My mouth fell open, and I reached forward and pulled his soup to me.

I stuck my finger in it to the bottom, found out that it wasn’t too hot, and then handed it back to him. “It’s okay to eat.”

He looked at me curiously.

“Your mother sounds awful, by the way,” I grumbled, not adding the part of ‘I’m glad that she’s dead’ because I wasn’t sure that was very nice of me to say that.

“Pain medication loosens my tongue,” he admitted. “I didn’t mean to tell you that.”

I hummed and got my own bowl, added some crushed-up crackers to it, then proceeded to eat it while he ate his own soup, slow as molasses, in front of me.

I was washing my bowl when he placed his bowl down very gently and said, “I want to go with you tomorrow.”

I looked at him curiously. “You don’t think that riding will hurt your ribs?”

“I think that I’m going to be hurting no matter what I do. And I don’t want to be here alone.”

I opened my mouth and said the total opposite of what I’d meant to say. “You can come.”

Before I could take it back, he did a small, very cute fist pump for an adult-sized, hot as hell male.

“Sweet.” He looked at his bowl then. “Sometimes, I leave my dishes in the sink just to piss her off. I hope she rolls over in her grave when I do it, too.”

I placed my own bowl down without rinsing it, then said, “Then leave it.”

So that was exactly what he did.

When he went to the couch that was in the middle of the massive room, I put away what was left of the soup. Then I placed the crockpot into the sink and filled it up with water.

It went against everything that was ingrained in me for being a guest in his house, but I did it anyway. I left it and didn’t look back at it until the next morning.

When I found Easton waiting on me, bright and early, with a cup of coffee in each hand and a grin of excitement on his face.

“You ready to go?” he asked.

I looked at him curiously. “You are way too excited for this. It’s only a truck. And hate to break it to you, but we’re picking up a load of cows. This is gonna suck.”

His eyes went huge. “Cows?”

“Cows,” I confirmed. “I was paid triple to get them there by tonight. The way back, I’m picking up computers.”

“Cows are cool.”

Turns out, cows were horrible.

Why?

Because halfway there, there was a wreck on the interstate.

CHAPTER 7

Farts are always funny.

-Easton to Banger

If this traffic didn’t clear soon, we wouldn’t make it.

We hit a bump, and my body jolted, causing me to groan.

Banger looked over at me and raised her eyebrows as if to say ‘I told you so.’

Last night’s conversation came back to me, and I nearly cringed at the repeat of my words in my head to my ‘sober’ self.

“The truck might have an air ride system, but it’s still gonna be uncomfortable to have to drive it. You’ll have to be straight up and down in your seat, and you’ll have to be able to look back and forth. You really think you can do that?” she asked curiously.