Dumping Dallas Winston Read online

  Dad pointed to the chair across from him. “Have a seat.”

  Reluctantly, I sat down.

  “I’m glad you are suddenly interested in my job and my duties as the Chief of Police. Had you been as keyed in earlier this evening I might not have had to explain to the Director of Parks and Rec that my daughter was caught redhanded defacing public property on the riverwalk.”

  I swallowed hard. Officer Nealson must have been quick with that report.

  “I was actually doing Parks and Rec a favor,” I tried. “Peonies or four letter words—which is a better look for the great city of Grover?”

  Dad was not amused. “A great look for Grover is the police chief’s daughter not getting picked up in a patrol car.”

  “Sorry,” I mumbled looking down at my hands in my lap so I didn’t have to meet his expectant stare.

  “I’m hearing a lot of sorry lately. The thing about that word is, it’s not...”

  “A magic wand,” I finished for him. Dad had been giving this lecture since my sister and I were old enough to break things.

  “I’m serious, Harper. You can’t just apologize your way out of everything. Earlier this year we caught you sneaking out your bedroom window. I don’t even want to talk about that hair cut—”

  I rolled my eyes. Why was it that everything came back to my side shave? Somehow my hair was more offensive than spray painting public property.

  “And now this. You’ve been behaving like a textbook delinquent. You know your mom thinks—” he stopped himself from going on.

  “My mom thinks what?” I asked, anxious to hear what Mom had to say about me, since she never seemed to have much to say to me.

  Dad sighed. “Your mother thinks you’re acting out because you miss your sister.”

  I roared with laughter. Alice leaving for college was the best thing that had happened to me lately. Now I didn’t have to hang my report card on the fridge next to Miss Ivy League’s.

  “Seriously? How many articles of Parent Magazine did she read before she came up with that garbage?”

  Dad gave me a hard look that wiped the sarcastic smile from my face.

  “If your behavior isn’t about your sister, then it’s about you. Maybe now would be a good time for you to tell me what’s going on in that partially shaved head of yours?”

  Inside my partially shaved head I ticked off a neverending list of things that were bothering me. Things like: I wasn’t going to get into Yale, maybe not even State College, and my boyfriend was kind of a jerk tonight, but how was I supposed to tell him that? If we weren’t meeting in his office because of something stupid I’d done, we weren’t meeting period. Maybe that’s what I was supposed to say. I don’t miss my sister, I miss you, but the words were caught in my throat.

  It didn’t matter anyway because before I could answer, his phone was buzzing away on the desk in front of us.

  He opened his mouth to speak, but I replied for him, “You have to take that. Trust me, I know.”

  Dad looked sympathetic, and for a moment, I actually believed he might hit the ignore button and tune in to me for a change. Then he raised the phone to his ear.

  “Sorry, hun. We’ll talk later?”

  I shrugged and headed toward the door.

  “Chief Huntington,” he answered, giving his full attention to whoever needed saving on the other end of the phone.

  “You know the thing about sorry.” I mumbled, before pushing through his door and kicking the outstretched legs of Landon Maxwell on my way out.

  Landon

  I can’t believe she brought up the pudding. I was seven!

  Still, it made me laugh as I leaned closer to the door, listening to every word. Harper Huntington didn’t forget a thing, especially about me.

  “Come on in, son,” Hunt called from inside his office shortly after his daughter stormed off. When I walked in, I saw the exhaustion on his face. It was getting late. Past seven, and my orientation appointment was at six, and the pile of papers on his desk and constant ringing of his phone certainly weren’t going to let him get home anytime soon.

  I sat down on one of the large chairs in front of his desk while he dealt with something on his computer.

  “Just give me a minute,” he muttered while he typed, a deep wrinkle formed between his brows.

  “Yeah, no problem.” While I waited, I looked around his office. There were pictures of his family, his dog, his pretty bombshell blonde wife who I recognized from when she ran the PTA at our elementary school.

