Chaos series by Kristen Ashley

Pete avoided having his nose amputated by baby teeth and gums and did this slanting his head and blowing a loud raspberry on Travis’s chubby cheek, making my baby giggle and squirm more, which made me smile bigger.

Once he did this, Pete turned to Tyra and ordered, “Don’t get any ideas, woman. Your man is already saving up, not for future college tuition, for future bail money. He don’t need no more headaches in the form of hooligans.”

I looked to the two dark-headed boys currently wrestling around on the floor of the Compound, grunting and giving it their all, something Tyra was ignoring, so I guessed it was normal, and thought Pete was not wrong.

“Tack would give me ten more kids if I wanted them,” Tyra returned.

“Definition of crazy in love,” Pete muttered, turned his attention back to Travis and advised gravely, “Learn early, little man, find an ugly woman so she’ll bend over backward to do your bidding, not a pretty one you’ll break your back to do hers.”

“Pete!” Tyra snapped.

He looked again to her. “What?”

Tyra glared.

I kept out of it but only because Travis had yet to learn how to understand English.

Fortunately for Big Petey (or maybe Tyra), at that moment, a loud crash sounded in the room and I looked to see that Rider and Cutter had knocked over a chair.

But they were still wrestling.

I looked at Tyra. “Uh… is this normal?”

She stopped glaring at Big Petey and looked to me. “I’m an only child, but Tack has a brother he hasn’t spoken to in years.”

That didn’t answer my question, but she wasn’t done.

“He said they really never had anything to do with each other. All the way back since they were young. He also had a sister.”

I didn’t think the past tense of that last bit was a good thing, but I didn’t get to react since she kept going.

“He said they were in each other’s faces all the time. But he adored her. He also said that Tabby and Rush were constantly going at it from kids to teens. And they’re super-close.” She looked to her sons. “My boys are always together, sometimes wrestling or arguing, sometimes not. Whatever this is will mean something else later. Knowing that, I let them be.”

This was food for thought should I be lucky enough to give Travis a sibling.

I was chewing on that notion when the front door opened and I twisted my neck to see Tack sauntering through. As he shifted around the back of the bar and came our way, he gave a chin lift to Pete, a nod to me, and a smile to his wife that made my heart flutter in a happy way for Tyra.

“You talk to Carissa?” he asked.

“No!” Tyra cried. “Shoot! With her showing with Travis, I got caught up in baby and forgot.”

“Talk to me about what?” I asked.

Tack made it to Tyra as Tyra looked to me. “Tack and I still own my old place. We rent it out for extra cash. And our renters gave notice about a week ago.”

I didn’t know why she was telling me this, so when she stopped talking, I said, “Okay.”

“Thought you might wanna have a look at it,” Tack said.

“I—” I started but only got that far.

“A little house,” Tyra stated and at that, my heart thumped.

Travis and me in a little house?

How wonderful would that be?

“Two bedrooms,” she went on.

Two bedrooms?

Heaven!

“I redid the kitchen when I was there, which was a while back, but it’s still nice,” she kept going. “And we put new carpet down in the whole place and repainted after the renters before these and our current renters have only been in there a few months. So it’s really nice.”

“I, uh… I…” I stammered.

“We need someone in it we can trust,” Tack told me. “The ones leavin’ jacked us around. Jumpin’ their lease early ’cause they had a kid, got pregnant, need a bigger place. The ones before them got a puppy, didn’t tell us, didn’t pay a pet deposit, puppy messed the place up. Which bought new carpet and paint and a pain in our ass. Not worth the hassle of gettin’ in the faces of a couple buildin’ a family. But need someone steady. Regular. In the family, meaning our family, who we know’ll take care of the place.”

I would definitely take care of their place.

Though, I’d likely have to start selling plasma (and then some) to afford it.

“Well—” I began.

Tyra cut me off again, “Six hundred dollars a month.”

My eyes got big.

Six hundred a month?

That was only a few hundred more than what I was currently paying for the not-so-great place I was raising my son.

A deal!

She took in my big eyes and added swiftly, “Plus free cable.” When I didn’t speak because my excitement made me mute, she threw in, “And electricity paid.”

“I, uh… a house for six hundred dollars?” I finally got out.

“It’s nice. Really nice. In a good neighborhood. And you said you weren’t real big on where you’re staying,” Tyra said by way of answer.

At this point, Tack was holding out his phone. “Scroll, girl. Those are pictures. We can take you ’round whenever. Place’ll be open at the end of the month, which means a week.”

I took his phone and I scrolled through the photos. They weren’t big on the phone but I could still see the place wasn’t nice.

It was very nice. Clean and attractive with personality.

Not something that cost six hundred dollars a month.

And here it was again.

This wasn’t a deal, it was a steal.

And I’d be the thief.

Darn.

I gave Tack back his phone, saying, “That’s really sweet but I couldn’t.”

“Why not?” he asked.

“Because you can get more out of it if you rent to someone else,” I explained what he well knew.

“Yeah, and we can get more headaches with dogs and lease jumpers and shit like that,” he returned.

“Not to mention, the expense of placing an ad in the paper,” Tyra put in.

I didn’t know how much ads cost but I did know that whatever they cost didn’t cover what they weren’t making if they rented their place to someone who could afford it.

“And we don’t go through a management company,” Tack added. “So we gotta go through applications, pay for credit checks, drop shit to do showings. It’s a pain in the ass. You take it, we don’t have to do any a’ that shit.”