Page 17 of Holding On To Good

“It’s not funny,” Miles said.

She sipped her coffee. “Guess you had to be there.”

His expression turned thoughtful. “That’s not a bad idea. I’ll stop by the lake tonight. And I’ll make sure more patrols are out there this summer. Wouldn’t want any of my officers to miss a good time.”

Verity slowly lowered her cup. “You wouldn’t.”

But she already knew he would. Worse? He’d enjoy it. He got a kick out of flashing his badge and waving his gun—metaphorically speaking. He’d love nothing more than busting her and her friends for real.

All the best parties happened at the lake. Always had. Always would. Miles himself probably went to his fair share when he’d been her age.

He was such a hypocrite.

“If I was a boy,” she said, “you wouldn’t even have a problem with this. You’d probably slap me on the back and give me a box of condoms and a twelve-pack of Keystone Light to get the night started.”

Miles leaped over to cover Ian’s ears. “Jesus, Verity.”

“I know what condoms are,” Ian said, pulling Miles’s hands away.

Kat sent him a frown over her coffee cup. “You do?”

He nodded. Of course he did. Sometimes it was like he was a forty-year-old in a seven-year-old’s body. “Nigel’s dad has a box in his bathroom. They’re balloons men put on their penises during sex so they don’t make a baby.” Ian scratched the side of his nose. “Nigel says his mom makes his dad wear them but what she really wants is for him to get his penis cut off.”

Verity’s brothers all went white. Blood just… whoosh… drained away.

Served them right.

Lips twitching, Kat cleared her throat. “Nigel is, as always, a wealth of information. But I think what his mom wants is for his dad to get something called a vasectomy. They don’t actually cut off the penis.”

Ian shrugged, already over the subject. “Can I flip the pancakes?”

And sometimes, he was just a seven-year-old with bedhead in a pair of Star Wars pajamas.

“Sure,” Toby told him. “Let’s get a chair.”

“Can we get back to me?” Verity asked. “And how I’m being discriminated against because I’m a female?”

“It’s not discrimination,” Miles said. “It’s us trying to keep you safe.”

“By threatening to arrest me and my friends?”

“Don’t do anything illegal and you won’t have anything to worry about.”

“This is your fault,” she muttered to Toby. “You and your big mouth.”

Carrying a chair from the table, he shrugged. “Do the crime. Do the time.”

She turned to Urban, hands on her hips. “Aren’t you going to say something?”

“Like what?” he asked, as if she was so unreasonable for wanting him to get involved.

“Like that you are my legal guardian and Miles needs to stop trying to run—and ruin—my life!”

Urban looked at Miles. “Stop trying to run—and ruin—her life.”

Why did she even bother?

“I can’t believe you’re not going to do anything about this,” Miles said to Urban.

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