  I couldn’t hold back my smile while I leaned forward, taking in a picture that looked to be from about ten years ago. His two tow-headed girls, standing in front of them with wide, toothy grins while holding fishing poles in their hands.

  Was that...Harper? I thought as I stared at the little girl with a smile as wide as her face. I did not remember her ever looking like that. So innocent. So happy. So...cute.

  Next to her, stood her sister, Alice, who I only remember because Gabe had a massive crush on her in middle school. She graduated a year ago and went away for college.

  She must have left the same time Gabe took off for his stupid Euro study abroad. How did I not realize that?

  As my eyes scanned the rest of the frames, the picture behind the fishing photo made me bust out with a loud throaty chuckle. Hunt’s hard stare found me from the other side of the desk, so I sat back and cleared my throat. Still, Harper’s middle school photo, complete with braces and pimples, watched me. I definitely remembered that version of Harper.

  Inside, I was dying.

  But every so often, I felt Hunt glare at me over his computer, so I kept it pretty solid on the outside.

  What a trainwreck that girl was. I almost wanted to tell Hunt about the time she almost took out one of my eyes with the pointy part of her high-heeled shoes after Homecoming. It’s like she was always blazing mad. Easily triggered and so desperate for attention that she’d rip off anyone’s head for one wrong move. And I wasn’t buying that sister’s gone crap. My mom died and my brother left, and you didn’t see me nearly breaking some kid’s arm in the fourth grade because he made fun of my combat boots.

  Yeah, Hunt. I have stories from elementary school too.

  Best to probably keep those to myself though.

  He glared at me again, and I smiled at him, tight-lipped and uncomfortable.

  “My daughter had some interesting things to say,” he muttered, looking back to his computer screen.

  “I sure wish I knew why she hated me, sir.”

  “Cut the crap, Maxwell.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Slamming his laptop shut and folding his arms over his desk, he cocked an eyebrow in my direction. “Parties and underage drinking…”

  “Not my finest, but can you blame me? I had unlimited funds and very limited supervision,” I said with a fake apology on my face.

  Hunt closed his eyes, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He looked downright exhausted. Now would probably be the best time to...as he said...cut the crap.

  “Okay, I admit. I haven’t always made the best decisions, Hunt. Sir. Sorry.”

  He peeled one tired eye open and shot me a look that threatened me to get on with my apology before he kicked me out onto the streets.

  “This internship is all I have. I’m not going to college, at least not without a scholarship, and the counselor lady said that if I do this, I’ll qualify for some college grant that will put me all the way through college and the academy.”

  “Why do you want to be a cop?”

  I sat back in my chair, and I looked around the office, this time ignoring the photos but seeing it for what it was. Authority. Power. Success.

  “I want this,” I said, waving my hands around. “I want to lay down the law, kick some...butt,” I said, catching myself. “Hunt, I know I have what it takes to run this town like you do, and I’m here to learn from the best.”

  Finally, there seemed to be some life to his eyes. He
even looked downright pleased as he watched me, nodding his head. I leaned back, feeling a little proud of myself. I guess that was a good speech.

  “Alright...good. I have a great idea. Harper!” he called toward the open door, and my head spun to where she finally sulked in a moment later. Did he want me to give my rousing speech to her too?

  With his shoulders back and a new sense of purpose in his expression, Hunt pulled open his laptop and started typing something furiously. His daughter and I sat there in tense silence while we waited.

  “What do you want?” she griped.

  “Now that school is out, Harper, you will be doing some community service to make up for the little misdemeanor you pulled tonight. You can thank Nealson for the fact that you’re not awaiting bail at the moment.”

  Harper huffed loudly in the doorway, her mouth hanging open and the same deep wrinkle between her eyebrows that her dad had.

  It was truly a pleasure to watch.

  Then, Hunt looked at me. “Son, I will gladly take you on as an intern at the precinct, but let me tell you now...you have a lot to learn.”

  I nodded eagerly.

