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Grayson
I walked out of the accountant’s office after having a very long talk with him. I finally felt like I had Anton’s estate settled, but not without some long conversations. Apparently, the accountant had felt he could take it upon himself to divvy up the funds to charities how he saw fit with his own personal guidelines and ethics. So I got my personal lawyer on the phone to let him know exactly what would happen to him and what I would drain him of if he didn’t follow Anton’s wishes to the letter.
It shut his ass up quickly, and I sat there while he processed the donations as they were laid out in Anton’s will.
I came out of the accountant’s office with my head held high and a settled soul. It still hurt that he was gone, but knowing his estate had been settled with relatively no hiccups made me feel better. I couldn’t wait to get home and talk with Michelle about it. I couldn’t wait to get home and spend my evening basking in her presence.
Unlocking my rental car, I looked up across the street and saw a familiar face walking out of the bar. It shouldn’t have shocked me that Andy was coming out of a damn bar at four in the afternoon, but I didn’t want him to see me. I didn’t want him to get the notion that I wanted to stand around and talk to his sorry ass.
“Grayson!”
Shit.
“Buddy!”
Nope.
“Hang on a second. I need to talk to you,” he said.
“Hey there, Andy. What’s up?”
But the second he approached me, he shoved me against my car.
I furrowed my brow as the door was slammed shut with my back. Andy had a scowl on his face and I braced myself for a fight. He held his fist back in the air as our eyes connected, and I balled mine up as people began to stare.
Funny, I didn’t even smell too much alcohol on his breath.
What the fuck was he doing?
“What do you want?” I asked.
“You know what I want,” Andy said.
Then a smile crossed his face and he patted me on the chest.
“I’m just messin’ with ya,” he said, as he lowered his fist.
He started laughing, like he’d made some sort of funny joke. I smoothed my hands over my shirt and began looking around at the people staring at us. I needed to get away from this man. This shell of a boy I used to know. He stopped laughing and leaned his elbow against my car, like he was about to chat up an old friend.
“What the hell was that for?” I asked.
“Oh, come on. Don’t act like you don’t know you’re dabbling in my sloppy seconds.”
“What?” I asked.
“Michy? My ex? Rumor has it the two of you have been snuggling up in town lately.”
Wait. ‘Michy’ was Michelle?”
“It don’t bother me a bit,” he said. “I know you’re probably banging her. It’s hard not to, with those sweet thighs of hers. And those eyes? Man, they can really take someone to their knees. But she’s sweeter on hers, if you want a few tips.”
I raked my eyes up and down his shirtless body as my mind began to drop things into place.
“And if you’re wondering, I don’t give a shit about her any longer. There’s a reason why I kicked her out. She’s a minx in the sack, but she’s crazy as fuck. And she’ll withhold sex in a heartbeat if you screw up, so have a little on the side to call up when she’s in one of her moods.”
Red dripped over my vision as he pushed off my car. Andy was her ex?
He slid his arm around my neck and brought his face close to mine. I wanted to shove his nose up into his brain. He had kicked Michelle out? That was why she stumbled into Anton’s house at two in the fucking morning?
Why the hell had she not told me any of this?
“Anyway, we got better things to do,” Andy said. “You settled Anton’s estate yet?”
“Just got finished with it,” I said.
“Good. I’ve already got myself locked and loaded,” he said, as he patted my chest. “Where we headed to first?”
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“I was thinking of maybe heading west to get a new start. I went north for the oil, came back here to right my head a bit. I’ve been thinking about it since I saw you in the bar. You know, when we talked about you settling Anton’s estate.”
“Uh huh,” I said.
“Yeah. I figured after dabbling in the northern girls and dipping into the slices of pie around here that a bleach blonde bunny might suit me a bit. Maybe one in one of those small bikinis that lay out on the beach specifically to attract men? I’m sure you know the type.”
“No. I don’t,” I said flatly.
This asshole was wrapping around me and talking about leaving town on Anton’s dime. But he had a rude fucking awakening coming to him. My brain finally processed everything he had thrown at me and I pushed him off my body.
“The fuck, man?”
“I settled Anton’s estate, but I didn’t sell anything off,” I said.
“What? That’s what you said you were doing.”
“No. That’s what you inferred I was doing. Anton gave his properties away. He gave his things away to the people of this town because he was a decent human being. Unlike yourself.”
“Say what now?” he asked.
“We aren’t going anywhere. I’m not taking you anywhere with me. I’m wrapping up shop here, then I’m going the fuck back home.”
“You better watch your mouth,” he said. “This place is your home.”
“This place stopped being home the second my mother shat on my life and my father decided I looked damn nice as a punching bag, Andy.”
His eyes widened as I took a step towards him.
“And you? You’re nothing but a piece of shit headed down the same damn path my father walked.”
“I’m a lot of things, MacDonald. But I don’t beat up kids.”
“No. You just toss women out of your life at two in the morning with nowhere to go and no money to her name. Sounds about like what my father did to my mother on several occasions,” I said.
I watched him raise his fist back to actually hit me, but I was quicker than him. I couldn’t take another neck injury or another blow to my head, but that didn’t mean my speed had dwindled one bit. I clocked my fist against his jaw and heard it crunch as he fell to the ground, writhing in pain and kicking up dust. I stepped over him and opened my car door, making sure to nail him in the back of the head before I jammed my keys into the ignition.
Then I pulled away from the accountant’s office and began speeding back to Anton’s.
My mind swirled with a thousand different things. Why the hell had Michelle not said something about being with Andy? And how the hell could she have ended up with an asshole like that in the first place? Did the woman have no standards whatsoever in her world? It was insane to me. The idea of a trash can like him putting his hands on Michelle before I did sizzled my vision. My hands gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles were white and my fingers went numb.
She seemed so sweet and innocent.
But I knew Andy well enough to know he never attached himself to anyone sweet and innocent.
Had it been a ruse the entire time? Fuck, I should’ve known it was. Women in my life did that. Portrayed themselves to be anything I wanted them to be so they could get closer to me. Closer to my vineyard. Closer to my wallet. Closer to my body. Andy enjoyed women who were fast and loose. He always had.
Michelle sure as hell knew how to pick them.
If Michelle had a type, did that mean she felt like I was akin to Andy? It wouldn’t shock me if she did. Apparently, I wasn’t welcome in this town unless I was being slapped across the face or used for Anton’s fucking estate money. If I was nothing but an overgrown bully like Andy, then it shouldn’t have surprised me that a woman like Michelle latched onto me.
Fuck!
I beat my hands against the steering wheel at the stoplight in front of me. The one damn light in all of Whitefish. I roared at the top of my lungs while people in other cars looked at me like I’d lost my damn mind.
Had I?
Had I lost my damn mind?
The fact that I didn’t even know was a fucking testament to how well Michelle fucked me over. Whatever her angle was for keeping that shit from me, it was going to come out. I needed to know why she withheld that information from me. Why she didn’t just tell me she was Andy’s ex and that he had kicked her out. Did she think I would kick her out, too? Did she think I’d just toss her out onto the street like some deadbeat fucker with an electric guitar and a penchant for shitty canned beer?
Apparently, that was exactly what she thought of me.
We needed to talk. And as the light turned green and my car sped off, only one question kept running through my mind to ask her.
Why the hell does she think I’m like Andy?
