Page 33 of Hideaway Whirlwind (Big Boys of Berenson Trucking #4)

I crawl in beside my babies, back to sharing one bed—my choice, since I wanted them close tonight.

It’s yet another reason why we need to get our own place as soon as possible, where I can give them a stable home, a solid routine they can rely on, and where we can all relax without other people watching our every move.

Someplace like the cabin , I think, right before my exhaustion wins, and I fall into a nightmare.

Elliott

From my perch on the edge of the loading dock during my fifteen-minute break, I watch my old rig take a left out of the parking lot and disappear over the hill.

My former home on the road has been stripped, scrubbed, and repacked with everything Vaughn—one of the seasoned truckers who recently moved to town—will need for the next five weeks, now that he’s taking over my old routes.

I can’t say I’m necessarily sad to see it go, like I thought I would be. Now that I’m on the other side of things with my semi-forced retirement, I view my rig as the self-imposed prison cell I’d made it out to be, voluntarily locking myself away from the general population for nearly half my life.

And I’d do it all again. For Birdie and Dustin and Sydney and Kendall and the little one.

I lean on a hip to pull my phone from my pocket for the millionth time.

The text bubble with the three dots is still there from last night, and I want so badly to know what Birdie was going to say.

Her last text message, asking me to come back, wasn’t some grandiose declaration of love or anything, but it’s possibly the start of her choosing me, I foolishly hope.

So, I’m determined to give her the space she needs and let her take the lead.

“Need to speak to you in my office,” Russell says from behind. Time to get my ass chewed out by the boss, it seems.

I grunt, my muscles shaking and protesting as I rise.

I punished myself for hours last night for what I did, digging holes in the hard-packed earth for some things that needed burying, my hands blistered and bleeding.

Then I moved on to flipping the tractor tire over and over until my legs gave out and I could no longer stand.

I did one punishing exercise after another until failure, then had to crawl up my front steps on my hands and knees, where I collapsed on the living room floor because I couldn’t make it to my bedroom.

Maybe it wasn’t the best choice, given that today is the first day back at work since the freeze.

With a mountain of delayed deliveries to be made, every employee not out on the road is here, coordinating schedules, prepping trailers, and moving pallets.

It’s all hands on deck, and mine are useless right now, much like the rest of me.

Russell’s been watching me all morning as if wary of what I might be planning.

My brother stood stoically by my side during my trial and sentencing when I was one hundred percent guilty of murdering a man.

And yet, not at any time did he look at me then as he does now when I take a seat on one of the two folding metal chairs in his office that reeks of coffee and diesel fumes.

Russell’s office chair creaks when he sits behind his desk and drums his fingers on a stack of invoices.

We’re in a standoff, staring at each other while waiting for the other to speak first. I’ll win.

I’ll always win, and by the set of his square jaw, he knows it too.

That’s why he’s so relieved when the door that connects his office to the warehouse swings open and Davis, whom I’ve been studiously avoiding, strides in.

I lunge out of my seat.

“Sit the fudge down, Elliott,” Russell barks, pointing at my chair.

I do, but only because I owe my brother everything. He’s the one who paid for my lawyer and rallied on my behalf for years, pulling every string he could to get me released from prison early, then gave me a job when no one else would consider hiring an ex-con, let alone the County Sheriff’s Office.

“Tell him,” Russell says to Davis.

Feeling caged in between them, I roll my shoulders, hoping they’ll loosen up and cooperate if I need to deck Davis in the face for whatever he’s about to say. A blister along the webbing between my right thumb and index finger pops beneath a bandage when I clench my fists.

“It’s about Goldie.” Davis moves stiffly when he takes the metal chair beside me, twisting it around to straddle it backward.

“So, you’re not about to rip me a new asshole?” I ask, not nearly as tense and ready for a fight when Davis takes his navy ball cap off and slides a hand through his floppy hair.

“No. Though you do owe me a new kitchen chair and hinges for the bathroom door.” Davis crosses his arms on top of the seat back, a hint of a grin tugging up the corner of his mouth.

“I’d be just as fucked in the head over Goldie if I were in your shoes.

” He gets me, even if he doesn’t like it, what with him and his wife stuck in the middle.

“But, you’re stressing my woman out. Her sleep has gone to shit because she’s on edge all the time, worrying about you and Teagan, and with Rowan keeping us up at all hours of the night still, I can’t have that. ”

Selfish, selfish, selfish . I hadn’t really considered how this would affect Davis’s family. While I don’t give a fuck about stressing the men out, considering they’ve all done the same when they were in the throes of their whirlwinds, the women are off limits.

Davis scratches his scruffy chin, leaving behind a streak of black grease. “So, no more creeping around our house, you hear me?”

“I already told Layla I’d stop,” I say, rubbing the back of my neck, though I haven’t quite figured out how I’ll accomplish that.

Russell gives a low grumble. He’s no doubt been given a play-by-play of our conversation when he came to pick Layla up at my place.

“Fuck you, Russell,” I snap impulsively, regretting the immature lash-out the second it leaves my mouth.

“Me?” Russell points to himself. “What did I do?”

“Whatever the fuck you wanted,” I say, instead of apologizing like I probably should, leaning forward in my chair with my elbows on my knees. “No one gave you shit for stalking Layla, least of all me.”

“You’re forgetting one very important detail,” he says, though he gives me a nod in acknowledgment of all the ways I’ve helped him, legal and otherwise, my point made.

