Wanted: A Bad Boy Romance (6 page)

“You hear someone got beat up
leaving Hammerhead last night?” The whirring of a power drill nearly drowns out
KJ’s voice as he works beneath a hoisted Buick in the bay next to me.

“Oh, yeah?” A zing of heat sears
down my back as my heart damn near stops cold. The last thing I need is someone
noticing the bruised and battered assholes that climb out of the basement of
that joint.

Kyle assures me he’s got
spotters, and he claims he’s never had any problems, but it’d be my fucking
luck that someone would see something and call the cops.

“What’d he look like?” I ask,
doing my best impression of a guy who doesn’t give two fucks.

“Shit, man. I don’t know. It’s on
the news.” KJ nods toward a flat screen T.V. hanging in the waiting area. I
squint through the clear glass pane to try to read the scroll at the bottom of
the screen.

They’re saying the victim was
beat beyond recognition, but they believe him to be a Hispanic male, upper
twenties,
heavy
build.

The guy I fought last night had
sandy brown hair. Just like Kyle’s. I distinctly remember that because I was
imagining Kyle’s face with each jab and strike.

“Hey, assholes.” Kyle struts in
like he owns the place. I suppose in a way he kind of does. It’s thirty minutes
past the hour. KJ and I have been here forty minutes already. He shoves a jelly
donut into his mouth and uncaps a bottle of Mountain Dew. A streak of neon
yellow drips from the corner of his mouth as he takes a lazy slurp.

Everything about Kyle rubs me the
wrong way, and it has since the moment I met the douche. I can’t boil it down
to the way he looks at me like his shit doesn’t stink or the way he peacocks
around the shop doing half-assed oil changes making double my wages.

No.

There’s something far more
sinister about him.

I watch as he motions for a car
to pull in and points the driver toward the waiting area. A second later, he
pops the hood and pulls out their air filter. It’s clean, white really. Looks
almost brand new.

He pops it back in and heads out
to the lobby, reaching behind a desk and pulling out a dirty filter. I watch
through the window as he convinces the
middle aged
gentleman
that his car is in desperate need of a new air filter.

The man seems to eat up Kyle’s
every argument. I can imagine him spewing off fuel mileage statistics and
allergy claims. Any one of us guys knows that a man who takes his car in for an
oil change probably isn’t the handiest under the hood. You can pretty much tell
them anything and they’ll throw money at it until it goes away.

So that’s why Kyle gets paid the
big bucks. He knows how to sell them shit they don’t need and increases the
shop’s profits exponentially.

Fucking dick wad.

“That filter was clean and you
know it.” My words stop him in his tracks and wipe the smug smile off his face
at the same time.

He shrugs and then straightens
his shoulders, like he’s bracing himself for a duel. His stance widens, and his
eyes challenge me. “You want to go tell him I lied? Go right on ahead.”

Goddamn prick.

It’s not that I don’t want to.

I can’t.

I need this job, and I can’t be
stirring shit up with the boss’ son in the middle of my first week.

“That’s on you.” I say. “You
lied. You’re the one who has to sleep at night.”

“Always sleep like a baby.” He
brushes past me, his shoulder grazing mine. I’m easily six inches taller than
the twerp with an extra thirty pounds of muscle, and he’s got some big balls strutting
around like he’s fucking untouchable. I could twist and mangle him in two
seconds flat.

“Just…don’t.” KJ warns me after
Kyle heads back to the supply room.

“Don’t what?”

“Try to talk him into doing the
right thing. It doesn’t work. Believe me.” KJ grabs a wrench and steps under
the lifted Buick. “He’s dangerous.”

I glance at KJ. His face blank,
ashen almost. Like he’s terrified of his brother.

Before I get a chance to ask him
to elaborate, Kyle returns.

“So what was your nickname in
prison?” Kyle swaggers slowly, taking his time as he tosses an air filter high
into the dead space of the ceiling and catching it. “Everyone gets a nickname,
right? What was yours?”

“JJ,” I respond without pause.

“JJ? That’s fucking lame.” Kyle
shakes his head. “The fuck is JJ supposed to mean?”

“Judge and Jury,” I say.

Another car honks and another
technician opens the door to his bay, guiding the car in.

“Judge and Jury.” Kyle laughs,
his eyes rolling into the back of his head. “We need to get you something
better than that.”

“They wanted to call me the
Executioner,” I say, pressing the trigger on my drill. “But I don’t kill
people. Only cowards and pussies kill people.”

Kyle’s smile fades for a half
second until he turns away and returns to his engine. He finishes ten minutes
later and disappears for a bit. I’ve only known him a few days but that seems
to be his M.O. He does one oil change for every three that I do.

The early morning rush subsides a
bit later, and KJ and I shoot the shit in the lobby, eating handfuls of broken
cashews from a twenty-five cent machine as we watch the T.V.

A news brief flashes across the
screen. The local news is still talking about the man from last night. KJ’s
lips tighten and he clears his throat, slapping a hand across his forehead as
if he’s stressed about the whole thing.

For whatever reason, this really
seems to bother him.

I mean. I get it. It’s wrong.

But KJ acts like it’s a personal
thing. It really bothers him.

His eyes dart around the room,
left then right. His mouth parts like he wants to say something but he’s
afraid.

“What?” I scratch my brow.
“What’s wrong?”

“I think it was Kyle.”

“Kyle what?”

“I think Kyle kicked that guy’s
ass?”

A laugh bursts through my lips,
and I try not to spew chewed cashews all over his shirt. “No fucking way.
Kyle’s a string bean. Thinks he’s big. He doesn’t have shit.”

