Got the Life (A Nicki Sosebee Novel) (2 page)

She bit her lip
as she caught herself staring at the half blank page
on her lap
.  She had to pay attention to what was happening in the courtroom.  Can’t have a front page story if you don’t get the facts straight.
  She adjusted in the pew again and
paid attention to
the proceedings.
  She managed to catch the defendant pleading “not guilty” and scribbled it down on the pad in her lap.  Then she heard the low rumble of her cell phone vibrating in the pew next to her, indicating that she had an incoming call.  She picked it up and looked at the screen. 
It was Sean.  She noted it but set it back on the seat.  He could wait.

The judge gave a date for the defendant’
s next hearing and set bail at $25,000.
  Edwards was taken into custody and escorted out of the courtroom.
  Well, she’d been wrong that he would get to walk
, but it made his case all the more interesting
.  The judge must see Edwards as a risk, meaning this case was important enough to cover
in the paper
.
 
Nicki jotted the date and amount
and saw an entire row of people—Edwards’s family, she assumed—make gestures and mutter amongst themselves.  They didn’t get loud enough for the judge to reprimand them, but she looked them over and wrote a couple of details for herself.  Just as she looked up from the paper again, she
saw her cell phone screen light up again.  She pressed a couple of buttons to read the text message. 
Call me
, the screen beckoned her.  Nicki’s right eyebrow curled—Sean
never
texted.  What was up with that?  She sat through the next few arraignments of the morning—nothing big to report on, but
those cases would
probably be clumped together in a little paragraph all their own somewhere in the paper tomorrow. 
Those
details weren’t her problem.  Her problem was finding a story good enough to make the front page.  And she thought Jason Edwards’s tale of family loyalty, criminal mischief, and
four
counts of arson might be the one.
  She planned to write a small blurb soon for the online edition of the
Winchester Tribune
and tomorrow morning’s paper edition.  Then it was up to Neal Black, the editor of her hometown paper
, to decide if it was good enough
to print
.

She walked out of the courtroom
into the cool, marble-floored hallway and quickly found her way outdoors.  Ugh.  It was hot
outside
. 
Arizona
hot.
  It shouldn’t be this fucking hot in the Colorado foothills
, Nicki thought.  She began walking down the concrete steps to the sidewalk and decided she’d better
go see
Sean.  Something important
must
have been going on for Sean to call and then text.  She’d better put him out of his misery ASAP.

Chapter Two

NICKI LEANED HER
back against
a
wooden table in Sean’s garage.  Sean was tinkering on a motorcycle while talking to Nicki. 
Nicki was looking over at the most precious thing in the world to Sean:  his custom-built Harley.  He hardly ever rode the damn thing, but it was souped up, and he was constantly doing more to it, which was why its permanent home was in his shop.  It was chrome
and
black
with
red
here and there
and contained over one hundred horses
in its engine
.  But looking at that beauty couldn’t help Nicki concentrate.  She
was biting the side of her cheek, forcing herself to not say a word
until she knew she could be calm
. 
Anything you say can and will be used against you.
  Nicki tried to pay attention
to Sean’s next words
but found it difficult. 
Jesus.
  She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. 
He must have gone and lost his fucking mind.

He had a blue bandanna tied around his head like he usually did when he worked in the shop, covering that gorgeous head of dark
blonde
just-a-little-too-long hair.  He kept looking up from the bike to make eye contact with her,
those
dark blue
orbs
piercing into her.

“Wait,” Nicki said.  “Did I hear you right?”

Sean looked up from the bike, setting the wrench down on the small bench.  “Yeah.  Kayla wants us to move in together.  But I wanted to see what you thought.”

Nicki shook her head and raised her eyebrows.  “Why don’t you ask your guy friends what
they
think?”

Sean smiled that killer smile of his, his perfect white teeth disarming her.  “You know why.  Because they’re a bunch of insensitive as
sholes.  Besides, even if they we
ren’t, they’ll tell me I’m pussywhipped even if they’d do the same thing.”

Nicki smirked.  “Well,
they’re right.  You
are
pussywhipped.”

He sighed and picked up
a socket wrench
.  “Is that what you really think?”

God, she was pissed at him, but there was no way in hell she was going to show it.  She wasn’t angry that he was thinking about moving in with his girlfriend.  No, she was pissed that he was making her talk to him about it.  But she had to be cool. 
“
What do
you
want to do, Sean?  Do you
want
to move in with her?”

He shrugged his shoulders while sliding a socket on his wrench.
  “I don’t know.  That’s why I need your advice.”

Nicki walked closer to the bike between them.  “Do you love her?”

Sean resumed fidgeting with the bike
, working the noisy socket wrench,
and wouldn’t make eye contact with Nicki.  “I don’t know.  Maybe that’s part of it too?”

He wa
s worse than a girl
.  “Would you marry her?”

“God, Nicki, why are you asking me all this shit?”

“Because those are the things
I
would consider before moving in with someone.”
  She walked over to the bench and sat next to him.  He finally looked over at her.  “What are
you
thinking about?”

