Page 87 of Rent Free

We ate tacos—I only ate two and a half—and talked about the good and bad of each facility.

In the end, they both chose my pick.

When we were done, I started to clean up, while the men slowly talked about the day, relaying everything that’d been decided with Sage.

“She’ll get no severance since she was fired,” Atlas finished. “Tomorrow, we expect to hear from her lawyers because she screamed it at anyone that would listen as we locked her up in the cells.”

“That must be why I got the phone call ordering me to bail her out again,” I said. “I blocked the call.”

“Good,” Gable said as he headed to the front door. “Stay the fuck away from her.”

“Trust me,” I said as I followed behind him, Atlas at my side. “I do everything I can to stay away from her. The woman is nuts.”

Gable looked at Atlas with a frown. “Maybe that’s DPD’s issues. They keep hiring women.”

I gasped. “You did not just say that!”

Gable cackled as he backed away from my ire.

“It’s the crazy gene.” He giggled. “It only shows up in females.”

I threw a pillow from the couch at his head, which he easily caught.

He tossed it back at me, twice as hard, a lecherous grin on his face.

“You’re going to hell…o. Hello.” I quickly changed my words as I saw Forest standing in the living room staring at us.

Forest flashed me a cute grin.

A grin that looked a lot like the man who was now crouching down in front of him.

Forest was a smart kid.

Now that he wasn’t worried about getting yelled at by us, he was coming out of his shell.

And he was also learning new words.

I’d made it my new mission not to say anything bad around him, but it was hard when the kid was quiet and sneaky like his father.

Gable went to Forest, held out his hand for a high five—which he received—and headed out the door.

I set the alarm and watched out of the corner of my eye as Atlas picked Forest up and disappeared into his bedroom.

I went to my own bedroom, took a shower, and was getting dressed in a large t-shirt—one I’d pilfered from the laundry room the day before—when there was a soft knock at the door.

I walked to it, very aware I was in the man’s t-shirt, and opened it.

He leaned on the door with one shoulder, crossing his feet at the ankle, and regarded me for a few long moments.

So long that I started to squirm and, to cover my discomfort, I turned to look out the window.

“I misspoke yesterday,” he said after long moments.

I looked up from my contemplation of the large backyard that the brothers shared to the man who’d come in while I wasn’t paying attention.

“Huh?” I asked, sitting up straighter.

“I misspoke yesterday,” he repeated.

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