Inmate of the Month Read online

  She growled. “How many times do I have to tell you to wash this out when you’re done? I don’t want it to stink like yours do.”

  “Can I not do anything right today?” Trent asked.

  Harlow narrowed her eyes.

  “The fact that you think adultery is ‘okay’ and the fact that you continuously do things that you know piss me off, makes me mad,” she explained. “I’m sorry that you don’t care enough about me to see that. You can go, Trent.”

  Trent narrowed his eyes. “I leave, and I’m not coming back tonight.”

  Harlow’s eyes narrowed. “You leave, and it’ll make me happy.”

  Trent’s teeth ground together, and he narrowed his eyes right back at her.

  “You won’t have my cock tonight. And that pussy is greedy,” Trent countered. “You okay with that?”

  Harlow’s face went red. “Your cock is nothing to write home about, Trent. I can get myself off with my vibrator just as easily as I can with your penis. If not easier, if I’m being honest. And I don’t just force it in there. I get myself nice and wet first, to make sure that my vagina isn’t sore the next day.”

  “I’m out,” he grumbled. “Have a good one, Kitty Cat.”

  With that, he was gone, slamming the door to Harlow’s half of the duplex on his way out.

  Sadly, Trent was just the next duplex over.

  Which meant, when he slammed into his own door a few minutes later, then cranked up the music that he knew Harlow hated, we heard every second of it.

  “You can come sleep at my place,” I offered.

  Her eye twitched as she washed the cup out, then set it to soak in the sink.

  “I’m breaking up with him,” she grumbled. “I was going to do it tonight, but then I heard that.” She gestured toward her computer. “Might’ve happened. So I had to investigate.”

  My mouth all but fell open. “You what?”

  “I’m going to break up with him.” She paused. “And there’s something else.”

  I was honestly worried sick about the look that took over her face.

  “What?” I asked, feeling my heart start to race.

  She bit her lip.

  “What is it?” I pushed.

  She sighed. “I’ve found another job.”

  I placed the computer on the couch beside me and gave her my full attention.

  “Explain.”

  She walked over, placing her ass on the coffee table in front of me, then looked at me, giving me her gaze.

  “There’s this new company in Paris,” she said. “They do shipping and deliveries. They’re in need of a computer tech like me, and the pay is outrageous. I’m talking, like full benefits, great retirement, and more money than I’m making now. Plus...” She gestured toward the loud music still thumping away next door. “I’m tired of that. I know that I can’t keep living here when I break up. So I’m letting my lease go this week, which’ll mean I’ll have until the end of the month to move out. And I’ve already accepted the job.”

  I was shaking my head.

  “I need to break up with him,” she admitted. “I really don’t like how he’s treating me.”

  I wondered if I should agree or not.

  I mean, on one hand, I did fully agree with everything that she had to say.

  But on the other, I knew that she was just pissed, and tomorrow she would be back to loving him all over again.

  I chose to stay silent, even though I would rather tell her everything that I hated about the man.

  “Umm…” I faltered. “He walked in on me watching a porn video. Luckily, he couldn’t see what I was watching.”

  “You watched it?” she asked excitedly.

  “Kind of. It’s not your brother, that, I know for sure.” I hesitated. “I got caught up. I got kind of pissed, actually, and was trying to find out whether the girl tricked him.”

  For now, I was happy to get off the subject of her moving and leaving me behind. We’d been best friends since we were old enough to talk in first grade. I wouldn’t know what to do without her, even if she was only a few hours away.

  “Why?” she asked.

  I then went on to explain.

  “It says in the video that the guy is secretly being filmed,” I explained. “And the way he acts with her? It makes me think that he really has no clue that there’s a camera set up recording everything.”

  “Oh, come on.” She rolled her eyes. “They put those captions in there to get viewers. It turns people on to see the ‘realness’ of a porn video.”

  I didn’t know.

  The way the description and the title were worded, as well as how the man had greeted the woman? That screamed ‘he’s in the dark’ to me.

  “Anyway, I only got halfway through the first video, so I’ll still need to take your computer with me to check out the other two.” I looked at the wall. “And I have a feeling Trent will be back once he calms down… and I don’t want to be here for when you tell him you’re leaving.”

  My breathing hitched on that last part, and she threw herself at me, wrapping her arms around my neck and squeezing me to her. “I’m not going to be gone forever. And I read that Paris has one of the best cookie companies in Texas. You know you like cookies.”

  I perked up slightly at that. I did love a good cookie.

  “How good is this place?” I wondered.

  “People from all over the world order these cookies,” she explained, a look of excitement on her face. “I knew you would ask, so I looked into it. They shipped some cookies to freakin’ France and the Queen of England for her last birthday. From a café in little ol’ Paris, Texas. They have like five thousand five-star reviews. No joke. I had to Google it to get this information.”

  My lips started turning up into a smile. “You’ll actually go there with me?”

  She sighed. “I’d break my diet for you, yes.”

  A year ago, when Harlow had gotten serious about CrossFit, it’d broken my heart. Our movie nights filled with pizza, beer, and cookies fled the building. In its place was healthy pizza consisting of cauliflower dough and organic chia seed cookies that sucked.

