Page 41 of Casual Felonies (Wildlings #1)
A little shiver races through my chest as we make it into the office area. First, Truett hasn’t mentioned that neither of us is acting like this is casual, and now he’s let Janice’s words fly without a complaint.
Don’t get your hopes up. Don’t get your hopes up. Don’t get your hopes up.
Pivoting to the freshly installed dry wall, I warn, “I might be really bad at this.”
“That’s okay. Show me what you’ve got.”
Based on the amount of laughing he’s doing, I’ve still got a ways to go.
“You’ve already figured out that if I don’t get it automatically, it takes me a while. So don’t lose patience with me.”
Truett stills beside me, his gaze intense. “Hey now, it takes as long as it takes to learn this. And I’ll never lose patience with or judge you.”
Before I can process the sweetness of his words, the side of his mouth hooks into a wicked grin. “Besides, nobody gets this good at edging by being impatient.”
I elbow him lightly. “You’re the worst.”
“No. I’m just really good at making you say my name when we’re in bed together.”
I flush, even though we’re the only ones in the office. I definitely said his name a lot this morning.
Truett, knowing I’ll get too in my head about things, proceeds to show me the proper technique for tape and float. I can see where I went wrong before and am grateful to find it isn’t all that hard. He has me tape the next two joints, then lets out a low whistle .
“You’re a fast learner when you’re not trying to moonlight as a stalker.”
I preen. “Every once in a while, I get it right.”
We may make our way around the office pretty quickly, and Janice approves of our work.
“Now it’s time to learn how to put up drywall.”
“I can show him how,” Truett says with a warm smile.
“Excellent.”
Now that I’ve actually gotten hold of the tape and float portion, putting up drywall is dead simple.
Truett and I once again fall into a rhythm and start talking—chatting, really—in a way we haven’t before. We exchange friendly banter, details about our childhood, that kind of thing, and it’s all just…easy.
A to Z.
That said, I can’t help but shed a few tears when Truett explains that he didn’t have the best childhood.
He wasn’t physically abused, exactly, but the minute his family picked up on his queerness, they collectively started ignoring him.
Sure, they always made sure his basic needs were met, but he spent most of his high school years feeling like a ghost in his own home.
I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to understand that.
I’m grateful he found an outlet in the vigilante work, and the things he’ll do for Wimberley are a natural extension of that.
He also shares that he helped local PD with an incident at the Pecan Street Festival, and sometimes passes along information to Detective Hitchens, the same detective who arrested Brantley at the gala.
“He’s sneaky,” Truett says, shaking his head. “I’m pretty sure he’s joined the WhiteHat group under this goofy name, booneyruney something-or-other, but he’s just been lurking.”
That sets off…something. “Wait. Hitchens is the camp counselor Mav was crazy about.”
“Did they…? ”
I’m quick to shake my head. “God no. Mav was like…maybe fifteen? And Hitchens was eighteen or nineteen and not at all interested.”
Truett grimaces. “Poor Mav.”
“It was the cringiest thing ever,” I say, shuddering with second-hand embarrassment. “Hell, Mav still gets flustered if one of us brings it up.”
“Seriously?”
“Oh yeah. Even better…Maverick is my cousin’s middle name. Wanna guess what his first name is?” I ask, grinning around this bit of chisme.
He shrugs. “I can’t imagine him as anything but Maverick.”
“Yeah, well…his full name is Rune Maverick Bash.”
Truett’s eyes light up. “No fucking way.”
“Two more interesting tidbits,” I say, holding up one finger, loving where this is going. “One: Hitchens has arrested Mav at least five times on super tiny infractions, like swimming in the Littlefield Fountain and jaywalking during Pride.”
“Why is a detective arresting someone on small shit like that?”
“Great question, but that’s not the best part.” I can’t help the laugh that bubbles up as I hold up the second finger. “Everyone at camp called him Hitch, but Mav’s nickname for him was Booney . Because his first name’s Boone and he’s from the boonies.”
Truett’s hands go to his mouth. “No fucking way,” he repeats, the words muffled. He puts his hands down. “So maybe something changed for the detective?”
“Maybe?” I rub my chin. “I mean…three to four years isn’t much of an age gap once you’re in your twenties. And Mav was down to his underwear when the good detective arrested him at the fountain.”
“From what I’ve seen on social media, your cousin’s pretty familiar with the gym… ”
“Hey!”
I smack True’s arm, and he brings me in for a kiss.
After several minutes of that, I pull away. “Kinda makes you wonder if he’s doing this WhiteHat thing for more than one reason.”
“You think Hitchens is trying to get Mav’s attention through me?”
I shrug. “Maybe.”
In the back of my head, I’m wondering about the detective’s endgame and whether or not I should tell Mav what I know.
Nah. I think I’ll let it play out and see where this goes.
Our conversation turns to more serious matters, and I find that I like Truett’s take on things.
“So, with everything you’ve seen in working with people who have been exploited, what do you think is the biggest barrier for them?” I ask, curious about his opinion.
His answer is swift. “Anyone who does this knows that this work is the equivalent of being tasked with shoveling out a crater full of shit with a cracked plastic fork. The biggest barrier isn’t the exploitation or even the harm.
It’s the systems that allow those things to flourish in the first place.
We’ve done a lot of work over the last twenty years, and that’s great, but it’s easy to pick out where the money is going by noting the things that aren’t better yet. ”
My mind immediately goes to the biggest, most impossible issues in this country, and I know exactly what he means.
“I’m not trying to ignore what Brantley did,” I say carefully, “but I think in his own way, he was actually trying to help. It was hard for him to get out from under his father’s thumb, but I think he was trying.”
“I can see that,” Truett says, nailing another board.
“You can see it, but…”
He stares at the seam in front of him for a moment, then continues putting up boards.
“ But ,” he finally says, “the vast majority of truly wealthy people couldn’t have gotten to where they are without harming innocent people.
Without paying unlivable wages. Without forcing people to work in unsafe conditions. ”
“And they don’t have the impetus to make the situation better.”
“Exactly. And maybe if we had some homeostasis, if things never got worse than they are right now, maybe we could come up with good ways to get around the bullshit. But in order to sustain these practices, the systems are forced to make it worse and worse and worse. And that shit only ever rolls downhill.”
“I’ll just never understand that mentality,” I say, nailing my own board.
“That’s because you were raised by people who didn’t gain their money from fucking over poor people.
They got very, very rich from fucking over the wealthy .
A number of the systemic changes we’ve seen over the last twenty years have a direct correlation with some of the horrible people the Wimberley team has taken off the map, not to mention those they menaced into cooperation. ”
“Maybe that’s why I don’t like being called a trust-fund baby,” I admit. “Obviously, I am. But…I don’t view myself as one of them. At least not intentionally.”
“Based on what some of your uncles have done with their money, you’ve got solid examples of how to use wealth to prevent harm. But with the kind of access you have? It’d be just as easy to hurt people without meaning to.”
He’s right. A lot’s changed in the last twenty years, and some of what worked for my uncles back then doesn’t hold up anymore—not in a world run by quantum tech and predictive systems.
“It’s evolving,” he says as we finalize the last boards. “But I think being aware is job one.”
That rush of feeling in my chest returns. I understand why he was so afraid of my fathers, why he thought he had to push me away. But as we continue to get to know each other, I hope to prove to him that I’m committed to being a net positive in the world.
Maybe more importantly, I hope to prove that to myself.
“You ready for lunch?” he asks, interrupting my thoughts.
I kiss him on the lips. “Yeah, I could eat.”