Yolo (Carter Brothers #7)

Chapter 21

I like long walks. Especially when they’re taken by someone that annoys me.

— Garrett’s secret thoughts

GARRETT

One week later

I heard the front door unlock, as did all three dogs that were currently lying at the end of the bed.

I blinked open my eyes as I heard my alarm beep, and then my front door open and close.

“ Not it,” the woman at my side grumbled as she buried her face into my pillow—yes, my pillow.

She was a bed hog, plain and simple.

If I was using it, she wanted it.

Pillow . Body . Sheet .

It was all the same to her, and I loved it.

It meant I got to keep her close.

The dogs all stood up the moment that my bedroom door was thrust open.

I was unsurprised to see Atlas practically storming through the door with his son, Glades , in his arms.

Atlas took in the bed, eyes automatically going to the woman at my side who hadn’t so much as picked her head up to see who’d just come in and caused all of the dogs to start moving around with their nails clicking on the hardwood floor.

She was out like a light.

Which didn’t surprise me, really.

This week had been hectic.

With Thanksgiving a day away—and her parents’ arrival late last night—it was no wonder that she was dead to the world right now.

“ Don’t shoot me,” he teased.

I nearly rolled my eyes at his words.

“ I’m not going to shoot you,” Bindi grumbled.

“ You ever heard of knocking?” I asked, my eyes still bleary from sleep.

“ I did,” he said. “ In my head.”

My woman giggled, still not picking her head up from her pillow, letting me know that she was now awake.

Atlas walked toward me and placed Glades in between the two of us, uncaring that we were both practically naked and still in bed, and still asleep.

“ I have to go save my girl from a murder hornet,” he exaggerated.

“ You mean a fly?” I asked, turning over and cuddling Glades closer to me.

I loved my nieces and nephews. All of them equally. But the baby stage was my favorite, and Glades was firmly in my favorite stage for now.

Bindi finally picked her head up when Glades made a soft, cooing sound. “ Is that my baby?”

Atlas snorted. “ Bye .”

He left us then, and Bindi rolled over and reached out.

I caught her hand and placed it on Glades’s chest.

“ Hey , Glades ,” she whispered.

I felt my belly dip.

In the last week, she’d met all of my brothers and sisters-in-law.

She’d also met all the nieces and nephews. The ones who could comprehend that Bindi was blind had all promised to help her, and I’d witnessed Bindi fall in love with them.

Neither one of us had told them that we were together, but at this point, it might as well be obvious.

I did pull them all aside and tell them we were keeping it on the down low at work, though.

At least for now.

“ I guess this means we have to get up.” She smiled as she leaned down and pressed a kiss onto Glades’s chest. “ I’m going to go let them out.”

She slipped out of bed and picked my T -shirt up from the dresser where I made sure to put it every night for her.

She slipped it on over her head and then whistled for the dogs.

“ Let’s go outside and get some breakfast, boys,” she called.

The dogs followed dutifully behind her, and I heard the back door open and close.

Seconds later, I heard voices and knew that her mother had joined her.

Getting up myself, I left Glades on the bed surrounded by pillows and quickly got dressed.

When I came out of the bathroom, it was to find him awake and glaring hard.

“ Well , hello, Glades ,” I said to him. “ What’s with the grumpy face?”

I picked him up, and his expression softened.

Reaching for the bottle that he’d probably had recently but hadn’t finished, I popped it into his mouth and started for the voices.

I found those voices in the kitchen.

Lea was at my counter making coffee. Ruben was at my table reading a paper.

And then there was my girl, feeding all of the dogs.

“ How much longer will you get to keep Rufus here?” Ruben asked as he looked toward his daughter that was running her fingers through his hair. “ That lady going to get him back?”

“ No ,” I answered for Bindi . “ As of last week, it was decided that Delphine would no longer be a K -9 officer with our department. She’s going back on regular patrol as of today.”

“ Good .” Ruben looked toward me. “ You got a kid?”

