Page 97 of Almost Beautiful (Beautiful 3)

I put my phone away, put on my helmet and revved the Harley’s engine, taking off down the street to the gas station on the next block. At least there’d be air conditioning and I could talk to Pidge without dying of heat stroke and anger.

I parked and went inside, buying a liter of cold bottled water and then slipped into the men’s restroom to call my wife. The soles of my trainers stuck to the floor as I checked the stalls. Empty. I dialed her number, staring at myself in the mirror while it rang.

She took so long to answer I was expecting voicemail to pick up, but soon her soft, comforting voice was on the other end of the line. “Hi, baby.”

“Hey,” I said, exhaling. All of my muscles relaxed, and for the first time I could feel the relief of the air conditioning.

“Uh oh. What’s wrong? Trent okay?”

“Trent’s fine. Brandon just popped off and I’m trying not to kill him. He asked us to dinner and then said he liked college girls.”

She thought for a second. “Well, we can make endless excuses for why we can’t go.”

“I might’ve let it slip that I work late every night this week. I wouldn’t put it past him to stop by.”

“I won’t answer the door.”

I smiled, looking down. “That’s my girl. You always have a solution.”

“He’s a dick, but you don’t have to worry about him, Travis. There is not one reason why I would ever be alone with him. He’s not that stupid, anyway.”

“I don’t know. He said something else.”

“Like what?”

“He was asking about the fire. He said he was playing poker with Parker, who mentioned the fire.”

“And?”

“He said Parker was hoping I’d get ratted out because he’s too big of a pussy to do it himself.”

Abby grew quiet.

“They’ve already written that piece to clear you, complete with quotes from people saying you weren’t there.”

“You never said how that all went down,” I said.

She was quiet again.

I closed my eyes tight, leaning my back against the wall. “Please tell me it has nothing to do with Parker.”

“What? No! Hell no, Travis.”

“So how did you get them to do all that with just owing you money?”

“Well …”

“What did you do, Pidge?”

“There was a guy there. Collin … something.”

“Vanderberg. Parker’s dad is basically the Wish version of Collin’s dad. He runs a lot of shit in this state.”

“Well, he recognized me, and knew who my dad was. He’s actually not bad at poker,” she said, lost in thought.

I frowned.

“So,” she continued, “I might’ve explained to Ricky and Justin who my dad was. You know, who he associates with. They owed me alotof money, Trav. They know who I was raised around. Collin actually planted the seed. Which was kind of accidental genius on his part, but that’s beside the point. They’re too scared to say anything again.”