Page 10 of Oh, Hell No

“Sam’s Club has a café?” Bane asked.

I took a pull from the cigar. “Yeah. And the hot dogs are fucking delicious. Even when they’re cold.”

“Huh, interesting.”

She had been funny at Hobby Lobby. She made me want to laugh more than once. It made me angry. I hadn’t wanted to have any opinion of her at all. Especially the one I’d gotten in the short few minutes we interacted before I took her from the parking lot.

“No female who looks like that one is going to be used to the conditions she’s in. Don’t let her fool you. She’s been having men fall at her feet all her life. And the ex-boyfriend of hers is fucking Alec Dart, as in the running back for the Saints.”

I stilled my cigar halfway to my mouth. She’d dated Alec Dart for two years? Really? The second-grade school teacher with no makeup, no fake anything, who was wearing a pair of cutoff sweatpants and flip-flops, had dated Alec Dart.

“Are you positive?” I asked, finding it hard to believe.

“Go look at his Instagram. He’s not deleted her from it. You’ve got to scroll a bit, but you’ll find her. I didn’t realize it, but when Halo saw her photo, she recognized her. She went and found heron his Instagram. That fucker who calls himself her brother is a State fan and followed Dart back then.”

Winslet was stunning. The all-natural-beauty thing had been given to her all the way around. But she didn’t seem like the kind ofgirl a guy like Dart would date. He had a huge ego, and he didn’t seem tobe a relationship guy. In the interviews I’d seen him do, he was a fucking cocky-ass douchebag.

“Do we need to be concerned that the football star is gonna track her? If he calls the cops, then the Feds need to be alerted that he’s stepping into things.”

“Nah, he’s got models and cheerleaders on his arms all the time now. She’s not been on there in a long time. They’re the past.”

I fucking hoped so. But if anyone tracked her phone, then Wilder would know. We’d wait and see.

“I gotta get back to bed. Halo needs sleep, and if she wakes up and I’m still not back, she’ll come looking for me.”

I took another drink. “Yeah. Night,” I said.

“More like morning,” he replied with a small chuckle.

The call ended, and I dropped my phone into my lap.

I wanted to go see what she was doing. If she was sleeping on the concrete floor. I knew she wouldn’t be cold. It was July. But she sure as hell wasn’t gonna be comfortable.

“Just talk, little darlin’, and this can all end,” I whispered to no one.

Five

Winslet

Last night hadn’t been horrible. I had slept in worse places.

Like the time I’d run out of the apartment with Perry before Mom could kill him for breaking a glass he’d dropped because she’d startled him with her screaming. There was no way I was taking Perry back home that night, so we slept under the back stairs in the far corner of our apartment complex. It stunk, I saw three rats, and I slept sitting up while Perry laid his head in my lap. He had been seven. I had been nine.

Thankfully, I hadn’t heard anything down here, like a mouse or rat. Small miracles.

That was the main reason I could shut my eyes last night. The chair had been an added bonus, and sitting up with my back against the wall and my head on the seat, like I’d had to do on my desk in elementary school during quiet time, hadn’t been so bad. I had a stiff neck, but that was about it.

My main problem was, I needed to pee. I stared through the darkness toward the bucket, as if it were a creature meant to suck me into the underworld. I did not want to pee in that thing. But I also did not want to pee on myself.

Where was Perry? Why wasn’t he here yet? Oz couldn’t have taken me that far. I mean, I had no way to google it, but I was sure that the stuff I’d inhaled hadn’t kept me out for enough hours to leave the state.

My car would stand out. The canary yellow wasn’t easy to miss. The fact that it’d sat in a parking lot all night would be a red flag. Right? But maybe it was still night. I had no idea of knowing. My body felt like it was morning, but then maybe it was my bladder and the sleeping conditions that had woken me up.

Moving the chair back, I stood slowly, stretching my body. The sound of my stomach rumbling was followed by hunger pains. I wasn’t sure if I wanted food, water, or a toilet more. My bladder hurt so bad that I had to cross my legs as I debated on how long I could hold it.

Perry, please get here before I have to poop. Just gross.

Bending down, I turned on the lantern that I had cut off last night, wanting to conserve the battery.

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