Text copyright ©2020 Lani Lynn Vale
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Dedication
To Will, my high school sweetheart. Love you.
Acknowledgments
Golden Czermak - Photographer
My Brother’s Editor & Ink It Out Editing- My editors
Cover Me Darling - Cover Artist
My mom - Thank you for reading this book eight million two hundred times.
Kendra, Diane, Brandi, Jen, Kathy, Mindy, Barbara, Penney & Amanda—I don’t know what I would do without y’all. Thank you, my lovely betas, for loving my books as much as I do.
Table of Contents
Blurb
Author’s Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Epilogue
Other titles by Lani Lynn Vale:
The Freebirds
Boomtown
Highway Don’t Care
Another One Bites the Dust
Last Day of My Life
Texas Tornado
I Don’t Dance
The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC
Lights To My Siren
Halligan To My Axe
Kevlar To My Vest
Keys To My Cuffs
Life To My Flight
Charge To My Line
Counter To My Intelligence
Right To My Wrong
Code 11- KPD SWAT
Center Mass
Double Tap
Bang Switch
Execution Style
Charlie Foxtrot
Kill Shot
Coup De Grace
The Uncertain Saints
Whiskey Neat
Jack & Coke
Vodka On The Rocks
Dirty Mother
Rusty Nail
The Kilgore Fire Series
Shock Advised
Flash Point
Oxygen Deprived
Controlled Burn
Put Out
I Like Big Dragons Series
I Like Big Dragons and I Cannot Lie
Dragons Need Love, Too
Oh, My Dragon
The Dixie Warden Rejects
Beard Mode
Fear the Beard
Son of a Beard
I’m Only Here for the Beard
The Beard Made Me Do It
Beard Up
For the Love of Beard
Law & Beard
There’s No Crying in Baseball
Pitch Please
Quit Your Pitchin’
Listen, Pitch
The Hail Raisers
Hail No
Go to Hail
Burn in Hail
What the Hail
The Hail You Say
Hail Mary
The Simple Man Series
Kinda Don’t Care
Maybe Don’t Wanna
Get You Some
Ain’t Doin’ It
Too Bad So Sad
Bear Bottom Guardians MC
Mess Me Up
Talkin’ Trash
How About No
My Bad
One Chance, Fancy
It Happens
Keep It Classy
Snitches Get Stitches
F-Bomb
The Southern Gentleman Series
Hissy Fit
Lord Have Mercy
KPD Motorcycle Patrol
Hide Your Crazy
It Wasn’t Me
I’d Rather Not
Make Me
Sinners are Winners
If You Say So
SWAT 2.0
Just Kidding
Fries Before Guys
Maybe Swearing Will Help
Ask Me If I Care
May Contain Wine
Joke’s on You
Join the Club
Any Day Now
Say it Ain’t So
Officially Over It (10-13-20)
Nobody Knows (11-3-20)
Depends Who’s Asking (12-8-20)
Valentine Boys
Herd That
Crazy Heifer
Chute Yeah
Get Bucked
Souls Chapel Revenants MC
Repeat Offender (Jan. 2021)
Jailbait (Feb. 2021)
Standalones
Somethin’ About That Boy
Blurb
Banner Spurlock knew the moment that he walked into Kilgore High School and saw Perry Street that life was about to get interesting.
Forced to move due to a problem at home, a problem in the form of his ex-best friend hating him for something that Banner’s father did, Banner doesn’t think very much could improve in his life.
He left his status as king of Benton High School behind and moved to a new school where not only would he have to try out for a new football team and prove himself, but he’d also have to find a place for himself in the hierarchy.
Only, the moment that he arrives, he knows that finding a place for himself won’t be too hard. Especially when his reputation follows him all the way to Kilgore, Texas.
***
Perry Street hates school. She hates her peers—most of them anyway—and she hates her classes. All she wants to do is finish her senior year, graduate, and find a place that will give her a full scholarship so that she doesn’t have to be stuck here forever.
That’s her goal, anyway.
Then she walks into first period, on her first day of her senior year, and sits down. Seconds later, he walks in and changes every single plan she’s ever made.
It isn’t long before Perry starts to fall for the bad boy who doesn’t care who he does and doesn’t impress. The boy makes her heart flutter. The boy makes her want things that she’s never wanted before. Not ever.
The boy brings trouble with him that nearly kills her.