  “There’s a lot more to being a police officer than catching criminals and running the town. We keep our community safe, happy, and healthy. And sometimes that means rolling up our sleeves and doing the dirty work.”

  I did not like the sound of that.

  “The two of you will spend the next five days, for a total of twenty-five hours cleaning up graffiti around the city. Together.”

  “Um...sir,” I said, sitting up to stop him. He must have misunderstood me. This was definitely not part of the internship. I was supposed to get him coffee and ride around with him in his squad car, not babysit his badly behaved daughter.

  “See you tomorrow, Maxwell. Bright and early.”

  With that, he shut his laptop and stood up from his desk. When I glanced toward the doorway, I could tell I wasn’t the only one devastated by this news.

  Harper

  Saturday morning, a day for scones, coffee, reruns of Bob’s Burgers. Not a day for misery. Not a day for community service with the devil. I pulled my deep purple comforter up over my face and screamed into the fluff.

  Dad knocked on my bedroom door three times before pushing it open a crack.

  “If you want a ride, get moving,” he warned.

  I groaned and flipped to my side, stumbling out of bed and into the bathroom shortly after. I had no more than peed and brushed my teeth before a honk from the driveway let me know he wasn’t messing around.

  Seriously? I shimmied into a pair of cutoffs, pulled a tie-dye tank top I wasn’t particularly attached to over my head and sprinted down the stairs.

  “Tomorrow you need to be up earlier,” he remarked, leaning across the driver’s seat to place a sweet and sticky donut in my hand.

  “This is such a stereotype,” I replied “A delicious stereotype.”

  Dad grinned. “That one doesn’t bother me.”

  As we wound through town from our place in the suburbs to the parking lot of the riverwalk, I wondered which stereotypes did bother him. It was never an easy time to be a cop, but lately it seemed like more people hated cops than appreciated them. Which made me wonder why on earth a privileged pile of dog poo like Landon Maxwell would want to join the force. Didn’t he realize it was actual work?

  I considered cutting dad a break and actually behaving, but then I saw Landon leaning up against a lamp post and I remembered Dad and I were enemies for the next five days minimum.

  “Be nice to my intern,” said Dad, pulling up to the curb to let me out. I rolled my eyes and shoved the last bit of donut into my mouth.

  Landon smiled the second I stepped out of the car. His eyes travelled from my converse tennis shoes to the baseball cap that covered my offensive hair, and I was pretty sure that smile was grounded in some deeply disturbing thought. He leaned over and gave Dad the man wave.

  “Good morning, Chief,”

  Dad, bless his heart, barely acknowledged his existence. Instead, he unloaded a bucket of white paint, a tray, and two sets of rollers from the back of his patrol car. I watched Landon’s eyes flick between the rollers and me, like he was wondering how I was going to paint with both rollers at once. He was either dumb or lazy. Most likely both.

  I could tell by the way he stood with his arms folded across his chest and his weight in his heels that he was under the impression he was supervising me and didn’t have to do any of the work. He was in for a rude awakening.

  Completely unaware of the dynamic occuring between me and Landon, Dad planted a mortifying kiss on my forehead before hopping back into the driver’s seat and leaving us to murder one another.

  “Pick up the paint,” I growled tucking both rollers under one arm and heading toward last night’s masterpiece.

  “I’m supposed to be directing you, you know,” said Landon, but he reached down and grabbed the can all the same.

  In the cold, cold light of day my peony was slightly flawed. I frowned, noticing a few drips along the edges that I hadn’t noticed last night.

  Landon handed me the can of paint and squinted at the wall in front of us. “You got busted for painting flowers?”

  “Vandalism, as you will soon learn in junior cop school, is not design specific.” I grabbed a stick from the brush beside me and popped the lid off the paint.

  “Yeah, but getting arrested for painting flowers over graffiti is like getting arrested for non-violent protest. I thought you were more, you know...rebellious,” he said, waggling his eyebrows up and down.