He looked down at the tool in his hand, then looked in her eyes.  “Well, it would save on rent, that’s for sure.  And we spend a lot of time together already, so there’s that.
  And it would be nice to come home to
her
arms and a hot cooked meal.
”
  So he wanted a slave.  Or ready sex.  Or both.

But s
he sensed that he was wanting a reason to tell Kayla no.
  And Nicki refused to be the bad guy.  If he didn’t want to do it, he needed to find those reasons within himself.
  “But…?”

She heard his
exhale.  “But…I don’t know that I want to be around her 24/7.  I’ve seen what it does to other people.  I mean, Christ.  You might as well get married if you’re gonna move in together.”

Why had she
decided to
s
it
down next to him?  She coul
d hardly stand being this close,
seeing the perfect cut of his
longish soul patch
and sideburns trimmed into not quite mutton chops
,
not quite a chinstrap beard
but certainly
longish sideburns,
larger than most
guys wore them
, highlighting the sexy shape of his angled jaw
.  Sean had always been all about looking good and it drove Nicki crazy.  She hoped he didn’t know she still thought about him that way. 
Of course he doesn’t, dumbass.
  Why would he ask her about his girlfriend if he thought she still cared?  He’d only do it if he was an asshole.  And he wasn’t.  Usually.  At least, he wasn’t being one right now.  Nicki was fairly certain of that.

She stood and cleared her throat, smoothing her denim miniskirt with her hands.  “Well, I hate to tell you this, but I can’t help you.  I feel like any advice I give you will be wrong.”

Sean stood up, facing her, leaving the
socket wrench
on the
bench.  He grinned.  “No worries.  You helped.”

God, it was no wonder she couldn’t get over him.  Not only was he smart and fun
with
a great sense of humor, he was nicer to look at than an entire night of
buff
WWE wrestlers with their shirts off.  He was wearing a simple white tee and faded blue jeans, but she could make out the definition of his chest.  There was nothing soft about Sean.  And his arms were well-inked,
mostly in black with very little color.  Even the fingers of his right hand were tattooed between his knuckles—each fing
er had one letter that spelled
BAMF
. 
He said it was his punching hand, so when he’d throw a right cross in a bar brawl, the recipient would know who took him down. 
She remembered when her parents first saw
the tattoo
and asked him what
it
meant.  Her mother was
not
amused to discover th
at Sean considered himself one B
ad
A
ss
M
other
F
ucker.  Too bad for
mom
he couldn’t just cover it up. 
But s
he seemed to get used to it after a while.
 
In that way,
Sean managed to have Nicki’s mother captivated too.  Nicki sighed.  “If you say so.”  She wondered what his decision was going to be, but no way
in hell
was she going to ask.
  She’d find out soon enough.
  “So guess what I was doing when you called.”

“You were sitting in court.”

“Oh.  I already told you.”

“No, that’s just usually what you do in the mornings anymore.”

Nicki smiled.  “Oh, that’s not good.  I’m getting predictable in my old age.”  Sean nodded, still grinning.  “But I think I’ve finally got a case that might get me on the front page.”

“Yeah?  What’s that?”

“Well, there’s this guy who was arrested for arson.  I have no idea how the cops figured it out, but apparently he burned some guy’s house to the ground.”

“The dumbass was probably bragging about it
on Facebook
to his friends.”

“Maybe. 
But what’s weird is the
victim’s
house was in
Colorado Springs
.  So I’m wondering why the cops here even care.  Why not let
El Paso
County
deal with it?”

“Isn’t
it
your
job to find out
, investigative reporter?”

Chapter Three

NICKI FINALLY
LEFT
Sean’s garage. 
She revved her beat-
up
decade-old
red
Volkswagen Jetta
and heard Korn playing on the radio. 
The station was
playing one of her favorite
Korn
songs, “Got the Life,” so s
he cranked the radio, then shifted into drive.  She had to
head over to the newspaper to
talk with her editor.

Why had it been so hard to be around
Sean
today? 
Why? 
She knew why.  She’d just broken up with her latest “boyfriend” last week and so all her thoughts came back to
focus on
Sean again,
like a lion’s intense gaze on the
zebra
across the plain.  Her thoughts always
snapped
back to Sean when she wasn’t distracted by a boyfriend du jour.
  And sometimes even the boy toys
weren’t enough.

But this whole Kayla thing had Nicki unnerved.  Sean had never been this serious abou
t a girl before.  This could be
really
serious
.

Which meant that Nicki had to finally find a way to get over him once and for all.

That was easier said than done. 
They’d become friends in high school while doing theatre together.  Sean was the sound guy, while Nicki loved the limelight.  So many hours spent together, especially
at
cast parties and impromptu
gatherings
, le
d them to discover that they had a lot in common.  They both loved the same music, the same TV shows, the same books (although Sean wouldn’t have admitted to his other friends that he liked to read), even the same classes
, and they both liked playing paintball
and snowboarding
.  They found themselves spending more and more time together, but they were just friends.  Nicki had been dating the same boy all through high school up until he left for college in
California
anyway, and so she hadn’t thought of Sean like that back then.