Author’s Note
Okay, so you might have a few questions with this timeline when it comes to Abilene, which you meet in Ask Me If I Care. (Book 4 of the SWAT 2.0 Series.)
I’m going to answer these questions, but they’re going to be in Slone’s book, which will happen with him joining my new Longview Liners Football Series that I’ll be starting shortly. He will be the first book in that series, and will be an adult, unlike what he is in this particular book. He has some serious life lessons coming his way, and I need him to be a little more, erm, broken. Sorry! <
3
Happy reading!
Chapter 1
Cowboys are dangerous. You should never look at them from the belt down.
-Rules to live by
Banner
“I’m not going,” I said stubbornly.
My father looked at me with an aggravated expression.
“Listen,” he said. “I’m tired of getting calls that you’re getting into fights with that little asshole. You’re going, and that’s that.”
I ground my teeth together forcefully, trying to stop myself from saying what I really wanted to say.
I knew that my dad would lose his shit if I lost my shit, and I wasn’t up to dealing with him right now.
All I wanted to do was go lie down and pretend this day never happened.
“Trance…” my mother said.
“Viddy, don’t,” Dad ordered. “This is happening. If he doesn’t go to Ford’s, things are not going to go well. I know when things have escalated to the level that they have that they’re not going to get better. One of them needs to be removed from the situation.”
Dad, sadly, was right.
One of us needed to be removed, but it didn’t need to be me.
It needed to be the motherfucker that was trying to make my senior year shit.
Vance McInroy, a kid that used to be my friend, hated my fucking guts.
Why did he hate my guts? Because my father shot his, and his father died.
That’s why.
Where Vance didn’t think his father did anything wrong, I knew better.
My dad was a police officer.
He didn’t just go around killing people.
What he did do was his job, and his job wasn’t easy.
It especially wasn’t easy for him to shoot his kid’s best friend’s father, either.
But that was what happened when that man happened to have a gun to his wife’s head.
My dad had to make a choice.
My friend’s father, or his stepmother.
Obviously, we knew which one my friend would’ve chosen.
Which was why Vance had decided to make my life a living hell ever since.
“It’s either Oakley or Ford,” Dad said suddenly. “You choose.”
I knew without a doubt that either one of my siblings would allow me to stay.
The thing was, both of them were in Kilgore, Texas. A couple hours away from where I was now.
“So what the fuck do I tell Coach when he finds out that I’m not coming back this year?” I asked carefully.
“You tell him that Vance is to blame, and if he wanted you to be there, he should’ve had your back a little better than he did,” my father snarled.
I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose.
“This fucking blows. You know that, right?” I asked.
My father sighed.
“I don’t want to do this to you, Banner,” Dad said. “But I’d rather you be safe, happy, and healthy than fucking in jail, or beat up because Vance finally decided to take that last step into becoming a goddamn felon.”
My dad had a point.
Vance had gotten considerably worse until the point where I didn’t know what to do anymore.
Staying away from him wasn’t working, and neither was ignoring him.
Sooner or later, things would get to the point where Vance wouldn’t skirt around the issue at hand.
Chapter 2
Adulting is soup, and I’m a fork.
-Banner’s secret thoughts
Banner
The first day of school in Kilgore, Texas proved to be a cold one.
It was unusually cold for the end of August. To the point that when I rode my bike to school that morning, I’d actually been thankful for the leather jacket that usually made me sweat.
Today was my first day of my last year of high school.
At a new school.
I was a senior.
At. A. New. School.
Goddamn Vance.
Walking into first period—I’d found it easily thanks to a freshman that’d been looking at a map like a fish out of water.
After taking it, I helped point him to where he needed to go, but only after I’d found where my own class was.
Which led me to now.
Statistics.
Kill me now.
“Ahh, you must be Banner Spurlock.” The teacher, a younger woman in her mid-thirties, smiled brightly.
She looked like a ho.
Seriously.
She had a pair of tight black pants on that almost covered her high-heeled hooker shoes that were so tall that it would be nearly impossible for anyone else but a stripper to walk easily in them.
Then there was her starched white button-down long-sleeved top that she had rolled up at her forearms. Oh, and let’s not forget the three buttons she had undone, just barely revealing the top bits of lace on her bra.
“Yeah, that’s me,” I said, my eyes automatically sweeping the room for an open seat.
I found it in the front row, at the opposite of the teacher, and the wall.
