Half A Million For A Girlfriend, Both Men Belong To Me novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Sage

My mother arrived on Saturday with a duffel bag of tea and a bundle of white sage tied with red string.

She had driven four hours to see the boy from the video.

"I saw it on a friend's phone," she said, hugging me in the dorm lobby. "Abby, I raised you to be honest, and there is no way you saw a grown man in a leash."

"It was purple, Mom."

"Then I'm not mad, I'm impressed."

She lit the sage right there beside the front desk.

The smoke went up in one thin gray ribbon, and the smoke detector above her head began to scream.

"It's cleansing the lobby," Mom said, over the noise.

"It's setting off the alarm."

"The alarm is part of the process."

The resident assistant ran in with a clipboard, waving her hand through the air.

A second alarm went off on the second floor.

Somebody pulled the fire switch in the hall, and the lights began to flash.

By the time the campus fire marshal pulled into the lot, nineteen boys in towels were standing on the lawn.

Mom had walked out in front of them, holding the sage high.

"Ma'am," the marshal said. "You can't burn that indoors."

"I wasn't indoors. I was in the doorway."

"Ma'am."

"Is there a problem?"

Beckett had appeared beside me on the grass in his gray hoodie, with his hands in his pockets.

"Marshal," he said pleasantly. "That's my girlfriend's mother. I'll personally cover the cost of the false alarm."

"Sir, I don't think..."

"Ashworth," Beckett said. "Like the freight trucks."

The marshal looked at him, then at the sage, then at the nineteen boys in towels.

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