Jackson Stiles, Road to Redemption (Road to Redemption #1)(11)

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Her brow creases and her eyes are angry.

“Me? What the—”

“Sneaking up on someone like that.” She looks around on the ground, for her phone, I’m assuming.

“You just—”

“You scared the shit out me, Stiles.” She finds it and bends over to pick it up. That tight ass of hers is flaunting itself. She catches me staring when she’s up straight again.

Damned tight asses.

“I’m reporting you.” She points a finger at me and stomps off. The clickity-clacking of her shoes echoes throughout the area.

“Reporting me? I should f*cking report your ass for assault.”

Green spins. “Assault?” She tilts her head slightly so she can hear me better. She’s practically amused for Christ’s sake.

“That’s right. Men are assaulted by women every day,” I inform little miss crazy pants. “They don’t make a complaint necessarily because it might somehow jeopardize their manhood. In this case, I’m glad to make an exception.”

Green’s mouth falls open and her eyes begin to narrow. She stands there, staring at me like that for an eternity before she decides something and shakes her head.

She turns to go again, then spins back to face me one more time. She’s about to say something, and it looks to be a doozy, except something catches her eyes behind me, and she points.

“Who is that?”

“Who is what?” I turn to see where she’s pointing.

“Who is that?” She takes me by the arm and pushes me in the direction she’s talking about and points more directly this time. Just as the someone pulls themselves behind a tree, I catch a glimpse of them. I can’t say I get a good look at the person, they’ve got a hoodie pulled over their face, but I know who it is.

“Shhhhhit.”

I’m calling my therapist out on the whole breathing bullshit next time I see her because it is definitely not working right now.

“Do you know that person?” Green presses.

“Unfortunately,” I tell her. Without thinking, I tug her along by the wrist until we’re around the corner where my one-time blind date turned stalker can’t see us.

Green, of course, slows me down by walking forward but looking backward.

“Who is he?”

“She,” I correct.

“What?”

“It’s a she, Green. He’s a she.”

We stop and I shove Green against the cold concrete, then lean across her to peek around the corner.

“Well then, who is she?” she whispers as I check to see if my friendly neighborhood stalker is still lurking. Not that I can concentrate very well with Green breathing against my neck like that.

It’s not that big a deal, really. The stalker, that is.

Lilah Gooding is harmless, if I’m being honest. However, because I happened to have found her sleeping in my car while she waited for me to get off work a couple times, combined with the fact that she nearly killed herself attempting to climb into my apartment through the cracked window Frodo uses to come and go, she was awarded a special document from certain officials in Redemption warning her to keep herself more than a hundred feet away from me at all times.

She’s pretty good at staying within the law, by the way.

“An old acquaintance.” I’m not about to go into the gory details of a relationship that never happened with a reporter who’s most likely itching to give the public all the juicy, inaccurate details of said non-relationship.

“Why is she following you?” Green whisper-yells this time.

She’s kinda cute when she’s going all undercover.

No, Stiles, she’s not.

I really need to stop finding this woman even remotely attractive.

When I’m confident Lilah is no longer spying on me, I relax a little. But Green’s neck is still stretched out as far as it’ll go as she tries to catch a glimpse of Lilah.

“She’s gone,” I tell her, and I dare say, the reporter in Green looks disappointed.

“You sure get around,” she jibes, avoiding eye contact with me.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I’m closer than I would have expected to be to her. With the amount of tension building between the two of us, she might have elaborated had we not been so rudely f*cking interrupted by some douchebag with bad taste in casual attire and terrible social skills.

I’m suddenly forced aside and out of the way before I can tell him to suck a bag of dicks for interrupting a very important conversation. Seriously, who walks up to a person and kisses them like that? But more importantly, why in God’s name is he kissing Green?

He’s on her hard, too. Like he wants to swallow her whole and it’s f*cking gross.

“Helloooooo.” I wave a hand and they break apart.

Green is breathless. If I could roll my eyes any more than I am, I might see out the back of my head, for Christ’s sake.

“Hi, babe.” Mystery guy says to her. My resting dick face says it all. Of course he talks like a guy who thinks he’s much better looking than he actually is.

You know what the f*ck I’m talking about.

And okay, it’s not so much a resting dick face as much of an all the time dick face. But I digress.