Page 42 of Awakening the Sheriff

“And your gut is telling you she’s influencing him?”

“Yeah. I’m not sure in what way, but something he said combined with what you told me about her gaslighting you… I can’t help but feel the two are connected. I promise I’ll try to find out more from Byron, but until he gives me permission to talk to you, I’m very hesitant to break his trust.”

I nodded as I looked away, an odd sense of relief washing over me. It was comforting to know someone cared enough to look out for my family like that. “Thank you, Auden. Really, I appreciate it more than I can say.”

“I want you to be happy here,” he said, his voice tender and warm.

As he spoke, our eyes connected again, sincerity radiating from him. The intensity of his gaze sent a shiver down my spine, and I couldn’t look away, my breath hitching in my throat. Was he…interested in me? Not as a friend, but as something more?

No, that couldn’t be. I had to be imagining things. My emotions about the whole situation with Mandy were clouding my perception. We were friends, nothing more.

15

AUDEN

The morning sun filtered through the trees as I pulled up to Keaton’s house to pick up Byron for his second stint of community service. To avoid any gossip, I was driving my own truck. Byron was waiting on the porch, his hands shoved into the pockets of his hoodie. God forbid teenagers should wear a damn coat when it was freezing, but I knew better than to start that discussion. I’d gone too many rounds with Violet to bother anymore. If she wanted to freeze her butt off, that was her choice.

Keaton stood in front of the window, and he raised his hand when I parked. I waved back as Byron climbed in and settled into the passenger seat. I waited until his seat belt clicked, then waved at Keaton again and drove off.

“So, where are we going?” Byron asked, his voice guarded.

“You’ll find out when we get there.” A small part of me felt guilty for keeping him in the dark, but if I told him now, he’d be arguing with me the whole drive down, and I wasn’t in the mood for that.

I took a sip from my thermos of coffee. “How’s your music coming along?”

Byron glanced over at me, clearly surprised I’d remembered. “It’s all right. I’ve been messing around with some new beats.”

“What do you do with them when they’re done? Do you use them to make songs? With lyrics, I mean?”

“Not really. Maybe once I’m better, I can sell them, but I’m not good enough for that.”

“Not yet, maybe. If you keep practicing, you will be. They say you need ten thousand hours of focused practice to become an expert at something.”

“Ten thousand hours? That’s like…” He was frowning, doing the math in his head.

“If you practice two hours every single day, it would still be over thirteen years of practice.”

He snapped his head toward me. “Thirteen years?”

“Yup. But don’t forget that most people who are masters at something do it full-time, for more than two hours a day. If you wanted to become a professional baseball player, for example, and you started young, you’d reach that ten-thousand-hour mark by the time you graduated from high school.”

“Damn,” Byron muttered.

I let the curse word slide. Correcting his language seemed counterproductive.

“I don’t know yet what I want to do after high school.”

“That’s okay. You have two more years to figure it out. Well, slightly less, since you’d need to apply for college.”

“Who says I wanna go to college?”

“I assumed, considering how smart you are.”

“You think I’m smart?”

“I know you are. Doesn’t mean college is the right choice for you.”

He frowned. “What do you mean? I thought every parent wanted their kids to get a degree.”

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