Page 30 of Forever After Fall

“Whose truck is that? Looks too shiny to be yours.” I tease him.

“Yours.”

“Ha. Very funny. Glad you had your hat on, or I would have kept driving. Assumed you were a serial killer who’d stolen Anson’s phone.”

“Might be. Anson’s not here tonight, remember?” He flashes me a smile. “I just gotta plug in the code for the gate. I’ll let us in, and then I have to shut it again.”

“Where are we?”

“Some land that Grant owns. Nothing serial killer-y to worry about.”

“I mean, if it’s Grant, that means it’s something untoward.” Grant is Hazel’s brother-in-law and Dakota’s husband. He runs the Avarice casino and resort along with one of his brothers. It’s not exactly a secret in this town that he spends a lot of time with very rich folks with criminal underpinnings. A few people even insist he’s in the mob. I’ve never pried into the details. I’m a mind-my-own-business kind of person, but I’m also not completely clueless either.

“I thought you liked untoward?” Anson gives me another devilish grin and then heads for the gate.

I follow him through, and once he shuts it again, he takes me down a long and winding road through the forest that eventually brings us to a switchback just wide enough for the trucks. The top of which is a rocky outcropping with one hell of a view that breaks over the trees. With the sun setting in the distance, it looks practically magical up here.

“Wow,” I whisper to myself as I step out of my truck, neatly tucked in the spot next to his between two boulders.

“Nice, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think nice covers it. I’m normally not jealous of his kind of money, but sometimes it does seem to buy happiness.” I glance back at Anson.

“I don’t know if it buys happiness, but it can certainly make it easier to come by some peace of mind.” Something flashes across his face, and then he looks back at me, smiling. “I’ve got a couple of things for you.”

“For me?”

He nods, opening the passenger door of the shiny new truck, and pulls out a set of keys and a massive rock. He holds one out in each hand.

“What’s this?” I ask, puzzled by the offer he’s making.

“Keys and how we’re getting rid of that truck.” He nods over my shoulder.

“Getting rid of my truck?”

“Is it yours? Really yours? If you love it, I won’t argue with you about getting rid of it. But I feel like I can make some pretty compelling arguments for ditching it.”

“I’ve just started making some pretty decent memories in it though,” I tease him, a small smirk spreading on my lips as he looks me over. He answers it with one of his own.

“We can keep those and get rid of the rest.”

“How do you figure?”

He pulls a knife out of his back pocket, flicks the blade free, and walks toward the truck.

“Do I have your permission to retire it or do you really love it that much?” he asks before he opens the door.

I hesitate. It’s a piece of shit. It reminds me of another pile of it that’s currently locked behind bars. But it’s mine, and at the moment, I don’t have a lot to my name.

“I need a car to drive that isn’t Mom’s.”

“I’ve got you.”

“Then okay. I can let it go. I don’t love it. Not sure I ever did.”

Anson knows I’m talking about more than the truck now. He takes that permission and runs with it, stabbing the knife into the leather and cutting a rectangle out of the center of the bench, sawing away until he’s freed it from the seat. My eyes go wide as he pulls out his trophy.

“I figure we’d better frame that. For the memories, of course.”