“ No .” I chuckled. “ This is my brother’s son, Glades . Glades is grumpy right now because he woke and didn’t have immediate attention.”

“ Glades is not a grumpy boy.” Bindi laughed. “ Mom , come meet Glades . He’s the sweetest, cutest, most gorgeous baby you’ll ever meet.”

“ You don’t even know what he looks like,” I countered. “ How can he be all those things?”

“ Because his mother told me.” Bindi laughed again.

I grinned and did the handoff with Bindi who held out her arms for him.

She guided herself to the seat at the kitchen island and climbed up, careful not to disturb Glades who was almost done with his bottle.

“ She looks good with a kid.”

I blinked, surprised to find Ruben so close to me. “ She does.”

“ I want that for her,” he said.

I looked over to Ruben and said, “ I’m going to give it to her if you’ll let me.”

“ Is that a question?” he asked.

“ Yes .”

“ You know, she’ll always be a handful, blind or not.” He chuckled. “ Are you sure you can handle her?”

“ Handle her? Probably not. But I sure do want to try for the rest of my life,” I admitted.

He slapped me on the back. “ You have a ring?”

I shrugged. “ Kind of. I have one in mind at least.”

“ Ask her while we’re here. Then my wife can help her pick out a dress before she goes home to start packing up our house,” he said.

“ You’re moving here?” I wondered.

“ How long do you think that my wife will let our daughter stay here without her when she’s happy, and married, and possibly could have a grandchild at any moment?” He chuckled. “ That’s the good thing about doing mobile welding. I can work from anywhere. And my wife’s already establishing a relationship with a hospital here. Plus , it hasn’t felt like home since she moved.”

I imagined that it didn’t.

Any time she decided to stay at her own apartment, it felt like my heart was being ripped out of my chest.

“ I guess I can see your point,” I said as I watched Bindi pull the bottle free of Glades ’ mouth and prop him up on her shoulder. She gently started tapping his back, and this overwhelming wave of need rocketed through me. “ I want that.”

“ Then have it,” Ruben suggested. “ It’s all within your reach.”

An hour later, I was driving Ruben with me to Bindi’s place to gather some of her clothes and a package that she’d had delivered.

I was pulling into her assigned parking spot—even though she didn’t drive—when I caught a flash of movement coming out of the front door.

I immediately reached for my phone and called it in.

“ This is Garrett ,” I said to the dispatcher who answered. “ I need a unit to 3354 Duncan Road . I have a trespasser.”

Ruben shot his head toward me, then whipped it back around to see what I was seeing.

I knew the moment he caught Joseph’s form, too.

His back stiffened, and his chest puffed out as he drew in a deep breath.

“ I thought he had a restraining order?” Ruben rasped.

“ Not yet,” I admitted. “ I’d thought he got the fucking point and would stay away. Apparently not.”

I got out of the car and headed in the direction of where Joseph was talking on his phone.

“ No , I haven’t seen her,” I heard him saying as he stared down the street in the opposite direction of where we were coming. “ I’ve been here for two days now. I’m on the same floor as her, for Christ’s sake. I think she’s actually with that guy.”

There was a long pause and then, “ Moving in here cost us a fuckin’ fortune. I had to pay off every person in the city. The judge won’t sign the restraining order if it comes down to that, and the trespassing charge will be forgotten the moment that I get to the station if I’m arrested.”

“ No .” Joseph paused as he saw a cop coming up the street. “ Hold on. There’s a cop here.” He hesitated. “ No , I don’t know why they’re here. I haven’t seen either one of them today. And the day front desk guy was moved to nights because we paid that other guy to quit. He hasn’t seen me. He’s the only one that would know that I’m here right now and shouldn’t be.”

Of course he’d made someone quit.

That was the least that I’d expected from a man like Joseph Harris .

The cop car pulled up, and Officer Assman —yes, that was literally his last name—got out.

He took a look at me standing behind Joseph who still had his phone pressed to his ear, then to Joseph , finally stopping on Ruben who had his phone out as well.

