Free ROYAL by Winter Renshaw Page B

my head. Don’t have time for this shit. “Don’t, Pandora.”
    I really need a new fucking job.

 

Chapter Ten

 
    Royal

 
    It’s a thirty-minute drive from Patterson Auto Body to my
apartment in Glidden, and it just so happens that Rixton Falls is the halfway
point.
    I take a detour toward Demi’s neighborhood and rest at a
stop sign a minute too long. It’s just past dusk. She could still be at the
hospital for all I know, but she knows my car now. No more drive-bys. No more
watching like some fucking loser creep.
    It’s probably all for the best anyway.
    I need to move on. Clearly she did.
    The honk of a horn behind me prompts my foot to gun the gas,
and I charge straight ahead, down Demi’s Better
Homes and Gardens street.
    Her porch lights shine, and her car is parked in the driveway,
taillights glowing red then fading to dark.
    Fuck.
    I stop down the street and wait as she exits her Subaru and
heads inside. Forecast is calling for more snow tonight. It’s a shame she can’t
park in the garage. Last I knew, it was full of all Brooks’s “toys.”
    Part of me wants to leave and come back another time. Give
her more space. I shouldn’t have shown up last night out of the blue, but I
couldn’t stand back and watch her suffer.
    Not again.
    Things were tolerable when I thought she was happy. She
smiled a lot, at least from what I could tell. I’d check her social media sites
from time to time. She seemed to love him enough. I stayed away, figuring she’d
moved on long ago.
    And then I learned what kind of fucking asshole Brooks
Abbott truly is.
    Demi deserves better.
    I had to intervene.
    I just didn’t know Brooks would be paying for his mistakes
with his life.
    I punch the steering wheel, drag my hands through my hair,
and pull up to her house. By the time I’m knocking on her door, everything’s a
blur and I can’t breathe.
    “I figured you’d stop by again,” she says when she answers
the door. I catch my breath when I see her face and those calming blue eyes of
hers. “Didn’t know it’d be so soon.”
    I stand at her front door in gray work pants, greasy boots,
and a plain white t-shirt. I smell like oil and paint thinner. I look like
shit.
    “Can I come in?” I ask.
    Demi’s cheek presses against the door, and her shoulders
rise and fall.
    “Yeah.” She swings the door wide. “But only because I want
some answers.”
    “Expectations can be dangerous.”
    “Not as dangerous as letting you back into my life, Royal.”
    I smirk. I deserved that.
    Removing my shoes, I glance into her pristine living room.
No way in hell I’m stepping foot in there in my work clothes.
    “You bring Brooks’s pants back?” She lifts a brow.
    “Nope. Threw ‘em away.”
    Her jaw falls. “W-why would you do that?”
    “Have my reasons.”
    Demi’s arms fold, her hips angled as we stand across from
one another in her foyer.
    “We can go to the kitchen, I guess.” She shuffles toward the
table in the breakfast nook, the one piece of furniture in that entire room not
covered in white. “I don’t know if it’s a territorial thing or what, but you
can’t just throw people’s things away.”
    “Territorial? What am I, a junkyard dog?”
    “I didn’t mean it like that.”
    We sit across from each other, separated by some frilly
little centerpiece filled with fresh flowers in bright shades that contrast
everything around us. I move them aside so I can see her face unobstructed.
    “Okay.” Demi sighs. “You have my attention. Now tell me,
Royal. Why the hell did you walk out seven years ago and never come back?”
    I’ve replayed the events of that weekend a thousand times,
each time asking myself how I’d do it differently.
    I thought I was doing the right thing at the time.
    I thought I was helping someone who desperately needed my
help.
    I never expected it all to blow up in my face, to create
some kind of butterfly effect, to completely change the trajectory of our
futures.
    “We