“What part of ‘I’m bad news’ did you not understand? Plus, I won our bet,” I said. “You owe me a trip around town. You can either borrow your parents’ car, or you can go for a ride on my bike.”
Her eyes seemed to gleam. “You have a motorcycle?”
My lips tipped up at the corner. “Sure do.”
“Oh, boy,” she whispered. “Are you eating?”
I looked down at my less than appetizing food and grimaced. “Yeah.”
“The snack bar line is way better,” she admitted. “From now on, you should get your lunch from there.”
I picked at my food.
“I would if this shit wasn’t free for me,” I admitted. “Having no money ain’t no joke. I’d like to keep the money I do have since it’s not like I’ll ever get anymore unless I get a second job.”
She tilted her head slightly sideways. “If you don’t mind me asking, how are you living next to me without any money?”
“Easton’s mother,” I said. “Dad’s life insurance bought the house. I have a sizable income from his pension. But Easton’s mom is providing me with weekly groceries, motorcycle insurance, and every once in a while, a free meal or two. As long as I stay away from her son.”
“She doesn’t like you?” she guessed. “She thinks that you’re bad news, too? Are you?” she wondered.
I grinned widely at her. “Maybe.”
Overall, my day wasn’t complete shit.
In fact, I ended up having three classes in total with Beckham, one of those being our last class, meaning we could walk home together.
Only, my day was turned to shit almost the moment that our houses came into view.
Why?
Because her father saw us walking next to each other and lost his shit.
“Beckham, inside,” Foster ordered.
Beckham sighed. “See you tomorrow, Troup.”
“Yeah,” I agreed as I watched her go.
It wasn’t until she was all the way inside that her father, Foster Spurlock turned his narrow-eyed gaze to me.
He tucked his arms across his wide chest and let me have it with both barrels.
“Did some checking up on you,” he said. “Quite a rap sheet you have.”
I clenched my teeth.
He had no fuckin’ clue why I had the rap sheet.
He didn’t know that, at night, before I was emancipated, my foster brother and his dad would take turns beating the shit out of me when I was asleep. He didn’t know that the time that I got kicked out permanently, the motherfucker had been trying to grope the younger foster kid he had in his care.
He didn’t know shit about me and was only assuming by a few pieces of paper on a computer that he knew me.
“Stay away from my girl.”
I held up my hands. “I was just walking home, sir.”
Foster’s eyes narrowed. “You were walking way too close to her.”
“If you want her to not walk with me, maybe you should buy her a car,” I suggested. “Then she would have no reason to walk, now would she?”
Foster’s eyes went flinty and hard. “Maybe I will.”
She had a fuckin’ car the next week.
But what her daddy didn’t know was that she gave me a ride in it every single day for the next year.
CHAPTER 3
Bro, all she wants is one of your hoodies.
-Trouper to a friend
TROUP
Nine months later
“This feels so unreal,” she whispered.
I leaned back in the swing and pumped my legs.
“I mean, I can’t believe we’re finally graduated.” She paused. “And you head into the Air Force tomorrow.”
I grinned over at her.
“It doesn’t feel right, does it?” I asked.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” she whispered.
Everything inside of me stilled at the tone of her voice.
“What?”
“I…” She swallowed and dropped her feet, kicking up a riot of dust as she came to a stop. “You know that I’m…” she sighed. “This is really hard.”
There were a lot of things really hard when it came to Beckham Spurlock.
Like keeping my fuckin’ hands off of her, for instance.
The past nine months had seriously been the hardest of my life.
But I’d managed to not only graduate with honors, I’d also managed to keep my fuckin’ hands to myself when all I wanted was to snatch her into my arms and declare her as mine.
“I know that we’re just friends,” she hesitated.
I stopped swinging too to look at her.
A knot of something exciting and dreadful started to fill my chest.
Was she…
“I have a proposition for you,” she licked her lips.