I’d just swiped my last thing across the scanner when Adam swiped his card.
I rolled my eyes but let him do his thing, very aware of his alpha male tendencies, and knowing when to choose my battles. Putting my things in the cart, I was just about to turn around when my arm was grabbed hard from behind.
“This is her!” Rogan growled.
Except, it wasn’t Rogan doing the grabbing, it was Adam.
He’d seen Rogan reaching for me when I had not, and had moved until I was behind him and he was pushing me practically onto the counter at my back.
“Don’t. Touch. Her,” Adam snarled.
“That’s her!” I heard cried from somewhere beyond Rogan. “She punched me in the bathroom! I’m pressing charges!”
“I did see her punch her,” an elderly lady said. “But that was only after that girl pushed her. Though, I don’t think that kind of reaction was quite necessary.”
I pressed my forehead against Adam’s back.
“Really?” I heard Rogan say. “She’s a menace to society!”
And that was how I found myself in handcuffs for the second time in a matter of a week.
***
“Mackenzie.”
I stood up, stiff from my uneasy perch on the edge of the bench I’d been occupying for the last hour, and walked to the cell door that was being held open for me.
I didn’t spare the officer a glance as I made my way out the door and to the man that was standing behind him.
“I will completely understand if you want to break up with me,” I murmured. “But, I swear to God. That girl had it coming.”
Adam grinned, flashing me a row of straight white teeth, and pulled me into his arms.
I groaned and rested my head against his pectorals. “I need food. Like, thirty minutes ago. But the officer didn’t want to listen.”
Adam stiffened and I knew he was staring at the officer at his back.
“She’s diabetic,” Adam said to the officer over my head. “If she’d have had low blood sugar in there, I would’ve had your ass.”
I heard the officer start to shuffle. “Listen, man. It’s not like I don’t hear all kinds of excuses. Sure, your lady’s was a little original, but I hear ‘em all the time.”
Adam didn’t say anything, instead taking me out of the hall, through some area that I hadn’t seen before, and out a back, side exit.
“You been here before?” I muttered, voice slurred slightly.
That was when my eyes got heavy and I contemplated taking a nap instead of eating.
Which was when I knew that things were getting dire.
“I need food,” I repeated.
“Working on it,” he murmured, taking me down the alley where the door had spit us out into.
“What’s going on?”
That wasn’t my dad or my brothers.
That was my sister.
“She needs something to eat. Now,” Adam said. “You don’t happen to have… ahh, good.”
I swayed on my feet when I felt Adam lift my head up and place a slip of chocolate into my mouth.
It wasn’t enough.
“Need juice.”
Simple, easy words were all I was capable of at that point.
I was dead on my feet from very little sleep the night before. My eyes felt like lead weights were attached to them, and to make matters worse, now my blood sugar was perilously low.
“Here,” someone said.
I didn’t recognize that someone.
But a bottle was placed to my mouth, and I tasted chocolate milk.
“Mmmm,” I said, greedily sucking it down.
I loved chocolate milk.
It’d be better if I could enjoy it with some donuts. But donuts weren’t on my diet plan, sadly.
“Enough?”
I nodded my head, and he managed not to spill a single drop of it on me.
When I turned my head to thank whoever’s chocolate milk I’d just stolen, it was to find a rather large looking man with his hands on his hips and a blank look on his face.
“Who’re you?” I said.
Even though I knew who he was, he hadn’t been formally introduced to me.
“Nathan Cox,” he said.
I frowned. “The sexy baseball player.”
And sometimes my mouth ran away from me when I was having these episodes. I couldn’t say that I was one hundred percent all with it, still.
“Amelia,” Shiloh, my bigger, more beautiful sister said. “I’m not more beautiful than you are.”
Did I say that aloud?
“Yes,” she said. “Now, can you stand up?”
I wasn’t standing?
“No, you’re not,” Adam rumbled, his voice laced with humor. “I’m holding you up.”
He was?
“Yes,” he said. “And you’re still saying these things out loud.”
I grinned.
“Oh.” I turned until he was all I could see. “You have every girl’s dream eyelashes.”
Adam’s lips twitched, and I leaned forward and pressed my lips to the corner of them, causing him to laugh.
“Your dad and brothers are staring at me like they’re about to kill me,” he murmured.
I pulled away and glared at Adam’s chin. “Brothers?”
“Brothers,” he confirmed.
I sighed and let my head fall backward over Adam’s arm that was behind my shoulders, then stared at the alley that was full of people.
My mom. My brothers—Sebastian and Sam. My sister and her husband, James. My dad. Oh, and Nathan.
What was Nathan doing here again?
“I was at Target,” Nathan answered my apparently out loud question.
“Oh,” I said. Target is so cool. Much better than Walmart.
“If you say so,” Nathan said.
He smiled then, and I wished I was looking at him from the right way up because I bet that smile was killer. I’d always wanted his autograph.
“I’ll give it to you sometime,” he said. “You’re right across the street now.”
“You know,” I said. “Reggie messed up when she let you go.”
Nathan frowned hard. “What?”
The chocolate was finally doing its job, and my head started to settle as his words and mine penetrated my brain.
I looked away, hoping that he’d buy my confused brain speak.
But I’d made a mistake.
I’d mentioned Reggie, better known as Regina Morton, to him.
Reggie wasn’t a common name.
There were only so many Reginas of the world, and in Kilgore, who were under the age of seventy-five? There were even fewer.
I’d met Reggie during school a couple of years ago. We’d instantly hit it off, even though we were both in different courses and had different majors.
All it had taken were our paths to cross in one single class, and the rest had been history.