Cops & Robbers

Chapter Seventeen

Later that afternoon when I woke up, it was to the soft sound of Ben snoring. One arm was folded beneath his head while the other rested on my arm. No longer caught up in the past, I found our closeness more than mildly uncomfortable. I carefully shrugged out of his unconsciously innocent hold, slowly scooting down until I could safely slide over the arm of the couch without waking him. Almost immediately after I got off he rolled over onto his side.

I tiptoed out of the living room and down the hall to the bedroom so I could change. Swiping my keys, I snuck out the back door and circled around to the garage so I wouldn’t accidentally wake him up. Old Faithful started with a bang and I groaned knowing that Vitor would probably tell me to junk her. The only thing was that I didn’t want to because she was just so… faithful.

Though the reason for my visit was vehicle related, I couldn’t keep my mind off of the rapidly worsening mess that was my life. I’d broken the number one rule: Don’t shit where you sleep. On a scale of one to ten, one being minimal poo and ten being enough poo to fertilize a field, I’d rate myself an eleven. It was to the point where I wasn’t even sure if Vitor would tell me to get the hell off of his property because I was a big part of his sister’s unhappiness with Alex.

With that thought in mind, I sat in front of Vitor’s place for a good ten minutes before I decided I should either crap on the pot or get off it. He was to my disappointment, the first person I encountered upon getting out of my truck.

“Hey Adrienne.”

His voice held no anger, no spite or any other variation of hostility and I sighed in relief.

“Hey Vitor.”

“I hope you’re here because you heard about our latest job and not because you want me to work on that piece of scrap metal.”

I frowned for two reasons, the first being that I hadn’t heard about the job and second because I knew he would give me a hard time about Old Faithful.

“Is the rest of the crew inside?”

“Well Tasha and Alex aren’t here yet, but I imagine they’ll get here soon. You know how they are.” He winked at me suggestively and my stomach turned. Vitor obviously wasn’t up to speed on the latest development, and instead of fixing it, I took the coward’s way out and ignored his last sentence.

“Okay, I’ll be hanging out in the living room until then.”

He waived me away as he took my keys from me and I strode past him to walk through the open door that connected his garage to his house. I didn’t even make it past the bedroom that served as an office before I ran into the man that I’d been avoiding like the plague: Daniel.

When he only looked surprised instead of angry when he saw me, I planned to greet him, figuring it wouldn’t hurt to try and salvage as many of my friendships as I could. Just because I planned to swear off men for the next great while didn’t mean I couldn’t remain friends with them.

He cut off my attempt at greeting him with, “Can we talk? In private?”

Glancing around the empty room, I laughed. It couldn’t get any emptier. I continued to chuckle right up until he kissed me. His hands moved up and down my body before finally settling on either side of my face. At first I was too shocked to do anything other than let him, but the shock quickly faded to give way to a very mild case of lust. His tongue lacked the urgency it usually had, but overall it was a very satisfying kiss. He eventually pulled away to look into my eyes while his hands gently held my face.

“Well hello to you too. If I’d known you meant that kind of talking, I wouldn’t have laughed at your request for privacy in an already empty room.”