Second Chance SEAL(82)

“Can’t be helped. Some clichés happen to be true.”

“I don’t know how she went from pretty, popular cheerleader to leader of a drug gang in only a few years. I really don’t.”

Hartley nodded slowly. “I guess we’ll find out.” She opened the door to the passenger side and climbed in.

I smiled to myself. Hartley was perceptive, surprisingly perceptive. I hadn’t much thought about how she was going to work into this thing we had going, but maybe she could hold her own. I basically was figuring that she’d be a liability for most of it and I’d be spending half my time keeping her alive.

But maybe I was wrong. So far she’d known when it was time to turn on the charm and when it was time to hang back. She knew when to step up and drink the damn drink and when to smile.

And so far, she’d set my damn veins on fire every time she so much as spoke. The girl was more and more attractive to me with every second we spent together. I was practically rock hard every second of the day, waiting for the moment I could get her alone.

That was dangerous though, really dangerous. We were playing a high-stakes game here. The Dixie Mafia was no fucking joke, and one wrong step could bring them down on both our heads. Maybe I could survive that, but not Hartley. If we got involved with each other, who knew what would happen. I was sure I couldn’t afford the distraction, though, as much as I wanted it.

Regardless, we still had to figure out how we were going to get this shipment back for the Mafia. I knew Janey, but I didn’t know her well enough just to walk up and ask her. Maybe her connection with my brother was going to be enough to get us in the door, but we needed a plan from there.

Not much we could do today about it, though. I started the engine and pulled back out, away from Toad’s place. I got one last look at the junk-strewn lawn and couldn’t help but feel something, deep down.

I’d never really left Knoxville. No matter what I did as a SEAL, some part of me would always be that poor kid from the wrong side of town. I’d always be that idiot teenager who wanted to steal cars and only dreamed about joining up with the mafia. I’d worked my whole life to get away from Knoxville, but now that I was back, I could feel it all coming back to me.

Toad’s place, Markus’s place, they were just like the house I grew up in. I had never pictured myself staying in town for more than a day or two, but it was starting to look like I was back for a lot longer than that. I was going to need to embrace my roots again if we were ever going to get out of this alive.

That was the last thing I wanted to do. Hartley was a good southern girl, but she had no clue what it meant to live around Knoxville. She was a farm girl, probably knew what hard work meant, but she didn’t know serious poverty like I did. She didn’t know these people, the way they thought, the way they fought and loved and fucked. I knew it all, even if I didn’t want to.

I was going to have to teach her if we were going to get through this. I was going to have to show Hartley what it meant to live this way, whether I wanted to or not.





Chapter 9





Hartley





We headed back toward my apartment. Travis was quiet during the car ride, but that was fine. I didn’t need to push him for more information.

Besides, I had my own worries. Travis was much more connected than I could have realized, and who knew what he was thinking about this Janey girl. He clearly had some unresolved issues with his brother and this town, and I was worried about how he’d react when he saw his brother’s old girlfriend.

Not to mention she was the girl who survived the accident. It must have been pretty hard for him to hear about this girl who walked away from the accident that took his brother’s life. From what I could tell, that accident really changed things for Travis. He went from just another criminal getting by in Knoxville’s underworld to the man I knew today, the intense and handsome SEAL.

I couldn’t begin to guess what that transformation meant. I couldn’t imagine how you went from just another poor boy living in the hills of Georgia to a Navy SEAL, respected and well trained.

I was having a hard time picturing Travis as anyone other than the ripped and cocky asshole sitting next to me. But he clearly had a past, and a deep one at that. He may have been a cocky jerk, but he’d earned his way through the world. He clearly came from nothing, but now he was definitely something.

At first, it was just his body that attracted me to him. I only saw a muscular and dangerous man all covered in tattoos. But now I was beginning to see much more of Travis, past the cocky attitude and into his past, into the man he once was. To really understand a person, you needed to understand where they came from.