Page 53 of Side Hustle
Bain shook his head slowly before his shoulders slumped. “Come on, Luc. I want to hate her. Don’t do this.”
Lucy’s fingers climbed up his arm and onto his shoulder before she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down nose to nose with her. “Let the system deal with her, but you and I need to forgive her and move on.”
I sighed romantically, watching the two of them. Lucy was such a good person and it warmed my heart to see big, bad Bain acquiesce to everything she wanted. Rip wandered over to my side and ran a finger across the tiny strip of skin showing below my shirt. The shiver sliding over my skin didn’t surprise me.
“Let’s get the hell out of here and finish what we started in the car, huh?” he whispered in my ear.
I glanced over and ran my gaze along his torso, the muscles there reminding me I also had my very own big, bad boyfriend who’d give in to anything I wanted. Twirling around, I slammed the last temperature-controlled chamber closed and grabbed Rip’s hand to drag him outside. We ended up both running, the other two couples smirking as they knew exactly what we were up to.
We’d have to go in tomorrow and give our statements, but tonight was for us.
21
Rip
“Well, shit,” I muttered, scrubbing a tired hand across my eyes.
Red and blue lights lit up the back of my truck as I tried to get home after a long day taking tourists out for some deep-sea fishing. They’d had more beer than brain cells, which only made my job harder. After very little sleep the last few weeks due to Hazel and the fact that all she had to do was blink and I was hard as a rock, all I wanted was to get home to Hazel and fall into bed with her again.
I put my flashers on and pulled off into the gravel, only a mile from my house. As I put it into park and searched for my registration, I saw Chief Waldo lumber out of his cruiser, shut off the flashing lights, and come along the driver’s side of my truck.
“Hey, Chief. Was I going too fast?” I asked after I manually rolled down the window, the blasted thing creaking the whole time.
He didn’t answer, just rested his forearms on my window and sniffed a long drag of air through his nose. Shit. His telltale sign of settling in for a while. What were the chances I’d finally get a life—and a hot girlfriend—to get home to and only now get pulled over for a long chat by the chief? Where’d he been all those lonely nights when I would have welcomed a shoot-the-shit session on the side of the road?
“Nah. I been waiting for ya before I turned in for the night.” He clasped his hands together, the worn gold ring on his finger glinting off his headlights shining through my back window. “I wanted to tell you personally that we let your father go on bail today. I had an honest chat with him before he left my custody about where he stood with the evidence we had. I think he’ll be announcing his retirement shortly.”
I blew out a relieved breath, not one ounce of me feeling guilty for being the one to supply that evidence. Nodding my thanks at the chief, I felt like one more moving puzzle piece to my life clicked into place.
“That’s good to hear. I was hoping he’d step down quietly.”
The chief scrubbed a thick finger over his chin, the mustache he’d been growing lately adding to the Clint Eastwood badass look. He might be nearing retirement and he might have a potbelly that would give a pig an inferiority complex, but the chief oozed a type of gruff confidence that could stop a guy in his tracks.
“There’s a rumor someone else might be better suited for running for mayor.”
That was news to me, though I didn’t exactly keep up with the gossip here in town. Several years back I had all my mail delivered to a post office box. The less I saw of Poppy around my house, the less I had a chance of getting in her rotation of gossip. I may be quiet, but I wasn’t a fool.
Chief whacked his thick palm down on my open window, making me jump. “It’s you, son. The people want you to step up. Tell them what you envision for this town and they’ll support you back with their vote.”
I had to clear my throat to speak. “I, uh, was thinking about it, but to be honest, I don’t think I’m ready yet.”
“Fuck that.”
I choked. “Excuse me?” I’d never heard the chief curse before, other than a well-placed damn or hell when the occasion called for it.
The chief straightened up, his bushy eyebrows badly needing some alone time with a pair of tweezers. “You heard me. This is why I wanted to speak to you tonight before you messed everything up. You had a shit father growing up, so no one told you how things are. So you listen real good. We get into trouble when people hold positions of power because they crave it more than anything else. Real men—and hell, this applies to women too and Lord don’t I know it with five daughters—the ones who have power, have it not because they crave it, but because theyearnit. They stand up for what’s right, even when it’s hard or contrary to what they’re being pressured to do. They think of other people before themselves. That’s the kind of mayor this town needs. And that’s exactly what kind of a man you are. If you craved power, you would have taken all that gold for yourself. But you didn’t. You shared it. You had information on your father that you could have used to blackmail him into doing any such thing you wanted. But you didn’t. You turned him in.”
He hitched up his pants and took a step away from the window. “You’re already exactly what this town needs in a mayor. You just have to see it.”
In my twenty-nine years of life, I’d cliff jumped more times than I could count. And yet nothing quite prepares you for that moment when you hit the water and the cold consumes you all at once, head to toe. Every single cell in your body is alive and vibrating. The breath whooshes out of your lungs, and you open your eyes wide, feeling like you weren’t quite living before that very moment.
That’s how I felt digesting the words coming out of Chief Waldo’s mouth. Thank God the man backed up or I would have reached out and held his hand while I wept. Okay, maybe I wouldn’t have gone that far, but inside, that’s exactly how I felt. Why couldn’t Waldo have been my dad growing up? In a flash, I saw Yedda’s wise face staring up at me as she told me to wave my weirdo flag with confidence. Why couldn’t she have been my mother growing up?
Maybe that’s just how it was for everybody. We couldn’t choose our parents when we were kids, but as adults we could choose our own role models. Our own adult “parents” to help guide us through life.
“Will you be my father, Chief?” I asked out loud, cringing the second the words were out. Then I thought of Yedda and lost the grimace, sitting up tall. Yep. I was weird and said odd things. Best the chief know that now. If I became mayor, we’d be talking a lot more often and he was sure to find out anyway.
He blinked and then his whole face scrunched up as he let out a belly laugh so loud even the seagulls went quiet for one goddamn second. The laugh evolved into more wheezing than laughing, and I couldn’t help but smile along as he wound down.
