There was something about Jayce I couldn’t shake. He was more than just a rebound, I now realized. He was filling the hole in my chest left by Scott, but not as a replacement. As something better. Something that fit the way it wassupposedto.
Now I just have to finish my community service and get out of this town alive.
I finally got out of bed and went to the bathroom to pee. I wondered how many hours of community service Jayce still had. He’d never actually told me. Probably a lot. And all of this was assuming the corrupt sheriff didn’t pin another random crime on him.
But he’s not staying just because of that, I thought.He wants revenge for his sister.
It was confusing having feelings for a man who expected to die, and was willing to die, to get revenge. I didn’t know how I felt about that. I didn’t know how Ishouldfeel about that.
The water of the shower was hot and relaxing compared to the rain pouring down outside. I examined his bottle of shampoo—a brand called Aussie, which came in a stout purple bottle—and decided to wash my own hair with it. The suds smelled like fruit and flowers.
Thunder shook the barn as I dried myself off with one of Jayce’s incredibly soft towels. That was something that made me smile: a hard biker on the outside, but soft towels and fruity shampoo in the privacy of his barn. Some men were more than what they appeared to be.
My clothes were still damp from the rain, so I hung them up on the closet door to dry. With one towel wrapped around my body and another around my hair, I decided to explore the barn Jayce called a home. The closet was a single rack of shirts and jackets, with a tall hamper for dirty clothes on the ground. The laminate floors weren’t cheap; they looked like real hardwood planks to the untrained eye. I loved the way he’d strung lights across the rafters above, filling the huge space with amber light without being too bright. I’d already seen the bathroom, so I walked past it into a room that was divided away from everything else by a sliding door.
It was a workshop area that smelled strongly of grease and acrid smoke. The floor was concrete instead of wood, and a steel workbench covered with tools took up one long wall. Cylindrical oxygen tanks were stacked horizontally on a rack underneath the workbench. Wall hooks held a welding mask, work gloves thicker than oven mitts, and a split-leather apron. A torch device on the end of a rubber hose was coiled next to that.
I was confused about what I was looking at until I turned to the other side of the workshop. Open-top barrels held long pieces of metal, like rebar without the ribbing. Each barrel held a different thickness of metal, some as thin as spaghetti and others as thick as baseball bats.
Next to the barrels was a piece of art made from the metal.
It was a humanoid figure, standing on two legs and with a trapezoidal torso. Its bony arms and spider-like fingers were clasped in front of it like a figure in prayer, and the metal face was tilted back to stare at the roof of the barn.
It was one of the pieces of art I’d seen around town!
“Well look who has some secrets,” I said to myself while running my fingers along the joints. Imagining Jayce as an artistic man, bent over his work like Michelangelo chiseling marble, made me giggle. I couldn’t wait to tease him about it later.
As if that wasn’t enough embarrassing ammunition, there was a framed certificate on the wall above one of the work benches:
Certificate of Membership
American Welding Society (AWS) Certifies that
JAYCE SIMONE HAWKINS
Is hereby designated an Affiliate Member
January 2013
“JayceSimoneHawkins,” I read out loud, grinning to myself. I was going to give him so much crap for this.
In the other room, my phone rang. Thinking that it might be Jayce, I ran to get it. I was already thinking of a bunch of ways to tease him about his first name. But it wasn’t him.
“Hi, Momma,” I said. “Do you mind if I call you back? I’m in the middle of something.”
“Sweet pea!”she said over me. “I’ve got some good news. Your father talked to more of his old sheriff contacts.”
“Momma, he didn’t have to…”
“He found someone who might be able to talk to the Eastland judge and get the rest of your hours waved! Isn’t that amazing?”
I winced. After what I knew now, the last thing I wanted was my dad sticking his neck into this corrupt town.
“Charlotte? Are you there?”
“Is that a good idea?” I said carefully. “I don’t want Dad upsetting the wrong people on my account. It could be dangerous.”
“What do you mean, the wrong people? Your father’s a former sheriff. How would he be in danger?”