Doin' a Dime by Vale, Lynn (learn to read activity book .txt) 📕

“So I was going to wait until later to tell you, but I was going to suggest we move into your old house.” I paused. “And sell this place.”

She hesitated for all of two seconds before she said, “Let’s do it.”

Her old house was just sitting there. Had been sitting there for going on a few years now since her aunt had started with her assholery.

Though it’d been ‘sitting,’ it hadn’t been idle.

I’d started over the last six months to fix it up in secret.

A bathroom here, a bedroom there.

At first, it was because before I’d gotten out of prison, I wanted to make sure that she had a beautiful place to return to if it took me longer to convince her to stay with me than I wanted.

Then, after I’d gotten out, I wanted it to be a place where we could return to. A place where she could remember the good times she had there with her parents and not the bad she had with her aunt.

Now, it was because we had motherfuckin’ spiders making their home in our walls.

“I’ve always been terrified that a spider would crawl into my ear while I was sleeping,” I admitted, tightening my hold on her ass.

She snorted and turned so that her face was nearly in line with mine. I nearly had to cross my eyes to look at her.

“You mean the world to me, Hunt McJimpsey,” she whispered. “Thank you for squishing the spider.”

I grinned and covered the last two inches separating our lips, placing my mouth to hers. When I pulled back, I said, “I don’t think you realize just how much you mean to me in return. I’d break into the White House for you, baby.”

She squinted her eyes. “The thing is, I wouldn’t ask you for anything that might take you away from me again. Now that I know what it’s like to live with you, to love you, I wouldn’t be able to make it four more years without you.”

I groaned and looked back down at our bathroom floor.

All the spiders were gone.

“We can go to your house tonight,” I suggested as she hopped down and looked around much like I had.

“How?” she asked. “It’s not been released to us yet.”

“As of right before I came in here,” I disagreed, “it had. I made sure to expedite that for you, too.”

She laughed and carefully kicked the tennis shoes that I’d left on the floor after my run.

“Anything more on my aunt?” she asked as she carefully picked them up by the shoestring and tossed them into the bathtub.

“She was moved to the county jail where she’ll remain until her trial. Her trial that, according to the prosecutor’s notes on his computer, will be a slam-dunk. I made sure to make it easy for them to find everything that they needed on her computer. I conveniently labeled it as ‘summer vacation’ right on the desktop. They found it within five minutes. In there were all her misdeeds from as far back as when your parents were killed. I have the dates, transactions, payment amounts, any and all communication that I could find. You name it, I found it and put it into that little folder on her computer. I had to pull that shit off of four of her computers to get to it. But I did it,” I explained. “And the lawyer dropped her case as well as the suit. It’s all yours. They just haven’t had a chance to give you a call just yet.”

That’s when she smiled wide and did the cutest little fist pump.

“So how many counts of murder is she charged with right now?” she asked carefully.

“I didn’t go that far into his notes. But, from what I can tell, your aunt getting rid of anything that fucks with her isn’t a new thing. She’s left a trail of dead bodies behind her since she left whatever hidey hole she was hiding in when she first came after your parents.” I paused. “At a glance, it’s at least eight, if not more.”

Wyett looked thoughtful for a few seconds, then sighed, her shoulders drooping.

“I wish that I had a reason,” she grumbled. “I want to know why. What did my parents ever do? I mean, those contract killers? I don’t care all that much about them. I mean, other than my aunt has no problem doing her own dirty work. But… why didn’t she kill me?”

I didn’t have an answer for her.

“I don’t have an answer for you, and your aunt is the type of person, I’m getting, that doesn’t like to share her motives or intentions.” I shrugged. “I’m not sure you’ll ever really know why.”

Which sucked.

What sucked even more was the fact that she had to live with the questions of why her aunt didn’t just take her out, too.

“How attached to the stuff in this house are you?” she asked, still glancing around the room warily.

“As long as I can get my computers, clothes, you and the dogs, I think that I’ll be okay,” I admitted. “The rest can be sold as is.”

“Your couch is really nice, though.” She paused. “And our bed.”

“Then we can take what you want,” I said. “Sin’s been looking for a place to stay. He can take this place until he can find what he really wants.”

She looked at me curiously. “Do you plan on telling him about the thousands of spiders we just released in the bathroom?”

I pinched my lips closed. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

• • •

Four hours later, I emerged from the hell of unhooking and packing up my computers to find myself alone in the loft.

Not even the dogs remained.

Frowning, I went to text her after making a loop around all of the rooms when I found a note attached to the door that led to my office.

Picking it up, I glanced at the paper and nearly rolled my eyes.

Went to talk to my