Mated to My Step-brother and His Best Friend novel · Chapter 12 of 32

Chapter 12: Night Shift

"Lesson one," I said. "You don't get to decide how it goes."

"All right."

"Lesson two. You start by saying sorry to the people you owe it to. Not to me in a hallway. In front of them."

He looked at me for a long moment.

"Graylick," he said.

"Graylick."

He nodded once.

Abner gave us leave that same morning.

He looked grey and tired at the breakfast table, rubbing his shoulder.

"There's a dead man under my hall," he said. "She's safer in her own town than in my house. Go. Keep your phones on."

Arlis wasn't at breakfast.

Nobody said where he was.

We drove down in Deacon's truck with Bowie asleep against the window, still smelling like the lake.

At six that evening the diner was full.

Word had gone round that the Lovett boy was back.

Half of them had come to watch him get thrown out.

The cook stood behind the counter with her arms crossed.

Deacon walked in, took off his good jacket, and folded it over a stool.

Then he stood in the middle of the floor where he'd bled.

Every fork stopped.

"My name is Deacon Lovett," he said. "Eight months ago three men shot me in your parking lot, and a woman from this town saved my life."

Nobody said anything.

"I went home and I called this place a miserable excuse of a town. I said it in my father's hall. I said it for eight months. I told my pack you were thieves." He swallowed. "I was wrong. I'm sorry."

The old man at the end of the counter set down his coffee.

"That it?" he said.

"No, sir."

Deacon turned and looked at me.

I was standing by the kitchen door with a rag in my hands.

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