Page 21 of Cold Foot Sentry (Wreck’s Mountains #6)

Yeah, he’d come back, but not to see Tammy. Not really.

There was one loose end he couldn’t wrap his head around leaving untied.

The auto parts store was connected to a shopping center, and the parking lot was full, so Tawk had to park down the street and walk up.

He’d almost reached it when he heard someone call his name.

Well, it wasn’t really his name. Some dude had called out, “Hey, Asshole,” and Tawk had just known he was talking to him.

When he swung his gaze over his shoulder, the guy who had been posting the rental flyers was jogging to catch up with him.

“Hey,” he muttered a greeting, half-wary that the guy was going to throw a punch or something. He’d been hard to read when he’d seen him in that bar the day he’d met Tammy.

“I thought you left,” the guy said as he came to stand in front of him.

He rested his hands on his hips and looked around, breathing heavily.

“I’m just realizing I need to focus more on cardio and less on weights,” he huffed out.

“You walk really fast. Whoa dude, look at your eyes. Red, huh? You look evil AF.”

“AF?” Tawk asked, confused.

“As fuck. You look evil as fuck.”

Tawk pulled his sunglasses off the neck of his shirt and slid them on. “Who are you again?”

“Dylan. Hoffman. I’m Garret’s brother.” He waited there, smiling an empty look. “Garret is the one you’re renting the house from?”

“I know who Garret is.” Tawk twitched his chin toward the auto parts store. “I have an errand.” He turned and walked away, and to his eternal annoyance, Dylan followed at a fast clip.

“Hey, do you want to grab a quick drink?”

“I like chicks,” Tawk said without turning around.

“Not like a date, fucker. I was headed to that bar right there when I saw you. I was supposed to have a lunch date, but the girl cancelled last minute.”

Tawk didn’t know why he did it, but he halted. Normally, he wasn’t a question-asker because he didn’t give a shit about other people’s lives, but something inside of him was curious. “Why did she cancel?”

“Aw, I met her on some online dating site. I guess she was talking to other guys too. She said she’s in a relationship now.”

“What the hell? But she was talking to you?”

“Dragging me along, man. I was kind of…” Dylan cast a look at the bar behind him and then shrugged.

“Kind of what?”

“Excited. She seemed cool. We talked for a couple weeks so I was kind of invested. I was already in the parking lot when she cancelled, and I thought about just leaving, but then I saw you.” Dylan cocked his head and narrowed his blue eyes. “Do you believe things happen for a reason?”

“No.”

“Fair enough. I’ll buy you a cheeseburger and a beer.”

At that inopportune moment, Tawk’s stomach growled. He hadn’t eaten a bite of anything since Jess had fed him whatever fucked up power she’d exerted to manipulate his reality, but a cheeseburger sounded good about now.

Tawk inhaled deeply and then gestured to the entrance of the bar. “Let’s go.

“Boom,” Dylan said, clapping his hands once. “Date with a dragon.”

“I will leave right now.”

“I’m kidding, geez. Don’t get so sensitive. Let’s make pet names for each other. I’ll call you Evil Eyes, and what would you call me?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

Dylan stood there opening the door for him with a blank grin frozen onto his face. “I like it.”

Tawk ripped him away from the door and shoved him toward the parking lot before he let it swing closed and let himself in. Dylan was not holding a door for him. He shut the door firmly behind him so Dylan wouldn’t think he was holding the damn thing open for him.

“Rude,” Dylan announced as he pried the door open.

Tawk made his way directly to the bar and sat down. When Dylan tried to sit right beside him, he pointed to a seat one chair down.

“Fine,” Dylan muttered, leaving an empty seat between them.

The bartender wasn’t busy, so they ordered food and drinks, and basically had this place to themselves.

“Maybe your lady found another man because you were bringing her to a dive bar for your first date,” Tawk said.

“The bar was her idea. She’s a local girl. She said this place has the best peanuts.”

Tawk stared at him. “She based her date preferences on the quality of peanuts?”

Dylan pursed his lips. “I thought it was weird too.”

“Take the next one to a steakhouse.”

“Chhh, what next one? I’m not a big dater.”

“Why not?”

Dylan scooped a cup of peanuts out of a silver bucket beside him and slid the cup over to Tawk, then grabbed one for himself.

“My life has revolved around my brother for a while. He needed some help. I was dating a lady back where we come from, but Garret got Turned into his freaking grizzly, and he had no help, no guidance. He didn’t even know what he was doing for a while, so we moved out here where he could travel out to the wilderness easily, and Change when he needed to. ”

“What happened with the lady?” Why did Tawk care about any of this? This was so strange. Why was he asking questions and encouraging conversation?

