Page 53 of Drawn Blue Lines

“One what?”

She laughed, and if I hadn’t heard it with my own ears, I wouldn’t have believed it. It sounded light and airy, a pleasant change of pace from her usual demonic growls. “Kids, you idiot. You know, a wife, house, white picket fence, dog…the whole plastic package.”

Now it was my turn to laugh, but it was neither light nor airy. It was an obstinate bark weighted in irony. “Hell, no. A kid is the last thing I need. I’m lucky to keep myself alive.” I raised my glass in a silent toast.

“Speaking of which,” she noted, taking it out of my hand. “How about slowing down, por favor.”

“I’ve only had two.”

“You’ve had six.”

I reached for my drink just as she tipped it upside down, pouring what was left of my scotch in the grass. Leaping forward, I grabbed it out of her hands mid-stream, trying to salvage what was left, but it was too late.

I glared at her while rolling the glass in my hand. “I don’t need another mother, Adriana.”

“Not trying to be one. I just don’t want to have to carry your drunk ass upstairs. I’d hate to have to blow your dick off for chipping a nail.”

I didn’t want to smile. I wanted to grab the bottom of the hammock and flip her ass upside down, but my brain and my face miscommunicated somewhere, and I grinned.

I fucking grinned.

“You really should back off the booze. Excessive drinking can kill you, you know.”

“All the more reason.”

She let out a sigh. I knew that sigh. I’d heard it so many times in the past year, it’d become an old friend. A lonely, old, asshole of a friend who showed up when others stopped trying to figure me out. I couldn’t blame them. Hell, I couldn’t even figure me out.

“You should have a few. Maybe it would knock that chip off your shoulder.”

She eyed the glass still rolling in my hand. “No, I can’t have…I don’t drink.”

I could’ve called bullshit. Not twenty-four hours ago, she stood in a run-down motel room, taunting me with a bottle of cheap scotch. But something in her voice stopped me. A sliver of weakness that any other time I’d wedge my foot into and pry open. But now wasn’t the time.

“No, I meant, do you think about having kids?”

“I’m kind of tired,” she announced abruptly, standing as she tapped her nails against the side of the glass still in her hand. “I’ll take this inside for you.”

She was gone before I could point out that it was barely seven o’clock. Whatever. It was a moot point. Her excuse, while transparent, peeled back another layer of raw truth. I’d leave her alone to lick her wounds tonight.

But the real Adriana was showing, and eventually there would be nowhere for her to run.

Chapter Seventeen

Adriana

“Adriana, stop.”

I had no idea what compelled me to obey. I was a grown-ass woman not an errant child, but Val’s voice stopped me mid stride, preventing my escape from his mandatory fun.

My grip tightened on the staircase banister. “Is something wrong?”

“I was hoping we could talk for a few minutes. Alone.”

Here it comes.

Clearing my throat, I peered over my shoulder, trying to look sorry. “Look, I didn’t mean to call her a whore. It just slipped out.”

Val squinted, his eyebrows drawing together. “What?”

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