“Does it really matter?” I said, sighing as I looked at him. Really looked at him. God, I could hardly believe I’d slept with this guy. Shade was all badass and sunglasses and hair that’d been swept in the wind. I was just small town white trash with a good push-up bra. “It was just a one-night stand. Why do you care?”
Shade shook his head slowly, running his tongue along his bottom lip.
“Pull your head out of your ass, Mandy. This is not a one-night stand. I bought you a fucking phone and I introduced you to my friends. You came and ate burgers with us. What the fuck kind of one-night stand doesn’t end until five o’clock in the afternoon?”
“But you said…breakfast…”
Shade cocked a brow, and I closed my eyes, realizing I’d been deluding myself. I wasn’t a total moron. Shade didn’t buy girls breakfast, and he sure as shit didn’t hang out with them all day once the sex part was over.
This might not be a relationship, but it wasn’t a typical one-night stand, either.
“I’m on probation,” I blurted out.
“No shit,” Shade said slowly, obviously startled. “What for?”
“Technically, I was an accessory to an attempted robbery, but then I pled down to a misdemeanor in stupidity,” I said, staring at his bike’s air-brushed gas tank. There was a picture of a pinup girl, like on a World War II airplane. It was good. Really good.
“You wanna elaborate on what happened?”
“Here’s the thing,” I said, looking back up at him and biting my lip. “It’s the curse of the McBride women. I told you—we pick bad men. My mom got hitched five times, and not one of them stuck. She married the last one when we lived in Spokane. Hannah was nineteen and I was seventeen. One night he and Mom went out and they never came back, because he’d gotten drunk and crashed the car into the river.”
“I’m really sorry, babe,” Shade said, reaching his hand around the back of my neck, giving it a squeeze. I liked that. Supportive without the expectation that I was going to collapse in a puddle of tears. I’d survived way too much to fall apart behind a grain elevator.
“Thanks,” I replied, pushing the memories away. “Anyway, so that was that. We bummed around for a while and then I met a guy in Missoula and decided he was Mr. Right, so I married him. His name was Trevor. I’m telling you—never trust a guy named Trevor. He had this other friend named Trevor and they were both shady as fuck.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
I smiled grimly. “Yeah, you do that. Anyway, Trevor wasn’t the greatest but it wasn’t like my standards were that high. I’d had a few boyfriends, but nothing serious. Nobody ever stuck around. But Trevor did. He latched on to me like a suckerfish. Anyway, I was working full time while he was going to college. Then one day he and his friend Robert and the other Trevor decided to start this business. You know, he was going to make his fortune and all that. In computers. Told me I wasn’t smart enough to understand.”Shade’s hand tightened against my neck. “Sounds like a real winner.”
“You could say that. What he was really getting into was drugs. All our money kept disappearing, but every time I talked to him about it, he had a good explanation. His laptop was broken, or his student loan hadn’t come through.
“I knew he wasn’t sober, but I had no clue how bad it really was. Then one night we had a fight because he wanted to go to the liquor store. I kept telling him he was drunk already and we should stay home. He wouldn’t, so I insisted on driving him. I figured they wouldn’t sell him anything, but that’s not what he was there for. Somehow, he’d decided it would be a great idea to rob the place. With a butter knife, because my life’s a fucking joke, you know?”
“A butter knife?” Shade asked, raising a brow.
“Yup,” I said, knowing it sounded like a bad joke. Unfortunately, it was a felony-level bad joke. “A plastic one. He wasn’t a very good robber.”
“Jesus,” Shade said. “There’s a lot of dumbass criminals out there, but seriously—sounds like Trevor boy was a new level.”
“Yeah, well, who’s stupider—Trevor or me, because I’m the who one fell for his shit. Then I got arrested as his accomplice. I had no damned idea what was going on when the cops pulled up. I thought they were just trying to say hello when they knocked on my window. Anyway, I spent three nights in jail before I found someone to bail me out. Things went downhill from there, obviously. Trev was so fucked up that he could hardly talk, but somehow he managed to tell them that the whole thing was my idea. Apparently I wasn’t just his getaway driver—I was his butter knife supplier.”
Shade gave a choked cough, and I cocked my head at him.
“It’s okay to laugh,” I said, and his lip twitched. Other than that, he managed to hold it in, which I appreciated. “Everyone else did. Then the prosecutor decided to take pity on me and offer a plea bargain. I got a misdemeanor and six months’ probation. I was a good girl for the first three months so they dropped my supervision. I had to petition to move to Violetta, of course, but they were really decent about it.”
“And then you met Rebel.”
“Less than two weeks after I got here. You saw how that ended. Anyway, that’s why I get nervous when I see cops. You never know when one of them is going to arrest you for something you didn’t even know you did…and if I do get caught doing anything, I could go to jail. Have you ever been to jail? It sucks.”
Shade nodded, and I remembered the rumors I’d heard about him. Of course he’d been to jail.
“I’ve been arrested several times. Never convicted,” he told me. “And you’re right—it’s not pleasant. But it’s not the end of the world, either. I’ve got brothers serving hard time inside, so that gives me some perspective. How much longer do you have?”
“Four more weeks.”
“That’s not bad at all,” he said. “You got any special plans for afterward?”
Right. Special plans, because I can afford to do all kinds of crazy stuff as a waitress. You know, in all my free time, when I’m not watching my sister’s kids in our luxurious trailer. I sighed, shaking my head. “You’re really lucky, you know that?”