The Job (Auctioned) by Cara Dee (highly illogical behavior txt) 📕

She bit her lip. “Are you super strong? Like Dad?”

What the fuck? I’d been working out like mad lately. Even my abs showed! But I wasn’t gonna flex in front of my daughter. It was probably weird.

Comparing me to Boone was harsh, though.

“If you can’t see my impressive biceps, we need to have your eyes checked,” I grumbled.

“I don’t think anyone can see past the impressive mustard stain on your tank,” she replied frankly.

I peered down at my beater and winced. “I went to Costco for lunch.”

“Great, now I want a churro,” she huffed. “Can you ease my pain with a new nail polish?”

I laughed. “You fuckin’ drama queen. Sure, go pick out a nail polish.”

She strutted off with victory written all over her, and I got to stand right there and watch our shit. My daughter had me too wrapped around her finger sometimes. She was too much like me sometimes as well. One might even think we shared genes.

But at the end of the day, she was just like her mother—God rest her wild soul.

My phone rang in my pocket, and I was surprised to see my cousin’s number. We hadn’t talked in a while.

“Darius, how the fuck are you?” I smiled. We didn’t share genes either; he was Boone’s biological cousin, but we came from families that picked up strays left and right. I’d once been a stray, just like Ace.

“I’m good, kid. All good,” he answered. “How’s Vegas?”

“Hot.” I eyed a guy walking past. “What can I do for you, cuz?”

“I have a job for you and Boone,” he told me. “Willow’s gonna send you all the information you need.” That would be his tech-savvy little sister. “Pretty straightforward—recon work, virtually no pay.”

I grinned. “My favorite kind. How’d you know?”

He chuckled. “When push comes to shove, it’s more of a favor, but there will be plenty of opportunities for you and Boone to collect a reward from our target.”

Color me intrigued. Darius used to be a private military contractor, but he must’ve taken a break from retirement if he was calling me about a job. Unless he wanted to hire me at his restaurant outside of fucking Seattle, and evidently not. He was also a good guy. He came from a family of good guys. But outside of the occasional family reunion, our paths didn’t cross, so to speak. Except for that one time he sent a couple buddies my way for intel.

“You can count me in,” I said. I trusted him, and I was always on the lookout for my next job. “Boone’s another matter. We haven’t been on speaking terms for the past four years.”

“Why the fuck not?” Darius demanded. “Shit was good when we saw each other last year.”

No—far from it. “We’re good at pretending when we have to, I guess.” Boone and I kept our most vicious fights far away from our daughter. She was used to the silent treatment he and I gave each other, and at the most, she’d been around a few bitch fights. But we pulled our shit together for her soccer games, recitals, and our family reunions.

“How does that even work with Ace?” Darius asked. I could practically see his frown through the phone. “You share custody?”

“Essentially.” It’d never been the plan for Boone and me to live together in the first place, but since when did life give a flying fuck about anyone’s plans? Shortly after Tia died, we found out she’d wanted us to raise her girl. Two screw-ups and a toddler—nothing could go wrong. Except, we’d moved in to a small apartment together and showed the world that precisely everything could go wrong.

I hated thinking about it. I hated being reminded of it. “I don’t wanna get into the details,” I said, peering down an aisle to see if Ace was coming back anytime soon. “Long-ass story.”

“So we’ll save it for another time,” Darius said. “But you better patch shit up with him, kid, because I need you both on this. You’ll hear from Willow tonight.” The fucker hung up on me. Was he even ten years older than me?

“I’m not a kid,” I bitched at the phone. Thirty-five years old and called kid… Fuck you, cousin.

Patching things up with Boone was outta the question. It’d be like building a bridge from desert sand.

When Ace returned from the cosmetics aisle, we made our way to the registers and decided to have patty melts for dinner. Whatever information Willow had for me, I’d work out on my own. I wasn’t gonna worry about it.

“Is the porch done yet?” Ace asked as we walked out of the store.

“Almost. It just needs a coat of paint.” I was mostly glad the hammerin’ and drillin’ were done.

I’d been stoked to learn that the trailer park where I lived got a new owner last year, just six months after I’d moved in to my run-down single-wide. Repairing and renovating the inside was a responsibility I had no problems handling myself, but the exterior fell on the owner of the park, and the previous one hadn’t given a fuck. Then the guy who’d taken over had announced that all trailers would get a paint job, the double-wides would be given a small deck in the back, the single-wides a front porch, and we’d get new mailboxes. Five months of constant construction had followed, waking me up at the ass-crack of dawn.

The park looked a hell of a lot better now. The owner had delivered on his upgrades, without raising the lot rent too much. Less concrete, more grass and trees. The playground wasn’t a tetanus hazard anymore, and the community pool had been resurfaced.

Reaching my car, I popped the trunk and stashed the groceries next to Ace’s bags.

Ace climbed into the back seat, which was unlike her, but when I passed her, I saw the several reasons tumbling out of my shirt. A bunch of shit just fell out when she opened it. Without a care in the world, she