Blog Tour: Preacher by L. Wilder!

“Who the hell left this out?”

Goose glanced over his shoulder with a smirk. “That’d be me. I’ll get it in a sec.”

“Don’t bother.” I picked it up and tossed it in the trash. “It’s garbage now.”

“Woah,” Goose gasped. “That was still good.”

“Yeah, if you like drinking curdled milk.” I started pouring myself some coffee as I grumbled, “Next time, put the damn thing back in the fridge.”

He muttered something under his breath, which only twisted the screw in deeper. My mood was far from improving when Memphis strolled into the kitchen. As he opened the pantry door, he glanced over his shoulder and asked, “You hear about the flat on the SUV?”

That had my entire throat turning into a knot. I turned to face him as I snarled, “What flat?”

“The back left,” he answered like it was no big deal. “Looked low yesterday, but it’s damn near dead now.”

“And no one thought to fix it?” I snapped. “No one thought, ‘Hey, maybe we shouldn’t let the only reliable set of wheels we got sit on its ass in the lot’?”

“I was gonna…”

“Don’t say you were gonna take care of it,” I cut him off. “You either did, or you didn’t, and clearly, you didn’t.”

I could feel the whole room shift. The boys sitting at the kitchen table looked down at their food, doing their best to avoid eye contact, and those who were standing by the door made their way out. No one wanted to poke the bear, not when I was already halfway to losing it.

But Goose was never one to tread lightly.

He ignored all the red flags and turned to face me with a smirk, “So, I’m guessing your night out with your new lady friend didn’t go so great, huh?”

I glared daggers at him, but he didn’t flinch.

He just sat there with that shit-eating grin and added, “Ah, damn. It went that bad.”

And just like that, it hit me like a punch to the gut.

I wasn’t pissed about the noise or the stupid milk.

I wasn’t even all that pissed about the damn tire. Not really.

It was her.

It was the way she’d looked at me last night when she told me she couldn’t do this. I’d thought things were going fine. Better than fine. I thought they were great. But somewhere between the ball field and the ride home, I’d felt her pull back.

It was subtle, but it was there.

I couldn’t figure out why it had happened.

Regardless, it had nothing to do with the boys, and it wasn’t fair to take it out on them. I raked a hand down my face, and I felt the fight drain right out of me. “Damn.”