“And what’s that?” I ask.

“No one knew I was doing it. And when Layla did find out, she thanked me for it,” he says with a small smirk. “Teagan, on the other hand…”

Since I don’t need the men seeing the tears building behind my eyes at the reminder that Birdie hasn’t chosen me, I stand up fast, causing my chair to tip backward before it crashes forward on all four legs. “Break time’s over.”

“One last thing,” Russell says quickly when I swing open the side door. “The welcome party got pushed back to tonight.”

I perk up, turning to look over my shoulder.

Russell pulls the collar of his heather gray T-shirt away from his neck, clearly uncomfortable, and I brace for the pain he’s about to deliver when he says, “Everyone agrees it would be best if you weren’t there.”

“Stick a fucking knife in my back, brother. It’d hurt less,” I say, storming away from his office.

“Elliott!” Russell shouts from behind.

“I’m taking lunch!” I yell without stopping, passing several coworkers who are either gaping or trying to get my attention. I jump off the dock, and in less than two minutes, I’m in my Bronco and speeding out of the employee parking lot .

Since my body can’t take another grueling workout, I bring up my tattoo artist’s phone number. Christian picks up on the third ring, some kind of new country-rock mix playing in the background.

Instead of saying hello, I tell him, “I need to move up my appointment.” I’d scheduled it for a week out from yesterday, but there’s no way I can tolerate the buzzing under my skin for that long without wanting to peel it off with a dull knife. I need the soothing burn of the needle.

“How soon are we talking?” he asks in his deep baritone.

“Right now.”

Christian chuckles, not at all put out by my gruff attitude and short response. He’s used to it. “I’m with a client, but come by the shop around three. I should be done by then.”

I grunt my thanks and keep it together long enough to get home, but as soon as I make it inside, all hell breaks loose.

My long-familiar static explodes in my head, blotting out every good thing in my life—of which there’s hardly any left.

Birdie still hasn’t texted, the man from Wichita is coming down to pick up Storm in a week, my brother thinks I’m a loose nut or a liability and doesn’t want me around, and I’ve hurt just about everyone I care about in some way or another.

I curl on my side in the spare bedroom, needing another dose of Birdie’s scent on her pillowcase that I won’t ever be able to bring myself to wash.

Storm isn’t allowed on the bed, yet when she jumps up onto the mattress, I don’t command her to get off.

She turns in circles until she finds a comfortable position and drops against my chest, licking my wet face.

When the puppies yip from the floor, I roll over to scoop them up to join us.

Stroking their silky ears doesn’t help as much as slipping my hands into Birdie’s hair would, but it’ll have to be enough. It just has to be.

* * *

Christian’s girlfriend and tattoo shop receptionist, Ms. Judy, points to the gold frame hanging on the blood-red painted wall.

“I still can’t believe that’s you, Elliott.

” It’s a side-by-side portrait of Christian’s work on my chest and back with my head cropped out for anonymity.

“He wouldn’t tell me who it was,” she says, her graying dark blonde ponytail swishing when she shakes her head and gives Christian a naughty-you look. She giggles when he blows her a kiss.

To be polite, when Christian takes a break to pull his chin-length black twists back from his face with a hair tie, I ask Ms. Judy about her daughter. “How is Dolly? I haven’t seen her in a few weeks.”

“Oh, she’s doing amazing.” Ms. Judy plucks a photograph taped to her computer and brings it to where I’m laid out on a padded table.

“She and Wyatt finished building the extension for the in-home daycare she wants to open up now that she’s graduated with her ECE degree. I couldn’t be prouder of my girl.”

The photograph is of Ms. Judy, Christian, and Christian’s father, Old Freddy; Dolly, Wyatt, and Wyatt’s mama, Ms. Ellie; and their two shared grandsons, William and Weston, standing in front of Dolly and Wyatt’s green-painted wooden house, not too far from Davis’s place.

They all have their hands thrown in the air, celebrating the new addition, each wearing a smile broader than the last.

I clear my throat, having to look away from the big, happy family.

Ms. Judy is yet another person living the kind of life I’ve always wanted.

One that I don’t know I’ll ever have. Though with Ms. Judy and Christian having found each other after her hellish twenty years with her ex-husband, it gives me a smidgen of hope that Birdie might ever come around and choose me.

Not that she should, as everyone apparently agrees.

“Changed my mind,” I tell Christian when he snaps on a new pair of sterile gloves, needing more physical pain to drown out the mental. “Add the trees in the background.”

“Shit, man, you sure?” Christian leans back on his rolling stool and studies me, his brows furrowing.

It’s like looking back in time when I was a kid and my dad worked at Old Freddy’s mechanic shop.

Freddy was the bright spot in my childhood—the one who got me into restoration in the first place—after my mama died and Dad became a living ghost ‘til he passed too.

“I’m sure,” I say, scooting down the table to get more comfortable, my neck already swollen and about to take another beating.

“You don’t want to take a couple of weeks to think it over? Come back when everything’s healed?”

“No. Now,” I grunt, instantly reminded of Birdie and every time she demanded now of me.

Christian shakes his head, but he goes ahead and refills the ink caps on his metallic tattoo tray. Ms. Judy taps and squeezes my arm before she returns to the receptionist desk, lightly drawing her fingertips down the photograph with a more subdued smile.