Page 33 of Not Mine to Rescue

“Walt wants her gone. She’s gone,” I said.

“Right. Leave, and don’t come back.” Kid echoed my command and backed it up with his patented towering glare and the extra pounds he’d packed on in his quest for the perfect Dad bod.

Winter’s shoulders fell. “I was just trying to⁠—”

“Get the fuck out.” I pointed at the door.

“Can I see you again?”

I really should have said no. I should have stuck to my guns. But Honoria’s brush-off stung. I wasn’t looking for her replacement, but I couldn’t help but say, “Give me your number. I’m going to call your phone.”

She beamed as she stored my number.

You’re intelligent, figure it out.

“And your address.” I’d need something to drown out that biting voice gnawing at my confidence.

Kid snorted.

She kissed my cheek before she drove away. The moisture chilled my skin.

I scrubbed it off and went back inside. Walt sat next to Kid at the bar. The coward finally came out of hiding.

And, like clockwork, his opening salvo struck. “I heard you caved.”

I shrugged it off. “Free pussy.” Sure, I said it, but even my tone didn’t sound excited about it. Which meant Walt saw a crack to exploit.

“You know, there’s no such thing as free pussy. Ask Kid.”

“Shut up. I’m married now.”

Walt stuck his thumb at his Sergeant at Arms. “That’s what I meant. You’re married to Sierra. Pussy ain’t free.”

Kid’s head turned toward Walt slowly until he fixed him with a glare that would make an elephant’s balls shrivel into tiny little walnuts. “Are you insulting my wife?”

Instead of answering the question directly, Walt sighed. “I don’t know what you see in her. That’s all.”

The tension in Kid’s body hadn’t eased one bit. However, he looked away. Finding another target, he stared at me as if I had an answer. I felt the overwhelming urge to cry out, “What? I don’t see what you like in her, either.” But I knew, no…fully understood that he was looking for someone to use as a punching bag since Walt out-ranked him. I put my hands in the air and said, “I’m not married, so have no clue what any criteria for marriage is.” Hopefully, that was neutral enough that he wouldn’t string me up on the nearest coat hook and make a Wombat-sized target out of me.

Walt laughed. His barrel chest shook as he tried to keep it inside. “He’s yanking your chain, ’Bat.”

“At least I’m not insulting a woman who can disembowel a hog or human in twenty seconds or less.”

Walt winced.

Kid grinned. Then he turned to Walt. “You done yet?”

“Fuck.” He paused then blurted, “No.”

I shouldn’t have snickered.

He turned on me. “Since when do you bang chicks younger than you?”

Oh shit. “It was a lapse of judgment, I swear.”

Both of them mocked my pain. Walt chimed in with, “Hell, maybe he’ll settle down with this one and pop out a litter of little wombats.”

Over my fucking dead body. The thought of waking up next to Winter every day for the rest of my life made me queasy. A shudder wracked through me with the memory of her sugary falsetto saying our names. “I’m not settling down.” Another chill went through me as I imagined a herd of little Winter lookalikes with red hair. “No fucking way.”