“I held on for a couple weeks, but long distance isn’t my thing, and it wasn’t her thing either. We weren’t invested enough to try to make it work. It wasn’t deep enough, you know?”

A couple weeks ago, he would’ve said, ‘no,’ but now, he did understand deeply. He was having trouble even dragging himself away from Tammy.

“So, you’re ready to date again?”

Dylan busied himself by removing shells off peanuts. “Garret’s good now. He has a Crew, and he’s got Raynah, and a baby, and he’s just…solid. I’m not really needed anymore.”

There was a tinge of sadness that clung to his tone, and Tawk tried to see it from his side. He’d come here for his brother, let go of a relationship, uprooted his whole life, and for a while, it had just been him and Garret, but now? “You feel like an outsider?”

Dylan nodded slowly. “I’m an outsider, like Tammy.

Like you. The Cold Foot Crew is tight-knit.

Don’t get me wrong, they include me. They include Tammy where they can too, but the Crew are like planets.

They orbit each other and never separate.

I’m just a fuckin’ shooting star man. I’ll always be on the outside.

I have to build my life outside of my brother now and I don’t really know where to start.

My focus has been on him for so long. I don’t even remember who the hell I am outside of that. ”

“I don’t know who I am either,” Tawk said low. Why he’d said that, he didn’t know. He clamped his mouth shut and frowned, surprised at himself.

“I could tell,” Dylan said.

“What do you mean?”

“The day me and Tammy saw you at the bar, you were sitting there making the whole damn place feel like it weighed a million pounds, looking for a place to live temporarily. You didn’t speak easily. You seemed so shut down.” Dylan shrugged. “I heard a rumor.”

“What rumor?” he asked as the bartender set a pair of beers in front of him and Dylan.

“Tammy got to you.” Dylan dragged his blue gaze from his work de-shelling peanuts to Tawk. “The Cold Foot Crew was talking about it. Talking about whether to let you stay or not, and Tammy was brought up a few times. She’s awesome, huh?”

Tawk wasn’t ready to expose his feelings about Tammy. Maybe he never would be. It was just for him. It was his treasure.

“Girls are a lot of work,” he told Dylan. “Maybe it’s…what did you say earlier? Everything happens for a reason. Maybe she would’ve slowed you down on figuring out who you are outside of your brother.”

“The right one will speed up the process,” Dylan said.

“How do you mean?”

“I’ve watched Raynah love my brother’s imperfections and call him out in the exact way he can hear and understand.

I could say the same shit to him, but he can hear her.

I’ve watched him grow under her care, and now it’s me looking up to him.

It happens to all the Cold Footers. They pair up and they improve.

They grow. They’re like these dormant, dry plants, and they find a mate, and they’re the water.

They’re the sunlight. I don’t know if it works for humans, but I want that.

” Dylan looked up at him again. “Don’t you want that? ”

Tawk held his gaze. Part of him understood. Part of him respected this human’s intelligence, but a bigger part of him was angry that he could see Tawk.

“I don’t want anything that would drag a woman to being a dormant, dry plant. I am no water. I am no sun.”

Dylan nodded as if he understood. “I saw you.”

Tawk waited, busying himself with the peanuts.

“I saw you yesterday, at Tammy’s graduation. You were standing off to the side with a hat pulled low and sunglasses covering your face, but I saw you.”

Tawk inhaled deeply and leaned back in his chair, checked his escape route over his shoulder. Ten big strides and he could be out in the open air and far away from this damn conversation.

“I was there at her graduation lunch afterward,” Dylan murmured. “Do you want to know how many times she checked the door.”

“Stop.”

“Twenty-eight. I counted.”

“I said stop.”

“If you aren’t sunlight, why was she looking so hard for you?

” Dylan asked, his eyes cool on Tawk. “Why did she get quiet every time the Crew wasn’t paying attention.

Why did she excuse herself to the bathroom four times just to get space to breathe?

Why did two of those times, she end up out back sucking air in an alleyway like she was going to panic? Why were there tears in her eyes?”

“I said stop!” Tawk barked, slamming his fist on the bar top.

“Whatever you are trying to protect her from, you forgot one thing,” Dylan said low.

Tawk’s heartbeat was hammering against his chest. He wanted to throttle this guy.

“You forgot to ask her if you were the sunlight or not.”

“Keep your poetic garbage to yourself.”

“Chhh, if I had a woman like Tammy putting on a brave face while she was quietly breaking just because I wasn’t there, I’d marry her.”