I looked over at him and saw the red record symbol on his screen.

Hopefully he’d gotten it all.

I couldn’t wait to find out which judge he’d paid off.

There were a few that I could do without seeing when I had to go to court.

“ Joseph Harris ?” Assman asked.

“ Yes ,” he said as he pulled the phone from his face. “ What are you here for?”

“ I’m here to place you under arrest for violating a no-trespassing order.” Assman took out his cuffs. “ You have the right to remain silent. You …”

Assman read Joseph his rights all the while I could hear screaming from the other end of the phone.

When Joseph was turned around to be placed into the car, he finally looked up and saw me.

His situational awareness definitely needed some work.

His eyes narrowed as he said, “ I live here now!”

“ You do,” I nodded. “ But she lived here first.”

“ I’ll never stop. I have enough money to make this hard,” he snarled.

He was right.

He did.

Assman put him into his car then walked back over to us.

“ If he lives here, I’m not sure if we can hold him.” He looked pissed. “ But I’ll try.”

“ Thanks ,” I said. “ I’m going to talk to the manager and get information out of him. If he’s new, I might not be able to do anything.”

“ Keep me posted,” he said as he walked back to the car and left.

We walked inside and came face to face with a brand new person I’d never seen before.

A woman that looked like she had way better things to do than her job.

She was on her phone, her feet propped up, while a UPS driver stacked packages in front of where he usually delivered them. The only difference was that usually it was the manager taking those packages up to the apartments and now there were so many stacked up that I knew it hadn’t been done in days.

“ Ruben ,” I murmured. “ Go over there and check through those packages to see if there’s anything for Bindi . I’m going to go over here and deal with this.”

Ruben went to the packages, and I went to the woman behind the counter.

She looked up briefly, then her eyes went back down to the phone in her hand as she said, “ Can I help you?”

“ That man that was just here,” I said. “ He has a no trespassing charge against him for harassing one of your tenants.”

“ Huh .” She shrugged. “ That’s really interesting.”

“ Is it?” I asked. “ Because he just told me that he lived here now. How does that work? Do you not check backgrounds on people before you approve them? And your owner, as well as your now night manager, both knew that he was given no trespassing orders.”

“ I’m new,” she shrugged. “ How was I to know?”

“ I imagine if you did your job correctly, you would’ve known,” I pointed out. “ When’s the owner coming in next?”

She finally put her phone down and looked up at me. “ Why do you want to know?”

“ Because I want to talk to him,” I replied, barely able to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.

“ I’m sorry, but he has no immediate plans to come into the complex,” she said succinctly.

I pulled out my phone and dialed Roger’s number.

He picked up on the third ring. “ Hey , Garrett . How are you doing?”

I didn’t bother beating around the bush.

“ I’d be doing better if my girlfriend’s stalker wasn’t just allowed to move into Ocean Heights ,” I drawled.

There was a long pause and then, “ What ?”

I gave him a breakdown of everything that had happened.

“ That’s impossible,” he said. “ I literally have a picture of his face hanging up beside the computer for the managers to see!”

I looked toward the computer and sure enough, there was the photo of his face still hanging up, obvious and blatant.

“ It’s still there,” I grumbled. “ However , your day manager that was hired let him anyway.”

I looked up as Ruben came up with multiple packages. “ She’s also not delivering the packages to the doors. There’s about sixty of them all downstairs.”

There was a long pause and then, “ I’ll be right down.”

“ I’ll be in Bindi’s apartment,” I said. “ We’re moving her out immediately.”

“ You’ll have to pay to break her lease,” the woman drawled.

I glanced at her and said, “ There’s no lease for the blind living here.”

“ Well .” She shrugged. “ That’s new to me.”

“ Who hired her?” Ruben grumbled under his breath.

I left without saying a word, said goodbye to Roger , and headed upstairs.

I looked at the door for a long second and stared.

“ What do you want to bet he’s been here?” I asked.

“ I’m not taking a bet I know I’ll lose,” he answered.