  But I would never tell her that, nor would I ever trade one of those days for anything.

  Now, I was glad that I didn’t, knowing she was leaving.

  My lower lip quivered, and I sniffled.

  Luckily, Trent chose that moment to change the song, turning it on to something even more annoying—Nickelback.

  “On that note,” I groaned as I got out of the chair, my leg throbbing from the hit that I took to it from a patient today. “I’m gonna go. Good luck with him.”

  I heard her snort in response as I gathered my things, then told me she’d see me in the morning.

  She didn’t notice my smarting eyes. Nor did she realize just how much this would affect me.

  Listen, I had friends. I mean, there was Belle Pena who literally shared the property next door to me. I loved her to death. We’d been friends since we were young kids.

  But she wasn’t Harlow. She wasn’t the cheese to my macaroni. She wasn’t the person that I called in the middle of the night when I thought of something random that we should do. Nor would she answer like Harlow would.

  And, granted, I knew that wouldn’t change. We’d still see each other a lot.

  I mean, she had a freakin’ boyfriend, and we still spent more time together than she and her boyfriend did, so I knew we’d make it work.

  But the thought of her not being near literally wrecked me.

  By the time I arrived home, even the enticement of watching the rest of the videos didn’t appeal to me.

  But I watched them. For her.

  At least, most of the other two videos.

  I never did finish the second video.

  Not until the next morning at least.

  And boy, did I have a whole lot to talk to Harlow about when she arrived for her computer.

  Sadly, not even the sexy, masturbating man could stop me from being sad that my best friend was leaving.

  CHAPTER 2

  Three things I wish:

  1. A

  2. Bitch

  3. Would

  Laric

  “Sit.”

  The dog, Alabaster, glared at me.

  Alabaster was my newest dog.

  I took in military working dogs that needed time to heal and time to reacclimate themselves into a routine.

  Some of the dogs that I worked with had never seen a normal home life, either. They had no clue what ‘downtime’ was. They’d always had a purpose in life, and a lot of these dogs literally had no clue how to play.

  This dog, Al, being one of them.

  “Sit,” I repeated, calmly and authoritatively.

  I was just about to ask him to do something else when he surprised me by sitting.

  Al knew his commands. Knew them, and had followed them well, up until he’d been retired from the military about four months ago.

  One, he’d lost the trainer that’d been with him for going on four years. His trainer had died as they’d been doing a sweep of a building. Al had been hurt right along with him, but where his trainer had perished in the bombing, Al had survived.

  Now, Al lived with me.

  I would now be the person that helped him reintegrate into society and hopefully find him a home.

  The thing was, Al was a stubborn bastard, and I wasn’t sure that he’d get very far if he didn’t at least put a little effort in.

  At this point, I wouldn’t allow even the strongest of men to get anywhere near him.

  Hell, even I had to have a muzzle on him so he didn’t bite my ass when we were working.

  He was aggressive, didn’t give a single fuck if he did anything, and honestly was on the verge of flunking out of even my program.

  The sad thing was, the next step was euthanasia. Because if they couldn’t be helped on my end, the US government wouldn’t find the time on theirs.

  I was the last resort.

  And I didn’t want that life for Al.

  I wanted him to be able to live a happy, full rest of his life with green grass under his paws and no bombs going off beside him.

  The bad thing was, Al was a Golden Labrador Retriever. You wouldn’t think that Al would be as aggressive as he was.

  But he was. And it made me sick to think about the long road ahead of him.

  I’d given Al a good four months now of constant one-on-one attention. I’d tried everything that I could think of to help him, and there wasn’t a single thing extra that I could do to ease him over this hurdle.

  “I’m going to take this muzzle off of you, Al,” I told the dog. “But I swear to God. If you lunge for me again, I’m going to be pissed.”

  The dog surprisingly stayed exactly where he was, allowing me to take the muzzle off.

  Which, honestly, was a surprise. The last few times I’d done this, he’d whipped his head around and tried to take my arm off.

  After I got him bedded down, I did my usual of getting my shower in, combing my overly long hair—I really needed to cut it, yesterday—and getting a couple of slices of avocado toast before heading out the door.

  I then did a U-turn to go back inside and grab my cut.

  I was the world’s worst at remembering it.

  Once upon a time, when Lynn came to Bruno and me with this idea of starting a motorcycle club to help victims of human trafficking, I’d thought that the cover story of an MC was a stupid idea.

  I mean, I loved riding my motorcycle. I loved being alone with the wind in my hair and not being tied down anywhere.

  But I hadn’t realized just what it would mean to have a club of brothers always at my back until I’d come to rely on them.

  Like right now, I was headed down the road to Zach’s place where he could look at the wound on my hand. The wound that Al had given me the moment that I’d opened his kennel this morning and allowed him outside.

  I winced when I looked at my hand, knowing without a shadow of a doubt that it was going to require stitches.

  I had numerous scars on my body, but the ones on my hands from working with these dogs were by far the most known when it came to me.

