Page 133 of The Mercenary's Guide to Mishaps and Romance

“I deal with him, correct,” Everly says.

“Any, uhhhhh… interest in murdering him? I pay well.”

“I already tried it,” Leland says.

“I tried it too,” Cassel mutters.

“Why’d you put him in prison if you just want to murder him?” Everly asks.

“Because I was a very confused man trying to be all ‘Look, Lucas, I’ve changed.’ It was a stupid mistake,” Leland says as he starts stuffing a vest on me. He’s cinching it so tightly that I’m positive he’s planning on suffocating me and leaving me behind.

“I can’t… breathe.”

“You don’t need to be able to breathe,” he assures me, which sounds counterintuitive to my survival… if that’s what this is.

Once I’m more than a little confident that Leland is just going to leave me in the back of the car where I can no longer move from all the protective gear on me, we reach the water.

“Leland, I can’t move like this.”

“Good. Just stay here until we get back,” he says. “Jackson, roll the window down and leave a little bowl of water for him.”

I grumble and flail my way out of these weird protective pants before slithering out of the car. “I am going! I’m… capable of something!”

“Are you sure you want to go?” Jackson asks.

“Yes, more than sure. I’m… I’m not like my dad and won’t just run away when things get rough.”

Jackson gives me a soft smile. “You’re nothing like your father. Don’t ever think that. You can stay back here where it’s safe and leave it to the rest of us who know what we’re doing.”

“I don’t know what we’re doing,” Everly mutters. “Is this the boat? Will anyone notice if I push Leland off?”

“I would notice,” Leland responds.

“I would pay handsomely,” Micah says.

Everly’s expression doesn’t change but when Leland gets close to the water, Everly seems quite interested in him. Even though they are all quite strange, I hurry after them as we get onto the boat. The person manning the boat guns it the moment we’re on and I fly back, slamming into a box before falling into Cassel, who takes me down with him. Cassel clearly isn’t going down alone because he grabs on to Jackson’s pants, whipping them down as Leland trips over me while trying to catch his footing and skids across the boat on his chest.

When it’s all said and done, the only one still standing is Jackson with no pants or underwear up since Cassel has both in a firm grip that he doesn’t seem prepared to release.

“Y’all should get some life jackets on,” the captain of the boat says, like he didn’t think to possibly tell us that before our lives were endangered.

Leland whistles from where he’s wallowing on the ground, also a victim of the horrible driving. “Damn, darling. Look at dat asssssss. Cassel, look at dat ass.”

“Cassel, can I please have my pants back?” Jackson asks as he tries to cover himself with them, but with Cassel holding on to them like a lifeline, it doesn’t seem that he’s going to be getting them.

“I’msosorry,” I tell Cassel.

Leland waves off my apology. “Don’t apologize, Ellis. Never apologize for getting to see Jackson’s tush.”

Cassel finally lets go, and I help him up enough that we can kind of waddle our way to a seat when my phone beeps.

Anxious that it might be Tavish, I yank it out only to see that it’s a picture of me and Cassel disrobing Jackson.

Leland: Dat ass. Dat ass.

Henry: Why the fuck do you think I want to look at that?

Leland: Your wife sure liked it.

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