Using the code to get in, we walked inside, and though nothing appeared out of place, something still felt wrong.

“ I feel like this is wrong,” Ruben said as he took a look around. “ Something feels off.”

I pulled out my phone and dialed my mom’s number.

“ Hey ,” I said the moment she answered. “ We’re at Bindi’s place and I feel like something’s wrong. Do you think you can bring that new gadget over that finds the hidden cameras?”

After Athena , Gable’s wife, had experienced some issues with hidden cameras, my mom had procured a new little gizmo that detected radio waves being transmitted. We’d found that it eventually led you to the cameras.

My other sister-in-law, Maven , had a family that was in a questionable line of work—though none of us tried to acknowledge it too much since we were fairly sure it was illegal as fuck. Maven’s eldest brother, Shasha , had given us this camera detector, and Mom freakin’ loved it. She liked to take it with her to all the VRBOs she stayed in when she and Dad went on quick little getaways on the weekends.

“ What ?” she asked. “ Yes , I’ll be there in ten. I’m due for a lunch break anyway.”

My mom got there in eight.

She walked inside, wielding her handheld hidden camera finder, and started it up after introducing herself to Bindi’s father.

I went about packing up all of Bindi’s clothes.

She wouldn’t be coming back here with that asshole on the loose.

If I had my way, she’d never come back even when he wasn’t on the loose.

“ Found one!” my mom called out. “ In her kitchen next to her mixer.”

“ Are you doing this as an officer of the law?” Ruben asked carefully.

“ Yes ,” she said.

“ Then you’ll want to go back through the video feed that I know is on this floor,” he said. “ We checked when we moved in to make sure that it was completely safe for Bindi .”

“ I have my son on it right now,” she said. “ Atlas was just twiddling his thumbs at work.”

“ Good ,” he said.

“ I’m going to pack up her bathroom. She’s not staying in this place while that asshole is on the loose.”

His almost exact words matching mine had me grinning despite the situation.

An hour later, armed with enough food to cook for an army, and almost all of Bindi’s clothes and bathroom items, we got back inside to find mom and daughter at my stove cooking away.

Even though Bindi was blind, you wouldn’t be able to tell with the way she was moving so effortlessly around my kitchen.

I really liked seeing her there, too.

“ Hey ,” I called out, hoping I wouldn’t startle her.

“ Oh !” she said as she whirled around, being careful to stay in her place because of all the dogs surrounding her. “ You’re back! Need help carrying any of the groceries in?”

“ Groceries aren’t the only thing we got,” Ruben grumbled. “ We also packed up half your shit and brought it back with us. That asshole moved into the same complex as you and planted cameras in your place.”

“ What ?” Lea whirled around. “ What did you just say?”

After giving them the breakdown, I said, “ We don’t actually have confirmation on the cameras yet. We know it’s him, but we can’t prove it. And without that proof, they can’t kick him out of the complex because he has a right to be there now. The cameras were wiped after we went back through the last week. But the owner of the complex, Roger , said that he has backups that come to his home. He’s going to go back and find them and call us back in if necessary.”

“ Good ,” Lea growled.

“ So what do I do now?” Bindi looked worried.

Lea looked from me to Bindi and back before she said, “ Hey , how about you go help him get your stuff? I’ll finish up here.”

Bindi looked frustrated as she took a step toward me.

Every single dog moved at once, stuck to her like glue.

But Rufus looked back at Lea , like he wanted to be with her, too.

Seeing the hesitation, Lea said, “ Go , Rufus .”

Rufus went, but I had a sneaking suspicion I might’ve just found Rufus’s new owner.

Not saying that I wouldn’t take him, because I definitely would, but I thought maybe he’d like being in a less chaotic house with a couple that didn’t bother him twenty-four-seven.

“ I’ll just be a minute,” Ruben said as he walked to his wife.

The dogs came outside with Bindi and me.

Once the door was shut, I said, “ You are moving in with me.”

