Lead Me Home (Fight for Me #3)(30)

Ollie





I snapped open the door to my nineteen fifties turquoise-blue Chevy truck to the sticky summer air.

Birds flitted across the sky that was painted a bright, brilliant blue, and the lush, towering trees rustled in the gentle breeze blowing through.

I stepped out onto the sidewalk and shut the door to the old truck, which was basically my prized possession.

When I found it, it’d been rotting at the back of this old guy’s land, swallowed by weeds and pretty much rusted down to the metal bones.

It was kind of my thing. Taking the dilapidated—the neglected and the failing—and doing my own sort of restoration.

It was where I found my joy.

Taking something that had been left for ruin and giving it a new life. A second chance when I wasn’t ever going to get one for myself.

A certain sort of retribution. Like I was desperate to find something good buried in the rubble.

My first love was my bar. Taking it from the ruin it’d been and breathing a new life into it.

I took just as much pride in the cars I had restored at a local shop, Roke’s restorations, a garage I’d invested some money into when it had been threatened with going under.

Hell, I’d invested in a few failing businesses around Gingham Lakes, wanting to see something good rise out of the dust.

But the cars . . .

I loved watching them going from completely rotted to immaculate.

From a heap of junk to a priceless treasure.

Guessed it was a whole lot easier to fall for material things than things made up of flesh and blood and spirit.

Safer.

But sometimes not falling proved itself impossible.

Which was precisely the reason I was there today, driving this specific truck when I had five others to choose from in my garage.

Because . . . Evan.

The first time Kale had brought him to my place, the little boy had run through that garage like he’d gotten a lifetime pass to Disneyland and couldn’t wait to visit it every day.

His big ol’ bug eyes had been nothing but excitement behind his thick-rimmed glasses as he’d gone from car to car. His fingertips had traced the metal, and he’d sat behind the steering wheel of each car, pretending like he was flying down a racetrack.

Kale hadn’t even protested when I’d let Evan climb onto one of my motorcycles.

But this truck?

It was his favorite.

He’d claimed it as his on that big spiral-bound notebook he always carried around, jumping up and down as he’d shoved it toward my face to tell me just how much he loved it.

Then he’d gone and left that ripped-out piece of paper on my coffee table so I wouldn’t forget.

A light chuckle rippled out as I thought back to that day, to the way the kid had gotten right under my skin like he’d belonged there all along.

The same way Frankie Leigh and Ryland had done.

So, there I was, locking the door of that truck and reaching into the bed to snag the football I’d tossed back there for my little adventure to the park that sat smack-dab in the middle of our small city.

Meeting up for a motherfucking play date.

Talk about being a third wheel.

Out of place.

A damned fish out of water when this was the very pond I grew up in.

Kale, Rex, and I had spent many an afternoon running the fields as kids, kicking up dirt, causing trouble the way we’d always liked to do.

A couple of hours ago, I’d gotten a text from Rex to meet them there. I hadn’t even hesitated. I needed to get the hell out of my loft.

Nikki’s scent had been stalking me like a fucking drug since the second I’d woken up.

I could feel the fractures and splinters getting deeper and deeper. Cracking me open wide.

My thoughts dangerous.

My need dark.

The last four days, we’d basically avoided each other, me grunting hellos and her offering timid, unsure smiles as she hightailed it out the door as quickly as she could, spending as little time within the walls of my apartment as possible.

She’d be gone before I even woke in the morning and already fast asleep by the time I made it back upstairs after closing the bar.

You’d think with the little amount I actually saw her, it wouldn’t be all that bad.

Not true.

I was constantly on edge. Need gliding across my flesh like the sharp edge of a knife.

Lust and regret a bottomless pit in the well of my stomach.

Worry this constant thud that banged inside of me.

Seth still had no word on who might have broken into her apartment, and until he did? I wasn’t about to let her leave.

Guessed a little fresh air would do me some good.

I rounded the front of the truck and headed for the park.

Fields and playgrounds went on for what had to be a mile, all closed in by massive, ancient trees.

The second she saw me, Frankie Leigh came running in my direction. Long, brown hair flew behind her like a cape, wild and uncontained.

Grinning, I moved a little faster to meet her.

Like I said.

Sometimes it was impossible not to fall.

I dropped the football just in time to use her momentum to grab her under the arms and spin her around and around.

She howled with laughter, shouting, “Come on, Uncle, can’t you go any higher?”

She was a wild one, that was for sure, so damned happy and full of life there was no way you could be around her and not smile.