Maybe Swearing Will Help Read online

  Ford shut his mouth with an audible snap.

  Then turned stiffly in his seat.

  What he did not do was open his mouth or say a word to the teacher.

  The moment the bell rang, I took off at a run out of the classroom.

  Despite my speed and readiness to move, Ford still managed to catch me.

  I was outside by the front of the building when he did.

  He roughly yanked on my backpack, hauling me back.

  I turned and got ready to yell, but the look in his eyes stopped me in my tracks.

  “What?” I snapped.

  “Why did you do that?” he hissed.

  I shrugged.

  “Because you need to play,” I told him. “And I want your dad to watch you play your senior year. And you’re too good to be out just because you can’t pass calculus. I’ll do it as much as I need to.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “You don’t have to keep repaying me.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “You saved me, Toyota,” I said. “I can do whatever the fuck I want.”

  Ford gritted his teeth.

  But it was true. He’d saved me from stepping out in front of a truck when I was pissed at him once. If he’d been even milliseconds behind me, I would’ve been a pancake on the road.

  I would never forget it.

  “I don’t like this,” he said.

  I wish I could say that was the last time that I bailed Ford Spurlock out of a bind, but that would be lying.

  And I wasn’t a liar. At least, not when it came to him.

  Chapter 1

  Maybe if we wait a little longer, a fuck will fall from the sky and I can catch that fuck. Then give it to you.

  -Ashe to Ford

  Ashe

  Four months ago

  “I’m sorry, what?” I said through clenched teeth.

  “I said no,” he repeated. “I’ll not pose for a stupid calendar.”

  I narrowed my eyes at the man. “But why?”

  “Because I’m not taking my shirt off,” he said. “I refuse.”

  I tilted my head to look at him through slitted eyes. “Then don’t take your damn shirt off, Ford.”

  He bared his teeth at me.

  “Then what would be the goddamn point of posing for a calendar if I don’t take my goddamn shirt off?” he challenged.

  I threw up my hands in defeat. “It’s for a fucking charity. Jesus Christ. Don’t you want to help the children, Ford?”

  He rolled his eyes.

  “You can’t keep referring to cats as children,” he said. “They’re animals. And not even good ones at that.”

  I gasped, my mouth fell open, and I pointed at him warningly.

  “Take that back,” I ordered.

  He shook his head.

  “I’m not doing it,” he insisted.

  “Do you remember that time when you were a senior, and I helped you pass the twelfth grade?” I snapped.

  Ford clenched his teeth.

  “That’s not fair,” he said. “I never told you to do that.”

  “No, you never told me to do that. Yet, if I hadn’t, you’d never have graduated senior year.”

  Ford knew that I was right.

  Ford had a learning disability.

  He had dyscalculia to the point where numbers were practically impossible for him to read.

  Where everyone else saw seventy-five, he saw fifty-seven. No matter how much he tried to train his brain differently.

  Not only had I helped him pass a few calculus tests, but I’d also helped him take the SATs, take multiple exams, and literally ruined my own GPA my junior year in the process.

  Luckily, my senior year, I was able to pull them up far enough to get honor roll.

  Barely.

  “That’s not fair…” he said.

  “Life’s not fair,” I told him. “Now, please? I don’t ever ask you to do much.”

  He rolled his eyes.

  I shook my head. “No, Ashe. I’m sorry. Now I have to go. I have to work,” he said. “Unlike you.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “I work!”

  “You volunteer at a cat shelter and play with cats all day. You’re a crazy cat lady that has no source of income,” he countered.

  “I go to school!” I growled. “And I could have a job if I wanted to. I could have your job.”

  He did laugh at that.

  “You couldn’t do my job,” he snorted. “That’s laughable.”

  “Listen here, Chevy,” I snarled. “I could do your job. I could also qualify for the SWAT team.”

  He snorted. “You’re a girl, Ashe. You can’t be on the SWAT team. You’d be eaten alive.”

  The notes started playing through my head as Ford Spurlock told me that I couldn’t become a police officer because I was a girl.

  Anything you can do, I can do better…

  “I can, and I will,” I countered. “Watch me.”

  “Fine,” he said. “Deal.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “Why don’t we make it interesting and bet on it?”

  His eyes sparked with interest.

  “Okay,” he said. “What are the stakes?”

  I’d heard that the officers got to choose where their portion of the calendar’s proceeds went.

  “I win, you do the calendar and donate to my charity. You win… your choice,” I said.

  “There needs to be a time limit,” he said. “And you have to go through official channels. You have to apply and get hired. And you’re going to have to take a lie detector test. You’re going to have to tell them that you lie.”

  I sighed.

  “I lie to my mother and father all the time,” I told him honestly. “Taking a lie detector test will be a cakewalk.”

  Ford snorted.

  “Sure. Whatever you say.” He paused. “You have five months. That gives you enough time to attend the police academy over the winter break while you’re off school.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest.

  “Fine,” I said. “I’ll show you.”

