Just Give In… Read Online Free

offered her his hand, but he didn’t. A handshake implied a contract, a pledge. This was nothing more than one human being helping out a woman who needed a chance to get her life together.
    Not that he cared.
    “So, you’re staying with your brother?” he asked again, in case she wanted to come clean about her living situation.
    “Yeah,” she answered, not coming clean. Message received. Don’t ask about the living situation, either.
    “You can start tomorrow?”
    “First thing.”
    “Not too early. I don’t get up early,” he lied. Jason got up at the crack of dawn, but he thought he should straighten up his place first. Get things in order before she started….
    “Not a problem. I have a lot of things to do.” She paused. “With my brother.”
    “Sure,” he agreed like an idiot. Rather than letting her notice that he actually was an idiot, he headed back toward the gate.
    “I’ll see you tomorrow around ten. That’ll be okay?”
    The smile was back in place.
    Not that he cared.
    Then she nodded and climbed into the Hell-Car. Once he returned to the yard, he spent the rest of the day repairing an old wheelchair. Yet every time he looked toward the porch, it was the red LED that was lit, not the green. Sometimes animals set off a false positive, but not often, and not tonight. Someone was out there, or maybe someone had never left.
    When night fell, and the crickets began to chrip, Jason quit working and then walked along the fence line, a man with no particular purpose at all. When he was a kid, he had sat on the porch with his dad, watching the sky and the stars, talking baseball and trusting the world to pass by peacefully.
    After thirteen years in the army, he knew better. As he walked the fence line, he spotted what he’d been searching for. The old Impala, parked at the edge of the fence line. One dim reading light glowing from the interior.
    It was dark outside and she was still out there.
    Obviously no brother. No place to stay, but at least she now had a job. A temporary job.
    Not that he cared.
    There were a lot of things to do before tomorrow. Make the house habitable for human living, do some laundry and throw out the two-month old milk in the fridge. And while he was doing that, she would be out there alone. He tried to ignore the hole in his gut. There was nothing that he could do about the Impala that was parked at the edge of the road, but every few hours, he peeked out the window, making sure there was no trouble.
    Not that he cared.
     
     
    B ROOKE CALCULATED THAT by day three she would have enough money to buy more suitable work clothes. First, she needed a cooler shirt, because the sweater was a merino-wool blend that was causing her to wilt. In order to have money for the car, she had sold most of her clothes in Nashville. At that time, a sweater had seemed practical. Now, not so much. The Shearling boots were looking sadder by the minute and would need to be replaced, too. Brooke believed that no matter the financial hardship, it was important to look capable and confident.
    Unfortunately, the work that the Captain had given her was insultingly easy, as if she wasn’t capable of anything more. That morning, he’d handed her a sheet of paper and then indicated a knee-high pile of assorted mechanical whatsits, a tiny island in a yard of complete chaos.
    “Here. Write down everything you see.”
    “That’s an inventory, not an organizational system,” she pointed out, and he glared at her out of his one visible eye, which he probably thought was intimidating, but she thought it was more sexy pirate. She knew he wouldn’t want to hear that, so she pulled her features into some semblance of lemming-hood.
    He didn’t look fooled. “Inventorying this pile is step one. Once that’s done, we’ll talk about step two.”
    She nudged at a wheelless unicycle with her boot. “It’s going to take me fifteen minutes to do this. Why don’t you let me sort by type?” By all