  “Sorry to disappoint,” I replied, then tipped the sticky white paint into the tray. “Now, close your mouth and paint things.”

  Landon shrugged. “It’s actually kind of pretty,” he mumbled.

  If he was a normal person, I might have said thank you, but he wasn’t normal. He was the right hand man of satan, so instead, I plunged my roller into the paint extra hard, ensuring speckles of white flew up to decorate his calves.

  It felt unfair that we had to roll the entire back wall of the building when my design only covered a four-by-four patch, but arguing with Dad was futile. This wasn’t about what I had done, it was about who had seen it. He couldn’t let his daughter off the hook without some visible punishment.

  Landon, for his part, didn't complain. Mostly he bopped along to whatever boy band was playing in his headphones whilst painting uncomfortably close to me. I sighed with relief when Sloane and Gabe popped up behind us.

  “Lovely day for manual labor,” said Gabe eyeing his brother with a smirk. “Feels like just yesterday I was padding my college applications with extracurriculars.”

  Gag me. I understood what Sloane liked about him, he had like a lot going on aesthetically, but personality wise, he bore a striking resemblance to a block of wood. I’d never been a fan. It didn’t appear Landon was either because his smile was tight and he was white knuckling the handle of that roller.

  Sloane made a pouty face. “We agreed to pretend you aren’t going to college. You’re a failure, remember?”

  Gabe shook his head, “I forgot about the alternate ending, forgive me.”

  Feeling a strong dose of nausea coming on, I interrupted their conversation. “So then, just out for a stroll?”

  “We’re preparing for a movie marathon,” said Sloane. Her red hair was covered in an oversized hat, and despite the 85 degree heat she wore tights under her shorts. Now would have been an ideal time to jab her about fearing the sun, but I didn’t want to give Landon any additional material to work with.

  “Let me guess,” said Landon, his headphones now resting at the base of his neck. “Lethal Weapon 1-4.”

  Sloane looked at Landon like an elephant trunk had just sprung from the center of his forehead.

  “You didn’t tell your girlfriend Mel Gibson is your all time fav?” teased Landon.

  Gabe looked like he might get a little less boring and slightly more viole
nt so I stepped back and grinned expectantly.

  “Actually,” said Sloane, not quite as eager to watch the two of them wrestle as I was. “Reagan sent me over to remind you to behave.”

  “Oh snap, yes, please be sure and thank her for that. I will now put my delinquent days behind me and take up soap making.”

  “Hardy har har,” said Sloane. “I’m serious. She said if you get grounded from your final Girl Scout camp together she will, in no uncertain terms, reveal the contents of the box under your bed.”

  My face turned ten shades of red. That little hoochie!

  “What is in that box?” asked Sloane. She was biting the corner of her lip like she was worried I kept animal bones or voodoo dolls of the Khaki Collective down there.

  I should have made fun of her earlier after all. Had I distracted Landon with a little ginger baiting then, he might not be looking at me like candy-coated gold now.

  Landon

  Did Sloane just say Girl Scout? Was I breathing too close to the paint and now I was hallucinating?

  Harper, little miss girl with the dragon tattoo...was a Girl Scout?

  “Well, we should get going,” my brother’s girlfriend said as she stared at me uneasily. I kept my smile to myself as I painted the wall, suddenly excited to be alone with Harper because I had so many questions. So. Many. Questions.

  And I couldn’t ask them while Landon was around. My older brother loved to kill all joy, and even after our little Lifetime movie moment at Burger Barn last semester, I felt like I had to dilute myself around him.

  Gabe didn’t have the same sense of humor I did. Or any at all, if I was being honest. He kept trying to talk about Mom and got pissed whenever I made a joke about it. Like having a sense of humor and mourning someone could not coexist. It’s like he forgot that Mom had the most twisted sense of humor out of anyone in the family—which is probably where I got it.

  Gabe and Sloane left, leaving me alone with Troop Beverly Hills, who was currently putting in headphones like that would stop me. She caught me staring with a lopsided smile.