as he pulls me in closer. “Now I can call this a date. I’m paying for your parking ticket.” He grins. It’s like an aphrodisiac.
“I’ve been warned about people like you,” I tell him. “Always having a secret agenda with their nice-doings.” I chew on my lower lip, raising a brow with intentions of making his grin stay just as it is.
“My agenda is no secret.” He pinches his fingers around my chin then presses his lips into mine, allowing me to taste the sweet dark roast of his coffee.
I hear the slowing of an engine coming toward us and I look over my shoulder to see a cruiser pull up. They’re either here to give me another ticket or—I don’t think PDA is prohibited. Regardless, my cheeks are burning. As the window of the cruiser opens, a strong-jawed, wide-eyed brute looking woman stares between the two of us. “Is this your car?” she asks.
“Yes ma’am,” I nod.
“If you don’t move your car, I’m booting it. You understand?”
“She’s leaving,” Hayes says, moving in front of me. He leans down into the window of the cruiser; his voice softens to the point where I can hardly hear him. “Helene, don’t you have something better to do right now?”
“Not like you,” she retorts, twisting her head around Hayes to look at me. She gives me a coy wink then rolls up her window, forcing Hayes to back up.
As he turns toward me, he waves her off over his shoulder.
“Know her?” I ask, laughing.
“Yeah. She’s worked for the police department for years. She’s a force you don’t want to reckon with.”
I unlock my car and Hayes opens the door for me. “I guess I better get going then.”
“Wait.” His hand encloses my upper arm, pulling me backward and leaving me with one last taste of his lips. “I’ll call you, Blondie-locks.”
* * *
Now that I’ve successfully wasted half the day, I have a little over an hour before I need to leave for work. I was hoping to clear the air with Aspen before I leave. But she’s currently singing in the shower. I suppose I would be too after such a busy night. Unless I was screwing my friend’s ex-boyfriend.
Actually, I wouldn’t do that at all, so…
I drop down on the couch and fumble with my phone until I end up back on Facebook, picking up where I left off earlier. I mindlessly scroll through my feed, deleting every message without reading it. Ignoring all of the sympathy remarks. I appreciate them, but I can’t look at any more. I click on Blake’s page next, expecting the worst. But to my surprise, there are only two comments; one from Aspen and one from Tanner. The one from Tanner says: you left your mark on my life, man. I’ll never forget you. Aspen’s says, “I’ll miss you, Blake. Rest in Peace.” I close the application as tears threaten to make their appearance once again and toss my phone onto the coffee table just as Aspen traipses out of the bathroom with a towel around her body and another wrapped around her hair. She clutches her chest, seemingly startled by my presence. “I didn’t know you were home.”
“Did you know I was here last night?” I come right out with it. I can’t stand this discomfort between the two of us. We’ve never had any issues before, and I hate this. Maybe it’s because we’re living together now. Or maybe it isn’t all about her any more. I don’t know.
“No, I figured you were out with your mystery guy when you didn’t come home after your shift,” she says, taking the towel off her head and wringing her hair out over the floor. I watch the water start to pool below her, losing sight of the point of this conversation. “I take it you heard some things last night,” she says with a crooked grin and one eye closed. The proud look of whatever she accomplished last night infuriates me.
“Aspen, I know you were with Tanner last night.” The words come out flat, almost like I don’t care who she was with any more. Not as much as I did last night when I was drunk, at least.
Her eyes widen, and she sighs, exasperated. “What are you talking about?”
She’s seriously going to make me drag this out of her. “I heard you moaning—with him last night.”
Her cheeks redden and she pulls her towel tighter around her body. “I was not with Tanner last night.”