We were the black sheep of Chester, and I didn’t mind one bit. I couldn’t have cared less if those people hated me or not. I wasn’t losing any sleep over it.

I kept my head down and ran my dad’s auto shop with the help of my uncle. The worst part of the job was dealing with people from town. Sure, they could’ve left Chester to find another auto shop, but alas, to them, venturing into the outside world was even more terrifying than dealing with my father and me.

That was why my current situation was so damn annoying: I had to deal with idiots.

“I’m just sayin’ you owe me five hundred dollars by the end of the day. I take Visa, Mastercard, check, or cash,” I told Louise Honey as she stood in front of me in her pink dress and high heels, tapping her fake nails on my desk.

“I thought we made an agreement last Thursday,” she asked me, confused by my coldness. “When I stopped by to talk…”

By talk, she meant fuck, and we’d happened to do that all night long.

That was why she had missed Bible study—because her small tits were bouncing in my face.

The women of that town had no problem hating me when the sun shone while moaning my name when the shadows of night fell. I was the secret escape from their fake realities. A challenge for their well-behaved Southern souls.

“Was our agreement made before or after you sucked my dick?” I asked dryly.

“During,” she replied in a whisper, her cheeks turning red. She was acting shy, which must’ve been part of her act to get her bill lowered because she hadn’t been so bashful when she’d asked me to tie her up and slap her ass.

“Any deals made with your lips around my cock are null and void,” I stated. “Just leave the payment on my desk. Half today, half next week, all right? Or I’ll just give your boyfriend a call and see if he’ll pay it.”

“You wouldn’t!” she cried. I stayed quiet, and she stood tall and quickly pulled out her checkbook. “You’re a monster, Jackson Emery!”

If I had a dollar for every time I’d heard that…

“Thank you for your time. We at Mike’s Auto Shop appreciate your loyalty to our company. Have a blessed day, sweetheart. Now, if you could please let yourself the fuck out of my shop, Louise—”

“My name’s Justine, you jerk!”

Oh. Justine…

Names weren’t something I cared about. They made things personal, and I didn’t do personal.

“As long as your name is right on the check, we’re good,” I replied.

“You’re an awful, awful man, and you’re going to die alone!” she barked, storming out of the shop.

“Joke’s on you,” I mumbled to myself. “Most people die alone.”

After she left, I returned to the car I had been working on as Tucker napped in his dog bed in the far-right corner of the shop. If my black lab was good at anything, it was napping in his dog bed.

He was an old man, fifteen years old, but out of the two of us, it was clear that I was the grump. Tucker just went with the flow in the same way he always had. When I was down in the darkness, he was always the happy spark of light.

My faithful companion.

As I worked on the car, my father walked into the shop, and by walked, I meant he could hardly remain standing. I hadn’t seen him since the day before when I dropped off groceries. His house had been a mess, but that didn’t shock me. His place was always a mess because he didn’t care enough to clean it up.

He looked identical to me in almost every way, except for his constantly bloodshot eyes and skinny body. He scratched his salt-and-pepper beard and grunted. “Where are my keys?”

I had taken his car keys away from him four nights earlier—crazy how he was just noticing they were missing.

“You can walk anywhere in town, Dad. You don’t need your car.”

“Don’t tell me what I need,” he mumbled, stretching his arms out. He wore a dirty T-shirt and a pair of torn and ratty sweatpants. It was his normal wardrobe even though I bought him new things every now and then.

“What do you need? I can get it for you,” I told him, knowing he had no business getting behind a steering wheel. Even though his license had been revoked long ago, he still tried to drive around.

Ever since he pissed on the damn float at the Founder’s Day parade, the townsfolk were just looking for a reason to get him locked up again, and I didn’t want to deal with that.

“Gotta get some food.”

“I just restocked your fridge. You should be good.”

“I don’t want that shit. I want a pizza.”