Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 73230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
I had what they called ‘resting bitch face.’
It was biological.
I got it from my mother, and I had no control over it.
But I was also pissed off.
The man at my back had been talking about me not wearing underwear underneath my pants for over twenty minutes now, and it was getting on my nerves.
The only way I wasn’t breaking my empty beer bottle over his head right then was if I acted like he didn’t affect me, then maybe he wouldn’t keep talking about it.
“So, tell me,” I ignored his question and drank a large swig of my beer. “Why do you also work as a Private Dick?”
I may or may not have, been a little buzzed.
Then again, it didn’t take much.
I was a lightweight.
My body didn’t handle beer and alcohol like most.
Some people could build up their tolerance over time, slowly taking in more each time they drank before they looked or acted drunk.
Not me, though. It didn’t matter how much I drank or how often I did it, I always got the same result.
One drink of anything, and my mind got fuzzy.
But I’d not been sleeping well lately, so I decided it was time to come down here for a beer.
“Used to be a cop. Got injured. Damaged my right side permanently. Sometimes my vision and hearing go out, and there’s no rhyme or reason to it. Couldn’t pass the physical to get back in,” he replied with absolutely no emotion.
No annoyance.
No indifference.
No nothing.
“I tried to get a job at the police station, right after I got my degree in biology,” I grimaced. “They said I was too timid.”
“You are timid,” Casten countered, not missing a beat. “If I’d have heard those guys talking about me for twenty minutes, I would say something. Instead, you sit here getting more and more bitchy looking, but you haven’t once said a single word to the two of them to get them to stop, or to stand up for yourself.”
“Why aren’t you telling them to stop?” I pushed him.
He grunted.
“Gotta take care of yourself in this life,” he mumbled. “You’re not always going to have someone protect you. Grow a thick skin and tell those fuckers to leave you the fuck alone.”
I laughed humorlessly. “That’ll work.”
He raised a brow at me.
“Why do you think it won’t?” he challenged. “Most of the time, people say things like that when they don’t think the person they’re talking about can hear. If they know you hear them, then they’ll either shut up or try to talk quieter. Either way, that’s a win for you.”
I thought about that for a moment and, realizing he was right, the argument I’d been forming died on my lips.
“And what if they don’t?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Then every time they say something particularly loud, you take that beer bottle you’ve been fingering all night, and you fuck them up with it.”
And that, people, was the beginning of a bar fight.
***
Casten
“I didn’t think she’d do it,” I told Ridley.
Ridley looked at me.
“So let me get this straight. You told her she should fuck up that guy who’d been trash talking her all night with the bottle. She was drunk, and he kept running his mouth. And you didn’t think she’d listen to you?” Ridley bellowed.
Well, when he put it like that, it did make me sound a bit stupid. Hand to God, I swear, I really thought she’d have known better.
Seriously! She was a grown ass woman!
I shrugged. “Let her out of the car. If anyone sees her in there, she could lose her job.”
Ridley grumbled under his breath, and I watched him walk to the car and open the back door.
Ridley was another member of The Uncertain Saints.
He was also a deputy with the Marion County Sheriff Department.
His hair was a mess, which was quite unusual for him. But I wouldn’t go there…not tonight.
He looked and sounded like he wanted to be anywhere else but here.
Probably at the bottom of a bottle, I thought to myself.
Ridley helped to steady a drunken Tasha as she exited the car on wobbly legs. She clutched at his arm, and it took everything I had not to rip her away from him.
Bad boy. Down boy.
Great, just great… I was talking to my cock now.
She sure brought out the best in me.
“Thanks,” I muttered, meeting Ridley half way to help Tasha stand.
She was really teetering now, and in tennis shoes no less.
“You’re welcome!” Tasha cried brightly.
Tasha was clearly one of those women who got happy when she was drunk.
Like my sister.
Speaking of my sister, I waved at her as I saw her come out the side door of the establishment.
She was a deputy with Marion County as well.
And she was fond of Ridley. Not in a sexual way, but in a friendly way.
Not that Ridley knew that. He had his head so far up his dead wife’s ass that it was comical.