KJ doesn’t laugh. His eyes hold
mine, refusing to let go as if he’s silently pleading for me to take him
seriously. “Nah. I’m not joking. He likes to pick off random drunk people
stumbling outside the bar after closing time. When no one’s looking, he beats
the shit out of
them
for sport. Thinks it’s
hilarious.”

“How many times has he done
this?” I’m not sure why that’s my first question. It seems like the least important
one to ask, but there’s plenty more where that came from. My blood heats
beneath my skin, flushing my face as I drag in a slow breath. “How has he never
been caught? And how do you know for sure?”

“I know,”
KJ
says, his eyes shifting to either sides of me. “Trust me. Anyway, he doesn’t
get caught because no one’s around, and the victims are too drunk to remember
who the hell beat ‘em up. They’ve got no recollection the next morning. Usually
wake up in a hospital. This is the sixth or seventh one in the last few years.
He’s like a fucking serial killer.
Every six months.
Boom. Like fucking clockwork.”

I’m not a man who’s afraid of
much, but damn if KJ didn’t just give me the chills.

“Drunks are idiots,” I say,
shaking my head. “Always starting fights. Running their mouths. Bar fights are
as common as mosquitos in the summer, especially in small towns.”

“I’ve seen him do it.” KJ leans
forward, scanning the space in search of his brother.

“Why haven’t you gone to the
police?”

“I mean, I didn’t see it, see
it,” he corrects himself. “I’ve seen the evidence. The locations. The
timelines. Everything adds up. One night he came home, his fists covered in
blood. And I found a bloody rag behind the bench in his truck a couple months
ago. It was the night after some young kid got beat up outside a bar in Campus
Town.”

I spy Kyle over in the second
bay, standing under a hoisted car and checking his phone.

“If he’s such an experienced
fighter, why doesn’t he do these basement brawls?” I ask.

“He’s not stupid enough to,” KJ
says. “No offense.”

“I’m not stupid, KJ. Just trying
to make a little money so I can get my own place. Not everyone can work for
Daddy for twenty bucks an hour.”

The bells on the door jingle,
ushering in a new customer. KJ scrambles for the cash register to greet them,
and I stride out to the garage to pull their car in.

Kyle tucks his
phone
into his back pocket
the second I pass him.

“Don’t work too hard there,” I
mutter.

He scoffs, a smug smirk on his
blockheaded face. “What would you know about working? You’ve been back in the
real world a hot minute now.”

I could punch him.

But I don’t.

“Where’d you go last night?” I
ask.

“The fuck do you mean where’d I
go? What are you? My bitch girlfriend or something?”

“After the fights. Where’d you
go?”

“Bars close, Titan. You know
that. I counted the money and went home.”

I lay a paper mat inside the
driver’s floorboard of a shiny white BMW and pull it into my bay, and by the
time I hoist it on the lift, I see Titan watching a video on his phone.

“You hear about that?” he says to
me.

“What?”

“That guy last night, just
outside Hammerhead.”

“Yeah.” I head to the stock room
to grab a couple quarts of oil and return. “What about him?”

“I’d kill to know who that som’
bitch was,” he says. “I’d like to recruit him. Buy him a drink. Make him a rich
bastard.”

***

The lights are off when I get
home. The sun’s gone down. The faint drone of the family room TV and the hint
of lamplight
fills
the backside of the house.

“Hello?” A voice calls out.

I ignore it.

I’d much rather
be
a ghost here. This whole house is filled with ‘em anyway.
The ghost of better times.
The ghost
of good memories and a time when life was simple.

“Hello?” It calls out again,
louder. It’s Jordana. It’s much too
young-sounding
to
be Laticia, and I’m sure she and my father are out painting the town red.

“Just me.” I kick my dirty boots
off by the back door and hang my oil-stained shop jacket, a too-tight hand-me-down
that had once belonged to Kyle.

I trek upstairs, peeling my
clothes off and tossing them on the floor of the guest room before strutting
down the hall buck naked and hitting the shower. I don’t fucking care anymore.
I have no shame. You lose any ounce of decency when you’re locked up like that,
sharing a shower with a handful of other men. In the last five years, I’ve seen
more cocks than a man should see in his lifetime.

And I sure as fuck don’t care if
Jordana sees me. She’s a grown woman. She should know what a dick looks like.

Twenty minutes later, I shower
off. Wrapping a towel around my waist, I strut down the hall to my room,
catching Jordana leaving hers.
 

“Why were those keys on my pillow
last night?” I ask.

She shrugs like she doesn’t know
what I’m talking about. I know better. “Where were you last night?”

“I don’t want to drive your
brother’s car. Not if your mom’s going to get upset like that again.”

“She’s fine,” Jordana says, her
gaze falling to my mouth and then to the bare skin below. The soap-scented heat
from my damp body permeates into the air around us, and I watch her breathe me
in. “We had a talk. You’re going to fix up his Mustang so she can sell it. She
needs the closure. It’s fine. It’s good that this is happening.”

“Why are you being nice to me?”

“I’m a nice person,” she says.

“Give me a fucking break.”

Her dark brows furrow.

“You want something,” I say. “You
want something from me. That’s why you’re being nice.”

“I don’t want anything from you.”
Her arms fold. “I mean, I guess I just want you to be nice and respectful. But
that’s not why I talked my mom into letting you drive the Mustang.”

“Hate to break it to you,
princess,” I scoff, “but I abandoned nice and respectful the second I set foot
inside the pen.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“You don’t have to.”

“You’re a good person, Titan.
Your family…your father…you were raised to be a good person. You were going to
college. You were-”

“The hell, Jordana? You think you
know me?” My nostrils flare as my hand flies up, slapping the wall behind her
and forcing her back into a corner. “What, you been researching me?”