Sinners are Winners Page 2

  The way his shorts were bunched up around his crotch meant that I had a full, unencumbered view of said crotch.

  And God, I was right for not looking earlier.

  I wouldn’t have been able to look away.

  Kind of like right now.

  His bulge was big.

  And sexy.

  Sexy big.

  Oh, God.

  I was looking at this man’s package and I couldn’t make myself stop!

  I straightened in my seat and gave myself an inner pep-talk.

  You are on a date with another man. Sure, you don’t like that man, and you wish you hadn’t come with him, but that’s not going to change the situation you find yourself in. You need to pay attention to your date. You need to control your hormones, and you need to stare straight ahead and not at his dick.

  A large crack had me looking up in time to see the man standing at the plate start running to first.

  I sighed and leaned farther back in my chair, bringing my knees up to rest on the chair’s seat again.

  Resting my head against my upraised knees, I wondered if it would be rude to go to the bathroom and not come back.

  “Hot dogs!” a man carrying a shit ton of hot dogs bellowed. “Who wants a hot dog?”

  My body perked up at that, and I stood up so fast that the chair’s seat slammed loudly against the metal backing.

  “I do!” I called.

  “You just ate,” Tad pointed out, looking away from the woman at his side long enough to inform me of that news.

  I barely resisted the urge to flip him off.

  My luck, I’d do it and then the camera lens recording the ballgame would catch me doing it. Then it’d go viral and my father would give me another lecture about controlling myself.

  “I want one, too,” the deep male voice from behind me said.

  I turned to see that he was standing up as well, reaching into his back pocket for his wallet.

  I cursed when I realized that I didn’t have any cash.

  “Do they take a card?” I asked curiously.

  He nodded. “I think so.”

  The hot dog man came down the steps and was handing us our hot dogs when I handed him my card.

  He held up his hand in a placating gesture. “Card machine is down. Cash only.”

  My shoulders drooped.

  “Hey, Tad,” I said. “Can I borrow four…”

  “I already paid for dinner,” he said, continuing to ignore me.

  I sighed and handed the hot dog to the man behind me, who did indeed have four dollars cash in his hand.

  “Here,” I said.

  He took it and handed me the cash, and I handed it to the hot dog man.

  When hot dog man would’ve passed me the other hot dog, I waved him off.

  “I don’t have any cash,” I said.

  And suddenly, I just felt like crying.

  Hard.

  My life was a mess.

  I’d moved to Longview, Texas to escape my father’s overbearing protectiveness, and continued to find myself in difficult situation after difficult situation. It was getting to the point where I was wondering whether or not I should just admit defeat and head back home.

  I couldn’t find a job to save my life. The only thing I could do was bake cakes and sell those.

  And even then, it cost money to bake said cakes.

  I was running out of savings at an alarming rate, and if something didn’t give soon, I would find myself once again living at my parents’ place.

  Not that they would mind.

  They loved me.

  But I didn’t love living with them.

  I sat back down in my seat and stared straight ahead, wishing that I had brought my own car.

  Because even if I did grow a set and leave Tad sitting where he was, I had no money to pay a car service to drive me home.

  I pulled my phone out and began to text my dad, wondering if he would catch on if I was upset or not.

  I texted my dad a lot.

  My mom, too, for that matter.

  But my dad was my rock. My best friend. One of my only friends.

  I wasn’t sure why, but I was incredibly introverted. It took everything I had inside of me to go to school and become a radiology technician. Hell, if it hadn’t been for my mother and father demanding I do it, I wouldn’t have even gone to graduation.

  But then I moved here, trying to get rid of my crutch—i.e., my father—and low and behold I’d been forced to make friends.

  I now had a steady client base here.

  I also had a few really great people that had turned from clients to friends.

  Just as I was texting my dad that I didn’t have cash for a hot dog, one appeared in front of me.

  I blinked, staring at the foot-long length of meat that was in front of my face.

  Would it be totally weird if I leaned forward and bit into it while the man was still holding it in front of me?

  “Here.”

  But the ‘here’ didn’t come from the man at my right—my douchebag date. It came from the man on my left—the hottie redhead that also had other pieces of meat I wouldn’t mind exploring.

  Jesus Christ, I’d turned into a horny toad.

  I looked up from the meat and glanced at the redhead that was staring at me with amusement in his eyes.

  “Um, thank you,” I said. “But no thank you. I hope I didn’t guilt you into buying that. I didn’t really need it. But thank you. That was really nice. Thank you.”

  Oh, sweet baby Jesus. The endless displays of gratitude were starting.

  He grinned. “It was four bucks, babe. Trust me when I say, it was definitely no imposition.”

  I gently lifted my hand and pushed it his way.

  “My father told me to never take food from strangers,” I tried.

  Seriously, I was not eating this man’s hot dog.

  The redheaded hottie grinned. “My name is Lock Downy. That’s my sister, Ares Downy. I live in Kilgore, Texas. My dad’s a police officer. I’m a police officer. My mother is a…” he continued his entire life story until I was blinking at him owlishly.

