bull is going down.”
“You know that turns me on more,” he challenges.
He’s right.
“There was no way to color-match you, so we decided to go with a tinted moisturizer. I’m sure you could use a little TLC after your stay in the hospital,” Gracie says.
I drop my hand from Cole and turn to my new friends. “You don’t know how true that is. A stiff drink would do the trick but a good facial cream comes in a close second.”
The sooner I get this over with, the sooner I can get my hands on the phone I bartered my freedom for.
Chapter 6
Unless You Piss Me Off
Cole
“I’m going back to work tomorrow. I expect you to be on your best behavior. You pulling this shit isn’t helping me any.”
“Don’t know what you’re talkin’ ‘bout, boy.”
“Like hell. You know exactly what you’re doing.”
He humphs without a glance as he toys around the shed, pretending to fix a lawnmower that’s already lived eight lives. Red Carson can mend what others consider garbage—rebuild any engine and reincarnate scrap metal into something a million times better than it was before—basically work general magic in overalls and a dirty T-shirt. It might not be a pretty process, there are usually left-over pieces when he’s done, and most of the time he’s shed blood, but it’s him. It’s what he does, what he’s always done, and what makes him happy.
That and Abbott.
I’m an only child and Red never minced words when I was younger—he wanted a daughter. Hell, even my mom never complained about only having a boy. My dad loves his granddaughter. So much so, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone so happy to hear the news that a mother walked out of their child’s life. When I became a full-time parent with no help, it was his idea to move in with us. He said Abbott had experienced more shit in her short life than any one person deserved. My mom died a year earlier and he’d since retired from his job as a maintenance worker for Union Pacific. He sold the only house he and my mom ever owned—the home I grew up in and the one he loved—to move in with me and help with Abbott.
It’s why I sold my townhouse and bought this old farmstead. It sits on enough land that I can’t see my neighbors, there’s no street for Abbott to dodge traffic, and it has a barn for all of Red’s junk. But it’s falling apart around me and there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t miss the city.
Living with Red again isn’t what I’d call the perfect life. Hell, some days it’s the perfect storm. He’s a gruff, grumpy old man who misses my mom. She was a saint, especially to put up with his ass. But nothing puts a smile on his sun-aged face like his granddaughter.
He’s less lonely. I don’t have to pay for childcare. Abbott gets to grow up with her grandfather. Even surrounded by old pipes, creaky floors, and a roof that needed to be replaced ten years ago, it’s a win-win-win.
Red tosses a wrench into his messy, rusted toolbox and turns to me. “Months ago, my son came home and damn near poisoned his liver because the Queen of England broke him. Now she’s here and you expect me to wait on her hand and foot?”
I cross my arms. “You’ve been watching too much daytime TV.”
“Lifetime Network has nothin’ to do with it. I keep that old tube on for background noise while I work out here.”
“Maybe you should turn on a ballgame instead of the shit you watch that’s causing you to see life as a soap opera. No one’s broken and quit calling her the Queen. She doesn’t like it and it pisses me off.”
“I can call her whatever I wanna call her. What’re you gonna do, kick me out?”
“For fuck’s sake,” I mutter and drag a hand down my