Chasing McCree Read Online Free PDF Page A

same after the bar brawl of
eighty-two.”
    “ Your grandfather was in a
bar fight?” I glanced at Briar.
    She smiled. “I hear he was pretty
wild.”
    Grandma purred. “An animal. Next time I
see you, I can tell you some stories about our trip to Africa. I
almost got married off to a tribal chief when Grandpa lost a poker
game to a witch doctor and a monkey who played the
harmonica.”
    Briar laughed. “Grandma, I’m going to
say goodbye to Chase, why don’t you go check on your
sangria?”
    “ Oh, I see how it is. You
kids want to smooch while the old bird isn’t looking.” Grandma
turned for the house, socks jingling as she opened the front door.
“I wasn’t born yesterday, you know. I got these gray hairs and
wrinkles from a hotheaded husband and a son who couldn’t keep his
pecker in his pants. Don’t know how he’s managed to stay married to
your mother for so long. She must have a magical
vagina.”
    The door shut. I looked at Briar. She
went pink with embarrassment, and I was about to tell her I loved
her grandmother, but the front door reopened. Grandma poked her
head back out. She narrowed her wrinkly eyes and pursed her lips
together, studying me closely, then Briar. “I know times are
different now, and you kids do things that would turn my hair
white. Do yourselves a favor and use protection. No glove, no
love.”
    The door snapped shut behind her, and I
couldn’t make eye contact with Briar as we walked back for the
truck. Her grandmother didn’t mince words.
    “ Well,” Briar let out a
breath and stopped next to the driver’s side door. “It was nice
meeting you Chase. Thanks for helping me last night. I owe
you.”
    “ You’re
welcome.”
    I shoved my hands in my pockets, not
quite ready to leave yet. Since I moved here to be with my mother,
Briar was the first person I formed any kind of connection with.
Come Monday, I knew, more than likely, things would go back to
normal. She’d go back to hanging with the popular crowd. The same
crowd that made it less than easy for me to make friends. Being the
new guy wasn’t exactly fun, but being ostracized by the general
school population because I didn’t drive a fifty thousand dollar
car or dress like a model, was verging on ridiculous. I would have
been happier at a public school around the average middle class. My
mother was trying to make up for all the years she’d been absent by
sending me to a pricy private school. A school where one of the
girls in my English class got a nose job for her
birthday.
    I wasn’t poor by any means. In fact, I
owned a 50,000-acre cattle ranch in Montana and had enough money. I
wasn’t going to use it to support a gluttonous lifestyle bent on
impressing others.
    My views were probably another reason
why I didn’t mesh so well with the other students. As I told Briar,
I was raised by my Grandparents. That makes an impression. It’s
vastly different from being born to parents who have friends with
other kids around your age. Especially when you are home schooled
on a ranch, and recess is learning how to run the family business
with a bunch of middle-aged cowboys for babysitters.
    The difference between Briar and me was
that I already knew our peer’s opinions meant shit. Worrying about
what the popular crowd thought only wasted valuable time and brain
cells. The people Briar called friends were too self-absorbed to
notice anything beyond them. And if they did notice, as was the
case with me, they only made fun of me to sooth their
insecurities.
    Ha, try walking up to any other
seventeen-year-old in the area, and I’m sure they wouldn’t know
half the shit I did.
    “ Well, I’d better get
going.” I couldn’t stand in the driveway all day, even though Briar
was mighty pretty to look at. She really did look like some sort of
princess. Those springy curls and freckles were damn appealing,
too. I’d met girls back home, but none of them interested me like
her.
    She nodded. “Yeah, me too.”
    I