Page 71 of 12 Months of Mayhem

Goddamn, I liked this woman. She had this air of innocence to her, but then she opened her mouth and gave it right back to me.

Before I could say anything else, a car pulled up to the pump outside and drew her attention away. She glanced at the monitor behind her and groaned. “Shit. I gotta go out there. The pump needs to be reset.”

I looked at the screen and tried to make sense of it. “How the hell do you know that?”

She ignored me, moved around the counter, and toward the door.

“Wait,” I called and pushed off the counter. The hell was she doing going out there by herself?

I followed her out and closed the distance between us with long strides. She reached the pump just as the woman behind the wheel stepped out of her car.

“Hey,” Maddie called, her voice light but firm. “I just need to reset the pump.”

The woman barely glanced at her before turning her attention to me and raked her gaze over me like she was trying to figure me out. “You her bodyguard or something?”

“Something,” I muttered and folded my arms over my chest.

The woman seemed harmless, but I’d known a few women who seemed harmless and were straight-up crazy. Same went for men. You never knew who was hiding their crazy.

Maddie pressed a few buttons on the pump, just like she had last night when I stopped for gas. After a second, she stepped back. “You should be good to go.” She smiled at the woman, then turned toward me. “No need to rescue me that time, stud.”

I grunted and stepped to the side to let her pass, then followed her back into the gas station. The bell above the door jingled as we stepped inside, the air slightly warmer than the crisp night outside. Maddie moved behind the counter with ease, leaning on it like she belonged there—because she did.

“You got a little sass in you, mama,” I said with a smirk.

She cocked her head, and her lips curved into a laugh. “Pretty sure I’d cry ten times a night if I didn’t. I’ve worked here since I was sixteen, stud. I’ve got pretty thick skin.”

“So, two years, huh?”

She rolled her eyes. “Try nine. And it’s probably going to be fifty more. They’re gonna have to hold my funeral here because I’ll still be the one working the night shift even when I’m dead.”

“Damn,” I laughed. “I don’t think I’ve ever thought about where I’m gonna be in fifty years.”

“Dead,” Maddie shot back with a grin. “Or living in a nursing home, flirting with the nurses.”

I squinted at her. “I think dead would be more likely. That would make me eighty.”

“Ancient,” she mocked, as her lips twitched with a barely contained grin.

“Easy there,” I laughed and raised an eyebrow at her.

She tilted her head at me like I was some kind of puzzle she couldn’t figure out. “How can you have not thought about the future?”

I gave her a shrug, casual and honest. “I tend to just live day to day. See where the day takes me. I’ve never been one to plan, well, anything.”

She laughed, and the sound was easy and natural. She shook her head and rested her elbows on the counter. “I wish I could be that carefree, but I’ve got a little guy at home who needs to have some plans and structure.”

I nodded slowly. “Yeah, probably for the best.”

She looked at me then—really looked. Her eyes swept over me, not just in that surface-level way people do when they meet someone new. It was like she was trying to see through me, to figure out who I really was underneath the rough edges and smartass charm. I held her gaze. Let her look. I didn’t have anything to hide, but I didn’t offer anything either.

“So what brought you here?” she asked finally, more curious than anything else.

I shrugged again. “Moose and I felt like heading east. We were in Cali for a bit but decided to head this way.”

She nodded like that made perfect sense, even if it didn’t. Then her lips quirked up, and she said, barely above a whisper, “Lucky me.”

I leaned in just a little, elbows on the counter like hers, and my voice dropped. “More like lucky me, mama. I’ve been to plenty of gas stations in the middle of the night, and none of the clerks could hold a candle to you.”

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