it in the middle of the day or I can’t get it. You literally save me a lot of hassle.”
I grinned.
That was why I liked doing what I did.
People were nice to me because I was doing them a favor, and I got paid handsomely for it.
Plus, the last time I was there, Murphy offered to give my car a tune-up in exchange for a trip to the store, which I took. And now it ran better, but it was still a beater.
I had no clue how nice it was to know a mechanic until Murphy.
“Damn, those dogs are getting big.” Taos shook his head as he walked out, wiping dog hair off of his pants.
I wondered what kind they were.
I’d never asked.
“Yeah, they sure the fuck aren’t the little puppies that they used to be when they came to the gym with me, are they?” Murphy asked.
After our goodbyes were made, I offered Taos the keys. “I’ll give you a dollar to drive.”
“Deal.” Taos paused as he looked at the minivan. “Though, just sayin’, but I think my man card will get revoked if I drive it.”
I snorted and got into the passenger seat. “I hate driving it. I feel like I’m driving a damn boat. But it’s easier to just take hers and allow her to take mine rather than shuffling the big ass car seat around.”
He chuckled as he put the van in reverse, then paused when he saw the backup screen.
“That’s really fuckin’ cool,” he mused as he started to back out. Without, might I add, once looking at the screen.
I didn’t have a screen in my car, either, meaning that I rarely glanced at the screen myself.
But I agreed with him, it was really fuckin’ cool.
“I think it’s so big, and surrounds the car so much, because they’re anticipating a shit ton of kids getting in here. And what better way to make sure you don’t run over those shit ton of kids than to have an angle on every single piece of this car?” I teased.
“There was an accident I worked once,” he said as he put the van in drive and then started driving down the road to somewhere I wasn’t privy to. “A grandmother ran over her grandchild. It was awful. Like, well and truly awful. I never thought I would see anything so heartbreaking. The van was partially on the kid’s chest when she realized what she’d done, and when she got out, she didn’t know whether to move the van or not. She was elderly, and crippled to boot, so there was literally nothing that could be done. But the uncle of the kid, hearing the screaming, came running out of the house and fuckin’ lifted the van right off of his nephew. You know they say that there are spurts of superhuman strength when you have adrenaline pumping through your body? The man that did the lifting was like five-foot-six, a hundred and seventy pounds. He shouldn’t have been able to lift that, but he did.”
I swallowed past a lump in my throat, feeling awful for even making that earlier teasing comment.
“Did the kid live?” I whispered.
He looked over at me, seeing the torture in my expression.
“He did,” he confirmed. “The uncle started to come to CrossFit the very next day. Wanted to get into better shape after that.”
“And did he?” I pushed.
Taos grinned. “He did. He’s at the gym all the time now. He’s competing in regionals next month, actually.”
I smiled, happy to hear that the ending was good.
“Vlad isn’t old enough to be doing that yet.” I paused. “But now I’m going to make sure that I look every single freakin’ time.”
Taos winked at me just as he pulled into the parking lot of a small hole-in-the-wall diner that I’d never seen before.
I tilted my head and stared. “I’ve been here for three and a half years now,” I mused. “And I’ve never seen this place before.”
“Cop hangout,” he said. “Not many people know about it, because the people that do frequent it don’t want to have to deal with other people’s shit.”
A laugh shot out of my mouth, and I could do nothing but shake my head as I got out of the car.
Before I could even open the sliding back door, Taos was there, expertly removing my nephew from his car seat and pulling him toward his chest.
I opened the opposite door and snatched Vlad’s diaper bag before looping the strap over my shoulder.
By the