  He grinned. “Fine.”

  “What do you want if you win?” I asked curiously.

  “A date,” he said.

  My mouth fell open.

  “You want a what?” I barked.

  “One date,” he said. “To the Japanese noodle place that just opened up in town.”

  I grumbled under my breath. “You know that I hate ramen.”

  He shrugged. “Guess you better win.”

  Nobody would go to the noodle place with him. This was desperation if he was asking for this.

  But Ford had a phobia of going out to eat on his own.

  I wasn’t sure why or how he’d gotten this phobia, but if it was affecting him enough that he’d stoop to this level, he must be desperate.

  “Fine,” I said, thinking nothing of it. “But you won’t be winning. You’ll be losing, Chevy. And you know it.”

  Hopefully, anyway.

  I really wanted him to donate to my charity.

  I couldn’t stand to see any more of my beautiful babies euthanized if I could help it.

  “Whatever,” he sighed. “Good luck. May the best man win.”

  I gave him an annoyed face, then watched him go.

  He was wearing jeans and a collared shirt that denoted him as a KPD SWAT team member.

  And his stupid jeans fit him good.

  Too good.

  So good that I knew I should look away.

  If he looked back, I had no doubt in my mind that he’d catch me, then use the information against me.

  I practically forced my eyes away, then drew in a steadying breath.

  Don’t look back, Ashe. Don’t look back.

  I looked back.

  I couldn’t help it.

  And when I did, it was to find ol’ Chevy looking at me over his shoulder.

  I flipped
him off, causing him to laugh.

  Rolling my eyes, I forced myself to once again look away, dropped my hand, and thought about what I was going to have to do.

  Now, I had to figure out how to get hired on at the police department. Following that, I had to try out for the SWAT team.

  I did the only thing I could do.

  I called my mother and told her what happened.

  “So you’re applying for the SWAT team?” Mom asked.

  Before I could answer, my father, better known as Torren Trammel, shouted from the background, “She most certainly is not! Don’t put ideas in her head, Tru!”

  My father was a staunch believer in women being able to do what a man can do, but he drew the line, apparently, at a woman joining the SWAT team.

  “Actually,” I said, “I am. I’m not going to stay on it if I get on it, though. So tell Dad to hold his horses. I’m planning on only trying out because Ford told me I couldn’t.”

  My mother sighed.

  “There was this one time that Ford dared you to jump off the back patio’s deck railing. Do you remember what happened then?” she pushed.

  I didn’t have to remember anything.

  My lower leg still ached every winter.

  “I broke my leg,” I sighed. “And, Mom, that was when I was fifteen. I remember it like it was yesterday.”

  “Then there was that one time that you dared him to jump out into the pond from the tree. Do you remember what happened then?” she pushed.

  “I remember,” I said softly.

  That time had been bad.

  Ford had jumped out of the tree as far as he could go. Only, by him doing that, he’d jumped directly on top of the old Christmas tree we’d thrown into it for a fish habitat. The very top branch had impaled him through his lower left abdomen, and he’d lacerated his liver.

  Needless to say, Ford and I daring each other to do things never really turned out as well as we imagined it would.

  “I’m joining the police department,” I said. “There’s no reason I can’t hold down a job while I’m going to school. In fact, it’ll actually be good for me to see who I’m going to be dealing with on a regular basis.”

  My mother didn’t disagree on that one.

  I was in my final year of obtaining my master’s in criminal psychology.

  “If you join the police department,” she said, “you’re not going to want to move to Dallas.”

  She had a point.

  I probably wasn’t.

  “Maybe, maybe not,” I admitted. “But I’m going to do this.”

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked again.

  I debated whether to tell her or not, then decided that she would understand.

  “I want him to donate his portion of the calendar proceeds to my charity,” I admitted.

  My mother sighed.

  “You and those cats, Ashe.”

  I grinned. “Give Daddy a kiss for me. I gotta go. I have a paper due tonight, and I have to look up the requirements to get onto the SWAT team.”

  “Daddy says he loves you, and he also says that you should probably start working out.”

  ***

  Ford

  “What was that?”

  I blinked, turning to stare at Louis and Sammy, my cousins.

  “What was what?” I asked.

  “That.” Sammy gestured to Ashe who was walking away with a sweep of his hand. “All that sexual tension in the air, I could practically cut it with a knife.”

  I grimaced.

  “There’s no sexual tension between us,” I disagreed. “There’s only the pain of a thousand upsets.”

  Sammy and Louis both snorted.

  I decided to ignore both of them.

  “Why didn’t you tell her that you were already doing the photoshoot?” he asked. “Were actually in the process of doing it right now?”

  I looked around the room at all the members of the SWAT team that would be taking part in today’s photoshoot for the charity calendar.

  Then grinned.

  “Because life’s more interesting when Ashe Trammel is riled,” I answered.

  “She can’t make the SWAT team,” Louis said. “I’ve never seen any woman able to run in full gear for two miles in under fifteen minutes.”

