Crazy on You Read Free Page A

into a little dish on the floor as the pure black cat with the pink nose rubbed against his leg. She purred and he scratched the top of her head. A little over a year ago, he hadn’t even liked cats. He’d been living on base at Fort Bliss, ready to be discharged from the Army after ten years of service and preparing to move in with his girlfriend, Tiffany, and her cat, Pinky. Two weeks after he moved in with her, she moved out—taking his Gibson custom Les Paul guitar and leaving behind her cat.
    Tucker rose and moved back across the kitchen. At that point, he’d had two choices: reenlist or do something else with his life. He loved the Army. The guys were his brothers. The commanding officers, the only real father figures he’d ever known. He’d enlisted at the age of eighteen, and the Army had been his only family. But it was time to move on. To do something besides blow shit up and take bullets. And there was nothing like a bullet to the head to make a guy realize that he actually did care if he lived or died. Until he’d felt the blood run down his face, he hadn’t thought he cared. It wasn’t like there was anyone but his Army buddies who gave a shit anyway.
    Then he met Tiffany, and thought she cared. Some of the guys had warned him that she was an Army groupie, but he didn’t listen. He’d met groupies, swam a few times in the groupie pool, but with Tiffany he’d been fooled into believing she cared about him, that she wanted more than a soldier deployed months at a time. Maybe he wanted to be fooled. In the end, he guessed she’d cared more about his guitar. At first, he was pissed. What kind of person abandoned a little cat? Leaving it with him ? A guy who’d never had any sort of pet and didn’t have a clue what to do with one? Now, he figured, Tiffany had done him a favor.
    So what did a former Army gunner do once he was discharged? Enroll in the El Paso County Sheriff’s Academy, of course. The six-month training program had been a piece of cake for him, and he graduated at the top of his class. Once his probationary period was over, he applied for a position in Potter County, and, a few months ago, moved to Lovett.
    Sunlight spread across his backyard and into the neighbors’. He’d bought his first house a few weeks ago. His home. He was thirty, and except for the first five years of his life, when he’d lived with his grandmother, this was the first home to which he truly belonged. He wasn’t an outsider. A squatter. This wasn’t temporary shelter until he was shuffled off to another foster home.
    He was home. He felt it in his bones and he didn’t know why. He’d lived in different parts of the country—of the world—but Lovett, Texas, had felt right the moment he arrived. He recognized Lily Darlington’s red Jeep even before he ran her plates. For the past week, since he moved in, he’d be getting ready to hit the sack as she backed out of her driveway with her kid in the car.
    Before he shined his light into her car, the impression of his neighbor was . . . single mother with big blond curls and a long, lean body. After the traffic stop, he knew she was thirty-eight, older than she looked and prettier than he’d imagined from his quick glimpses of her. And she’d clearly been annoyed that he had the audacity to pull her over. He was used to that, though. Generally people weren’t happy to see the rolling lights in their rearview.
    Across his yard and Lily’s, separated by a short white fence, his kitchen window faced into hers. Today was Saturday. There weren’t any lights on yet, but he knew that by ten that boy of hers would be outside bouncing a basketball in the driveway and keeping him awake.
    He’d been out of the Army for two years but was still a very light sleeper. One small sound and he was wide awake, pinpointing the position, origin, and exact nature of the sound.
    He replaced Pinky’s milk, then she followed him out of the kitchen and into the living room. A