Just Kidding (SWAT Generation 2.0 #1)(60)

My phone rang, but since it wasn’t a ring tone that I knew—yes, I was that loser that assigned ringtones to my friends and family—I didn’t bother rushing to answer it.

It was probably a telemarketer.

I was being punished as an adult for all the random prank calls that I used to make with Katy when we were kids.

Nine times out of ten, if my phone rang, it was some random person ghosting my number and heavy breathing into my ear.

The random calls had been going on for months now.

To the point where I’d just assigned everybody special ringtones and didn’t bother answering anything else unless they left a voicemail.

The phone finally stopped ringing, and I walked to the front window and looked out through the blinds.

I grinned when I saw my brother mowing his lawn.

I stepped out onto the porch, leaving the door wide, and walked to the end of Dax’s front walk.

I waited until he finally looked over and then grinned at him.

He ignored me, going back to mowing.

The next time he looked at me, I pointed at my lawn.

He rolled his eyes, but I knew he got the drift.

My lawn would be mowed.

Dax’s? No. Mine? Hell yes.

Did I say that I loved my brother?

Because I so totally did.

Sometimes.

Other times, he annoyed the hell out of me and got off on doing it.

Waving at him on his next pass, he flipped me off, causing me to snort.

Turning back around, I made my way back into Dax’s.

Then almost turned around and went into mine.

But I wanted to read the fridge message.

After that was done, I would go back to mine.

I slammed the front door closed behind me and made a beeline straight to the fridge and stared at the letters that were there.

It was almost a habit at this point just to see what he’d say.

I looked forward to it.

Today’s message?

At first, I was confused.

‘I hope you die.’

“What?” I asked.

That was a little harsh for calling him Mr. January, wasn’t it?

“You know.” The woman’s hissing voice sent chills down my spine. “I watched you do that three times during the day yesterday.”

I slowly turned to find Shondra there, arms crossed, eyes narrowed.

“It’s sickening.”

Then my confusion slowly slipped away and only understanding and fear resided there now.

“What’s sickening?” I asked, voice rough.

“You and him,” she said. “Your obvious love for Theo is sickening.”

I swallowed hard. “I don’t… I don’t have any feelings for Theo any longer, if I even had them in the first place.”

“Lies!” she cried out. “You’re lying!”

I wasn’t lying.

In fact, I was so far away from lying that I couldn’t stand it.

“I’m not lying!” I burst out. “I can’t stand Theo anymore. The only person I care about anymore is Dax!”

Shondra scoffed, shifting.

That was when I saw the fucking hammer in her hand.

Son of a bitch.

“You know, you were the one that introduced me to Theo,” she continued. “You realize that, right?”

What?

“I saw you talking to him one day after work. He was at a station across the street from where you were visiting. Why do you go to the spa so much?” she asked.

“What?” I asked.

Her change of direction was confusing to say the least.

“You go to the spa. You go to the salon. You get your nails done. You get facials to do on yourself every Friday night. You buy fucking skin cream from Sephora every six weeks. You even change your mascara like clockwork. Why do you change your mascara so often?” she pushed.

I… didn’t know what to say.

“I saw Theo for the first time and I just knew… he was mine.” She focused her eyes on me once again. “Then you kept talking to him.”

Then I kept talking to him?

What?

“I’m sorry, Shondra,” I apologized.

I mean, what else could I do?

I wasn’t the one in the wrong here.

Obviously Crazy Cathy was.

And why did she have a hammer?

I kept talking to Theo?

What in the hell did that mean?

“You’re not sorry.” She sniffed. “You’re trying to get out of what’s about to happen.”

I didn’t know what she had planned for me, but I knew that I couldn’t let her do what I thought she was going to do. And what I thought she was going to do had a lot to do with that hammer in her hand.

My biggest hope was that she was hanging up a picture, which I highly doubted seeing as the one time I’d asked Shondra if she had a hammer I could borrow at the office, she told me she didn’t hang her own stuff up. Maintenance did. Why the hell would she have a hammer?

No, I could only see one reason why she had a hammer in her hand, and that wasn’t going to end well for me.

Meaning I had to try to distract her.

“Theo and I aren’t together anymore,” I tried. “Never were. He always had a thing for my sister, and he could never get over her enough to even look at me.”