  I’d lost.

  “Listen, buddy,” Tad said, interjecting. “She doesn’t need the hot dog. It’ll go straight to her ass. And she’s already packing enough back there to sustain her through at least six months without food. If you know what I’m saying.”

  Tad said it in a joking way, I was sure. He was grinning like a loon and winking at me. He was trying to keep me from having to eat the hot dog from a stranger.

  I was sure it was a joke.

  Right?

  But it didn’t come off that way.

  Honestly, it came off as him calling me fat.

  It came off as him being controlling.

  It came off as him thinking that I was ugly.

  I smiled saccharine sweet at the redhead. No, Lock…

  “Thank you,” I said, taking the foot-long hot dog into my hands and viciously took a bite.

  “If you want, during the seventh-inning stretch, you can go get me a beer or something from the concession stand to pay me back,” Lock offered.

  I looked at him out of the corner of my eyes to see him staring at me with amusement in his eyes.

  He knew that I hadn’t wanted the hot dog since I couldn’t pay for it, and now I was eating it like it was about to disappear from existence.

  He was giving me a way to pay him back.

  I smiled, mustard and ketchup, bread and meat, all likely covering the front of my teeth.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll do that.”

  And I would.

  We ate in companionable silence after that.

  It was in the fifth inning that everything just went…wrong.

  The girl next to Tad must’ve realized what a dick he was. Or maybe she just accidentally got up and never came back. Whatever the reason, Tad finally
started to pay attention to me, his date once more.

  I, on the other hand, continued to ignore him.

  Each time a word came out of his mouth aimed in my direction, my anger would rise.

  Tad had literally ignored me for five innings. Five.

  And honestly, it was a while before that, too, seeing as he’d been talking to the other girl from the moment we took our seats twenty minutes before the game started.

  So now that she was gone, he was going to talk to me?

  Yeah, I think not.

  I was doing my level best not to get pissed, and I was also leaning so far into Lock at my other side that I was practically rubbing my shoulder against his.

  Lock didn’t say a word, though.

  He just chatted with his sister, commented every once in a while about the game, and ultimately ignored me.

  “What’s happening?” Ares, which I’d learned was Lock’s sister’s name over his lengthy diatribe about who he was earlier during the hot dog incident, asked.

  “Pitcher change,” Lock said.

  “Great,” Ares muttered.

  Lock started to laugh softly as he said, “It’ll be okay. Maybe he’ll see you and freeze.”

  I really, really wanted to know what they were talking about, but without actually asking, letting them know that I was listening to every word that they said, I couldn’t show my hand.

  Instead, I just sat there all miserable.

  “Thank God,” Tad said, realizing that there was a pitcher change happening. “I need to pee.”

  Tad was gone seconds later, and I let out a relieved breath, returning to a straight up and down position in my seat.

  “Problem?”

  It took me a second to realize that the rumbled question was directed at me.

  I turned slightly and said, “Umm, what?”

  He gestured to where Tad had been sitting. “Is there a problem?”

  I made a face.

  An awful, I’m ready to leave because my date is a dick, face.

  “My date didn’t turn out to be as charming and charismatic as I thought he would be,” I admitted. “But he’s not necessarily a problem as much as a nuisance.” I smiled then. “I’m okay.”

  He touched my cheek with one fingertip.

  My smile widened.

  I liked this guy.

  He’d already done more for me since the game started—even if it was just buying me a hot dog and asking if I was okay—than my own date had.

  The crowd around us started to talk, softly at first before their words got louder and louder until they were cheering.

  “Hey, y’all are on the Kiss Cam!” Lock’s sister tittered. “Look!”

  Lock and I both broke away from our stare, and I found myself staring at…myself.

  Oh, and Lock.

  Lock was looking up as well, then his face was turned toward me—at least on the screen, anyway. I was still looking at the screen.

  People around us started to cheer and chant.

  “Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!”

  I yanked my gaze away from the screen, cheeks flushing with embarrassment.

  Then Lock was grinning down at me.

  “Kiss?” he teased.

  And something inside of me just…snapped.

  I wanted to kiss this man.

  He was offering…so who the hell was I not to take it?

  I’d be dumb not to…

  I saw the moment he knew that I was going to kiss him.

  His hand came up to cup my face, and all of a sudden, I was partially up on my knees in my seat and leaning over the armrest so that my face could reach Lock’s.

  The fact that my father was watching this game from home and would probably see me kissing some strange man didn’t matter.

  Also, the fact that I’d arrived with a different man than I was kissing didn’t matter.

  What mattered in that moment was that I was kissing Lock, and he was the single best kiss I’d ever had in my life.

  Well, if I were getting technical, I’d never kissed a man like this before.

  Sure, I’d gotten pecks on the lips from a few boyfriends, and I’d even gotten a tongue kiss from a girl once.

  But never a boy—no, a man.

  Definitely never a man.

  And definitely never like what Lock was giving me.