  Gritting my teeth, I pulled an old bandana out of my saddlebags and headed to Zach’s.

  When I arrived, it was to find a bright pink car pulling up behind me.

  I didn’t stop to spare the person a glance, mostly because I could hear the quiet giggles of a little girl that I hadn’t heard in quite some time.

  Two months ago, Zakelina had been shot by her father. He’d shot her in the side of the face, and the bullet had gone through one side of her jaw and had come out the other side of her mouth, luckily only requiring one surgery to repair the broken jaw and another involving plastic surgery on the entrance and exit wounds.

  Just last week, she’d been released from the hospital to home health nurses that would help her get back on track to being a little girl again.

  And hearing that little girl giggle was enough to make my heart fuckin’ race.

  I didn’t usually do girls. Or pink. Or anything that had to do with kids under the age of twelve.

  But that little girl had a special place in all of our hearts now and hearing her giggle was the highlight of my goddamn day.

  Heading inside, I left the door open for the home health nurse that’d pulled in behind me—you couldn’t mistake their bright, hot pink cars—and headed for the giggling.

  I found the giggler in the room with a movie on the screen, and Zach on one side of her, with a sleeping Crockett on the other.

  My eyes took everything in, and I walked to the little girl and lightly tugged on a stray curl that I could see had escaped her ponytail.

  “Hey, Rotten,” I said. “How are you today?”

  Zakelina smiled, showing off her pearly whites.

  “Hi, Larry,” she said through slightly clenched teeth. “How are you?”

  I held up my hand. “I need to borrow your pillow. I have a boo boo.”

  Zach grunted and got up just as there was a hesitant ‘hello?’ from the door I’d left open.

  Zach growled, stalking toward the door, and I let him, bending down over the couch to poke Crockett awake.

  She blinked at me, eyes furrowing in a cuteness overload. “You better go save the poor home health nurse before he gets another one fired.”

  Crockett jolted up so fast that she stumbled.

  Zakelina giggled this time at Crockett, but Crockett wasn’t laughing as she darted toward the front door where I could hear Zach starting in on the Spanish inquisition.

  See, Zach was very much hard-headed, and since everything that had gone down with Zakelina, and his own wife, he’d become a lot more suspicious of everyone.

  In the process, he’d run two other home health agencies off due to his over-protectiveness.

  With the two of them gone, I took the couch next to Zakelina.

  “What are you watching?” I asked curiously.

  Zakelina leaned her head against my chest, and I curled my arm around her carefully, still cautious of her fragility

  “Moana,” she answered. “I’ve never seen this one. Daddy wouldn’t let us.”

  Her words, though clear, still came through clenched teeth.

  She’d had her jaw wired shut in the hospital, and just a few days ago, she’d had the wires removed.

  The only thing was, she was still getting used to not having it wired shut. That, and apparently it still pained her to use, so she tended to take the easy way out and not open her mouth all that wide if she could help it.

  Which was where the home health nurses came in, helping her get to the point where she could use her jaw like she was supposed to.

  Though, the ones that had been fired weren’t the nurses themselves, but the certified occupational therapists.

  They’d made her cry due to the pain she was in as she was forced to use muscles she hadn’t been needing to use in a while.

  And let’s just say, Zach did not like that.

  Granted, neither did Crockett nor me for that matter, but something had happened to Zach. An over-protectiveness that blanketed everybody he knew and loved.

  Hell, even to some certain extent, his club brothers.

  But with Crockett in there helping deal with the new chick, I got to have me some Zakelina time.

  At least, until Zakelina had to get to work a few minutes later, that was.

  “Lina,” Crockett called. “It’s time to work with Ms. Catori.”

  The unusual name—I was the king of unusual names—had me glancing up and staring straight into a pair of brown eyes that were breathtaking.

  Zakelina slowly moved out of my arms and off the couch, heading toward where Crockett was holding her hand out for her.

  But my eyes were all for the brown-eyed beauty that was wearing hot pink scrubs and dirty black shoes.

  “Zakelina, you remember me, don’t you?” Brown eyes asked.

  That’s when I realized that she’d broken eye contact when my eyes had started to scan her body.

  With the unshapely scrubs she was wearing, I couldn’t tell anything about her body type.

  Like, they were so big and baggy, there was no way to tell if she was curvy, fit or even had a little more junk in her trunk.

  Hell, the only thing I could seriously tell was that she had very delicate wrists, and no outward signs of tattoos on her arms.

  Unlike me.

  I had so many on my arms that there wasn’t a lick of space left for any more ink.

  Complete and total opposites we were, that was for sure.

  “I do, Ms. Catori,” Zakelina confirmed with a nod.

  Again, barely opening her lips to speak.

  Catori.

  First name or last?

  “Please, call me Cat.” Catori must be her first name. “Are you ready to get to work?”

  Hesitant, Zakelina nodded her head, but even I could tell she was not looking forward to what was about to happen.

  Zach tensed, but Crockett placed her hand over his arm and gave him a look that clearly said ‘control yourself or else.’

  I snorted, causing both Catori and Zach to look my way.