  I didn’t contradict him because I didn’t think she could do it, either.

  “When this was originally set,” Louis said. “I heard that they made the local soccer team at LeTourneau run it. I’m not even sure that there’s a woman’s time available.”

  “March?”

  I looked up just as the cute little geek in glasses, better known as our photographer, called out my month.

  “Gotta go,” I said as I made my way into the room where she was shooting. “Wish me luck.”

  Louis and Sammy snorted.

  “You don’t need luck, pretty boy,” Louis countered.

  Little did he know…

  “Where do you want me?” I asked as I shut the door of the room.

  She pointed at a large black panel at the back of the room where a bunch of lamps and shit were set up all around it.

  “The black screen back there,” she said. “Are you going shirtless?”

  No, no the hell I wasn’t.

  “Ummm,” I said. “I’ll go half shirtless.”

  She frowned.

  I lifted my shirt over my head and she winced when she saw the scars on my right and left side.

  “Hmm,” she said. “I’m understanding that you don’t want the scars to be seen at all?”

  I nodded. “Please.”

  She looked as if she wanted to ask why.

  So I decided to take pity on her and told her.

  “It’ll invite people to ask how I got the scars, then I’ll have to explain at least a little bit, and then I’ll have to remember just that little bit. And sometimes the only times that I can safely remember these times are when I’m in the comfort of my own home and half drunk,” I told her. “I can’t be explaining this shit while I’m on duty and expected to actually perform said duties.”

  Avery, the cute little geek photographer, grinned.

  “I gotcha,” she said as she looked around the room. “Don’t you have a SWAT vest somewhere in here?”

  I walked to it and shrugged it on, getting ready to zip it.

  “Don’t worry about zipping it,” she said. “I’ll position you to where you don’t see anything at all. Oh, and can you turn your hat around? I want to be able to see your eyes. You have beautiful eyes.”

  I mumbled under my breath but did as she asked, and ten minutes later, I was done and once again wearing all of my clothes.

  “How was it?”

  I looked over to find Hayes, another member of the SWAT team, staring at me with a worried look in his eyes.

  “Wasn’t too bad,” I admitted. “Just tell her that you don’t want your face shown, man. She won’t. She was cool with my scars.”

  Hayes nodded once.

  “Okay,” he sighed. “Thanks.”

  I nodded once at him and left the training room completely.

  I didn’t stay in the SWAT rooms. Instead, I headed straight for the chief’s office.

  The chief was a cool guy, and I liked him a lot.

  Which was the only reason that I was doing what I was about to do.

  I found him at the coffeepot in the middle of the bullpen.

  Walking up to him, I said, “Chief, do you have a minute?”

  He snorted. “I have about half of one.”

  “I can say what I have to say fast,” I told him.

  He snorted, picked up his cup, then gestured for me to follow him.

  “I’m on my way out,” he said. “I have to babysit tonight. Have you ever babysat twins?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve never babysat one kid, let alone two.”

  He snorted.

  “What d
o you need?” he asked.

  I went into my spiel about Ashe, and how she would be applying, refraining from telling him who exactly I was advocating for.

  I didn’t tell him that it was all based on a bet, however.

  He didn’t need to know that part.

  I didn’t want her to get turned down before I’d officially won.

  “I’m actually fully staffed for once in my goddamn life,” he said. “But I will keep her application for when—”

  I interrupted him before he could finish.

  “She’s on the last half a year of her criminal psychologist degree,” I said. “And she’s at the top of her class.”

  Luke stopped speaking.

  “Tell me more,” he ordered.

  “She’s very good,” I continued. “All A’s in all of her classes. She’s able to multitask. I recommend her.”

  He grinned. “You recommend her?”

  I frowned. “Well, she drives me just a little bit crazy, and she enjoys it. But we won’t be working together all that much, I don’t think. She’d have to be put on days with her schooling, and I’d be on nights.”

  Luke sighed.

  It was at this point that I thought he might know who I was talking about. But I didn’t give him the info. He’d figure it out.

  “I’ll take her application if she comes in. If I like what I see, I’ll talk to her,” he said as he got to his cruiser. “Now, wish me luck. I’m about to go wrangle some kids that don’t know right from wrong.”

  With that, he got in his cruiser, and I walked back into the station for my keys.

  Today was my day off, and I didn’t want to be spending it at the station when I could be spending it getting some shit done.

  Like going to the grocery store and running to the home improvement store so that I could finish my back deck one of these days.

  “You out, Spurlock?” Louis asked

  My lips turned up into a smirk. “I’m out, other Spurlock.”

  Louis laughed with me as I got my keys and left the building.

  Funny enough, I wasn’t the one laughing the next day when Ashe showed up, immediately got the job, and got a salary offer twice as much as I got with zero experience under her belt.

  Son of a bitch.

  Chapter 2

  When the light flickers at my house, there’s a one percent chance that I will think electric issues is the cause and a 99% chance that I’ll credit it to demons and shit.