  Cheers rose up all around me, and Lock finally pulled away, a grin on his face.

  I stared at those lips that’d just been kissing mine, admired the beard that had tickled my chin and nose. Then I grinned right back at him.

  For all of two seconds, because I was knocked to the ground in the next second.

  When I looked up, it was to find Tad standing over my prone body with a knife in his hand and a look of death on his face.

  “That’s my fuckin’ girl, asshole!” Tad bellowed. “My. Girl!”

  “Dude, didn’t look like your girl when I was watching y’all,” came a man’s reply. “You were all talking to that other chick that had to move. When you propositioned her for sex but said you’d have to do it later after you dropped your date off, and she moved, that didn’t sound like the girl was ‘your girl.’”

  I looked over, still on the ground, staring at the man that was behind me.

  He was a big bear of a man.

  Five-foot eleven or so.

  Standing there, leaning over the chairs, looking like he was calm, cool and collected as he talked to Tad.

  I, on the other hand, was nowhere near calm, cool or collected.

  In fact, I was hyperventilating.

  Also, I was lying in a pool of mustard and squished hot dog from some little kid that’d dropped it on the ground on his way to his seat.

  So no, let’s just say I was not a happy camper at the current moment in time.

  “Put the knife away,” Lock said, hands up slightly and his eyes locked on Tad. Watching his every move.

  The game behind us had stopped.

  There were now security guards all around us, but the crowd was so thick that they were having a hard time getting to Tad.

  And then there was me, in the middle of it all, on the ground.

  I tried to stand up but Tad kicked me in the hip.

  “Stay down, Saylor,” Tad ordered.

  That was when I lost my shit.

  Literally, lost my shit.

  I didn’t stay down.

  Nobody could keep me down.

  Not my ex-boyfriend who always wanted more than I was willing to give. Not my ex-employer who found it fun to ruin my career because I wouldn’t sleep with him.

  And definitely not motherfuckin’ Tad who was a boil and didn’t deserve a single thing—let alone for me to listen to him.

  I sat up so quickly that he hadn’t even had time to pull his leg back to deliver another vicious kick to my thigh. Once on my ass, I went up onto my knees just as his kick landed on my knee.

  Pain burst through my lower limb, but I didn’t think about what I did next.

  I only reared back my fist, then launched it forward into his testicles and dick so hard that pain shot up my arm in an aftershock of impact.

  The knife fell from Tad’s grip and landed near my feet.

  But, saying that, Tad might’ve gotten hit in the nuts so hard he’d be singing soprano for the next six months, but that didn’t count him out of the fight.

  I saw the fist flying at my face but could do nothing about it.

  Lock, on the other hand, could.

  He yanked me back by the collar of my shirt, once again throwing me to the ground.

  This time, I at least understood and went with the flow.

  Ares helped me to stand just as Lock took a fist to the face for his troubles.

  I gasped at the sickening impact and went to launch myself back into the fray only to have a security guard push me back even farther.

  Security guards from the other side
of the row started filing in, and it all of a sudden got really, really crowded.

  The knife was kicked backward, Lock got one more good hit in, and Tad was put into handcuffs.

  “Sorry.” Lock held up his hands. “But the fucker deserved it.”

  I agreed with Lock’s explanation to the security guard.

  “He might’ve,” the guard agreed. “But that doesn’t mean that you should’ve taken it, Lock. You know the chief is going to have something to say about this. Look at all the fuckin’ cameras out right now.”

  I looked around at the cameras in question and realized that not only was the big one that the game was being televised with aiming our way but so were about two thousand cell phones.

  Shit.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  For someone that was trying to find a job like I was, negative attention wasn’t a good thing.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” I said to no one in particular.

  “Hey, Ares.”

  I looked over to see a player for the other team staring at Ares like she was a ghost.

  “Fuck off, Ryan,” Ares said as she pressed closer to her brother, turning her back on the man.

  “You can stay as long as you stay out of trouble,” the security guard that’d lectured Lock said, eyes hitting me and Lock before leaving.

  Lock turned to me, his eyes assessing.

  “Would you rather be on a deserted island with a stranger or someone you hated but knew?” I blurted.

  He wiped the blood off his lip and asked, “Is it you? The stranger?”

  I shrugged. “Sure.”

  “Then you.” He narrowed his eyes.

  I felt things inside my belly tighten.

  “I’d choose you, too,” Tad snarled. “So I could have something to eat.”

  I looked at him wide-eyed as the security staff hauled his ass away.

  Lock turned as Tad was dragged out of the stadium, kicking and screaming, by no less than six security guards.

  Then I looked at all the people that were staring wide-eyed around me.

  Gathering my things, I looked at the man that had just practically saved my life.

  “Thank you,” I said softly.

  And before he could say another word, I hauled ass out of there, not once looking back, but also taking the other exit, being sure to stay as far away from Tad being hauled off as I could.

  Lucky for me, I knew where Tad parked.

  Also lucky for me, I’d known how to hot-wire a car since I was ten.