I walked to that seat, ignoring the way the teacher continued to talk to me, and took my seat.
Once there, I pulled my jacket off, getting a better look at the girl that was next to me.
At first, I thought she was just a girl-next-door type. But then she glanced up, and I got a good look at her eyes.
She most certainly wasn’t a girl-next-door type.
She was a ‘I want your panties on my bedroom floor’ type.
Jesus Christ.
Her black sweatpants and black long-sleeved, tight as fuck, curve-hugging top were nothing special.
Unless you looked below the surface. Saw the delicate curve of her hip. The beautiful swell of her breasts.
The delicate slant of her neck that was covered in deliciously golden skin that I wanted to…
She looked up at me, her gaze making contact with mine, and my breath hitched.
Her eyes were fucking purple.
Who the hell had purple eyes?
“All right, ladies and gentlemen,” Mrs. Hooker—dear sweet baby Jesus, how the hell was I going to call her that? —ordered. “Now, who wants to start the introductions first?”
“Mrs. Hooker,” someone called from behind me. “We’ve all gone to the same school for our whole entire lives. We’ve been with the same one hundred and fifty kids since we were all in kindergarten. We don’t need to do any introductions.”
I knew what was going to happen the moment that the kid said that.
“Oh?” Mrs. Hooker said. “What about Mr. Spurlock here? He’s new this year. None of y’all know him.”
“We don’t need to know him,” someone muttered in the back.
“Perry?” Mrs. Hooker said. “Why don’t you start?”
Perry, the girl that was dressed from head to toe in black beside me, sighed.
I grinned at her misfortune, but wiped it off my face the moment she turned her head to look in my direction.
My eyes studied her as she stood up and turned around to face the class.
“My name is Perry Street. I’m a senior this year. I work at the Stop and Go, I play volleyball, and I also run cross-country and track,” Perry drawled.
“Ohhh, Mulan,” someone called from the back of the room. “How’s Mushu?”
I could see the Mulan analogy.
She could pass as the cartoon character’s double.
Hell, she even had the long, flowing, thick hair.
“How about you go f—” Perry started, but Mrs. Hooker cleared her throat, causing her to break off mid-sentence.
I snorted.
She said it so monotonously that she sounded like a computer. Like the fucking Alexa electronics that my mother loved so much.
“Thank you, Perry,” Mrs. Hooker said. “Who’s next?”
It went on like this until it came to be
my turn.
I stood up and said my name, keeping my eyes on the girl next to me.
Her long, black/brown hair was in a low ponytail at the back of her head, and the tail was coming over her left shoulder to curve around her breast.
And her eyes were slanted slightly, hinting of Japanese descent.
Maybe not full-blown Japanese, but she definitely had someone in her family that was.
Her arms were crossed tightly over her chest, and she was staring ahead at the chalkboard—what the fuck kind of school still had chalkboards? —and doing her level best to ignore the hell out of me.
“My name is Banner Spurlock. I’m a senior. I don’t work anywhere just yet because I just moved here. But I’ll probably be finding a bike shop or something to work at when I do. I play football and hockey,” I droned.
Mrs. Stripper—I mean Hooker—clapped her hands.
“Wonderful!” she cried. “Well, as I’m sure a lot of you know, my name is Genie Hooker. I graduated two years ago from SFA with my teaching degree…”
I ignored her and instead focused on the girl that was next to me.
Her long brownish-black hair was captivating.
There were strands of it that had the subtlest shade of purple to it, and it almost made her hair look like a galaxy.
And her skin was just fucking perfect.
Her sweatpants and shirt did nothing to hide her figure, either.
Underneath it all, I could tell that she had an amazing one.
Big boobs, muscular legs, curvy hips.
She really did kind of look like Mulan, too.
Not that I’d be telling her that based solely on how she’d reacted when the little shit in the back of the class had.
Crossing my arms over my chest, I leaned back in my seat and thought about my next class.
I also thought about what I would need to do after school.
I had a meeting with the coach about trying out for the team.
I was so in my own head that Perry, the girl I was trying very hard not to study, poked me with a stack of papers.
“Here,” she said.
I took them from her, accidentally brushing my hand against hers.
She jumped and pulled back before I had them fully in my grasp, causing the papers to flutter to the floor.
They landed everywhere, and she cursed, getting out of her seat and rounding it to help me pick them up.