Her eyes, which weren’t covered by her usual glasses since she wasn’t leaving the house, went wide.

Those beautiful blue-green orbs felt like they stared straight into my soul.

God , how I wished that she could see me.

Could experience me the way I got to experience her.

“ Are you…” She licked her lips. “ Are …wait…are you sure?”

I grinned at her flubs.

“ Yes , I’m more than sure,” I said. “ We both know where this is going, honey. You’ve been here every night since your second day of work. It might get awkward if someone comes by the house and finds you here every time they arrive, but I don’t think that’s an issue we can’t overcome.”

“ Garrett ,” she whispered. “ I’m not quite sure that you realize what all it’ll entail having a blind person in your space.”

I moved closer, twisting her so that her face wasn’t in the sun—blind or not, I didn’t know if her staring directly at the sun would cause any damage, and I sure didn’t want to find out— I said, “ You mean, like not leaving my shit out in the middle of the floor so you don’t trip on it?”

“ Yeah …”

“ Or how about making sure that you have every available technology advancement you could possibly have?” I teased. “ Or was that huge Amazon order that I placed with all the voice tech stuff not what you were thinking about?”

She sighed. “ Garrett …”

“ I will go to the end of the earth for you, Bindi Lea Howe ,” I asserted. “ And now that I have your father’s permission, I’ll make you my wife while I’m at it.”

She gasped. “ Garrett …”

“ I’m not asking you because you need a place to live,” I shared. “ I’m asking you because you mean the world to me. To be completely truthful, I fell in love with you the first day I saw you in a hotel lobby in Dallas .”

She blinked. “ What ? When ?”

“ You were wearing a black slip dress that hugged every single curve on your body. And you were walking behind that asshole you once called a fiancé, and he was berating you for not hurrying up,” he said. “ I wanted to walk up to him then and show him exactly what he was about to lose.”

“ You were there?” she asked. “ Why ?”

I explained what I was doing there that day, and she shook her head in amazement. “ I wish you’d done it.”

I tucked a lock of her curly hair behind her ear, just to watch it spring back forward again, before saying, “ You don’t know how much I regret it. Maybe if I’d made the approach…you might not be blind right now.”

She leaned into my hand, and I uncurled my fingers to cup her face.

“ I don’t regret anything that led me to you, Gee ,” she whispered. “ Not a single ounce of suffering was too much. Because in the end, I got you. And I think that’s a great trade-off.”

I leaned forward and pressed my forehead against hers as I said, “ You’ll move in?”

“ Yes .”

“ You’ll be my wife?” I pushed.

She snorted. “ That remains to be seen. I don’t have a ring yet.”

I chuckled. “ I don’t have one yet.”

“ Then ask me again when you do,” she teased.

I narrowed my eyes. “ I’m going to get my keys.”

She giggled. “ We have to start preparing for Thanksgiving .”

“ Y’all do,” I teased. “ I don’t know how to cook.”

“ And I’m blind.” She laughed as she threw her arms around me. “ Between the two of us, we can make a whole cook!”

“ Okay , so then maybe I’ll ask you after I go buy you a ring,” I grumbled. “ Maybe the diamonds will be on sale for Black Friday .”

She snorted. “ The one you’ll want to get me will be the only one not on sale.”

I grinned and pulled her back into the house.

I stopped short when I closed the door and saw what was happening in the kitchen.

“ Your parents are totally making out,” I whispered.

They broke apart at the sound of my voice.

“ They’ve done that since I was a kid.” She laughed. “ Like that one time that someone broke into our house, scared me and traumatized me to death, and then my parents get home. The police leave. Then they start making out.”

“ It wasn’t a make-out session,” Ruben grumbled. “ I was trying to calm her ass down!”

“ Oh , boy,” Lea said as she flushed. “ Let’s get back to cooking.”

“ First make sure you wash your hands,” Bindi teased.

Lea did.

Ruben grabbed a beer and went to the bar.

I washed my hands and did what Bindi told me to do for the next four hours.