Rattle Some Cages Read online

  Table of Contents

  Rattle Some Cages

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Other titles by Lani Lynn Vale

  Blurb

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Epilogue

  Not a Role Model

  Rattle Some Cages

  By Lani Lynn Vale

  Text copyright © 2022 Lani Lynn Vale ®

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  To my best friend, Danielle. You da best.

  Acknowledgments

  Golden Czermak - Photographer

  My Brother’s Editor & Ink It Out Editing - My editors

  Alyssa Garcia - Cover Artist & PA

  My mom - Thank you for reading this book eight million two hundred and eighty-seven times.

  Kendra, Lisa, Laura, Penney, Brandi, Jen, Kathy, Mindy, Barbara & Amanda—I don’t know what I would do without y’all. Thank you, my lovely betas, for loving my books as much as I do.

  Other titles by Lani Lynn Vale

  The Freebirds

  Boomtown

  Highway Don’t Care

  Another One Bites the Dust

  Last Day of My Life

  Texas Tornado

  I Don’t Dance

  The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC

  Lights To My Siren

  Halligan To My Axe

  Kevlar To My Vest

  Keys To My Cuffs

  Life To My Flight

  Charge To My Line

  Counter To My Intelligence

  Right To My Wrong

  Code 11- KPD SWAT

  Center Mass

  Double Tap

  Bang Switch

  Execution Style

  Charlie Foxtrot

  Kill Shot

  Coup De Grace

  The Uncertain Saints

  Whiskey Neat

  Jack & Coke

  Vodka On The Rocks

  Bad Apple

  Dirty Mother

  Rusty Nail

  The Kilgore Fire Series

  Shock Advised

  Flash Point

  Oxygen Deprived

  Controlled Burn

  Put Out

  I Like Big Dragons Series

  I Like Big Dragons and I Cannot Lie

  Dragons Need Love, Too

  Oh, My Dragon

  The Dixie Warden Rejects

  Beard Mode

  Fear the Beard

  Son of a Beard

  I’m Only Here for the Beard

  The Beard Made Me Do It

  Beard Up

  For the Love of Beard

  Law & Beard

  There’s No Crying in Baseball

  Pitch Please

  Quit Your Pitchin’

  Listen, Pitch

  The Hail Raisers

  Hail No

  Go to Hail

  Burn in Hail

  What the Hail

  The Hail You Say

  Hail Mary

  The Simple Man Series

  Kinda Don’t Care

  Maybe Don’t Wanna

  Get You Some

  Ain’t Doin’ It

  Too Bad So Sad

  Bear Bottom Guardians MC

  Mess Me Up

  Talkin’ Trash

  How About No

  My Bad

  One Chance, Fancy

  It Happens

  Keep It Classy

  Snitches Get Stitches

  F-Bomb

  The Southern Gentleman Series

  Hissy Fit

  Lord Have Mercy

  KPD Motorcycle Patrol

  Hide Your Crazy

  It Wasn’t Me

  I’d Rather Not

  Make Me

  Sinners are Winners

  If You Say So

  SWAT 2.0

  Just Kidding

  Fries Before Guys

  Maybe Swearing Will Help

  Ask Me If I Care

  May Contain Wine

  Joke’s on You

  Join the Club

  Any Day Now

  Say it Ain’t So

  Officially Over It

  Nobody Knows

  Depends Who’s Asking

  Valentine Boys

  Herd That

  Crazy Heifer

  Chute Yeah

  Get Bucked

  Souls Chapel Revenants

  Repeat Offender

  Conjugal Visits

  Jailbait

  Doin’ A Dime

  Kitty, Kitty

  Gen Pop

  Inmate of the Month

  Madd CrossFit Series

  No Rep

  Jerk It

  Chalk Dirty to Me

  Battle Crows MC

  Always Someone’s Monster

  Make Me Your Villain

  Rattle Some Cages

  Not A Role Model

  Get Tragic

  Strange and Unusual

  Never Trust The Living

  Blurb

  It’s not every day that you see a dead body at the beach. Or the woman of your dreams sitting next to that dead body.

  Price Crow first saw Sabrina Proctor in the middle of a hurricane.

  She’d been sitting next to her dead best friend, who’d passed away on the beach, with no way to get her back home, thanks to the world’s worst luck, and one hell of a storm.

  So Price does what any decent person would do: he carries Sabrina’s dead best friend to their beach house and doesn’t leave her side until he’s forced to.

  He had every intention of bridging that gap, of checking up on her and making sure she was okay, but life is funny and has a way of making a mockery of the best-laid plans.

  Despite one hell of a connection, under the worst of circumstances, they go their separate ways. At least, he tries to. But he can’t stop thinking about her, and it becomes apparent, very fast, that he has a decision to make.

  Choose Sabrina, or live out the rest of his life making everyone else around him happy except for himself.

  PROLOGUE

  If I were a bird, I know who I would shit on.

  -Sabrina to her father

  SABRINA

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  Surely, I hadn’t heard him correctly.

  Surely.

  “I want my dad to check to make sure that you’re still pure,” Cole repeated, confirming that I had, in fact, heard him correctly. I wasn’t hearing things. “I know that this is rather… odd. But this is something that every single female in the history of my family has done on the night before her wedding.”

  I blinked.

 
Then I burst out laughing.

  Because surely he had to be joking.

  He had to be.

  Right?

  But nope, the moment that I burst out laughing, Cole’s lips went all pinchy—which usually indicated that he was about to lose his shit.

  But, I kept laughing.

  Because how could I not?

  I mean, when I’d met Cole at the age of eighteen, I’d found his vow of celibacy until marriage quite annoying, but doable.

  I mean, we were meant to have sex, and I didn’t believe in all that hullabaloo like he did.

  But since Cole meant something to me, I was more than willing to give him everything he asked for.

  And I did.

  I gave him six years, as well as my promise of waiting until marriage.

  “Only if you let my dad look at your asshole,” I found myself saying, hoping yet again for him to joke right back with me.

  Except, he got offended. “What does my butthole have to do with this?”

  I literally almost burst out laughing again.

  Because he was so offended, in fact, that he had that little line between his eyebrows, indicating that he was even closer to blowing.

  I’d been on the receiving end of Cole’s temper before, and I didn’t like it.

  He knew this.

  I knew this.

  My dad even knew this.

  Yeah, speaking of my dad…

  “I guess I’ll see you later,” I said stiffly.

  I stormed out of the house, the only thing on my mind was my father, and what he would do now that I’d called the wedding off.

  Probably celebrate.

  My dad hadn’t much liked Cole since the moment that I’d met him.

  He’d tolerated him, sure, but he hadn’t liked him.

  Which was quite surprising, because everyone liked Cole.

  Only my dad?

  He hadn’t much liked him.

  “If you leave, you won’t be welcomed back.”

  I looked over my shoulder at my now ex-fiancé.

  What I saw were his brothers, his dad, and him watching me go. Cole looked as if he couldn’t quite believe I was walking away.

  His father and brothers were looking on as if their favorite plaything was disappearing right out of their lives.

  Gross.

  I got in my car and plugged my phone into my dash, because I still needed the fucking GPS to lead me out of the hellhole where Cole lived with his backwoods family.

  Pressing Dad on my favorites, I started heading toward his house, shaking my head and muttering to myself the entire way.

  I got home—and yes, I still thought of my dad’s place as home even though I’d moved out four years ago when I’d started college—and slammed my car door a little too hard.

  Causing my grandfather to startle from the nap he’d been taking on the front porch.

  “Whoa there, darlin’,” Gramps called in his frail voice. “What on Earth has your knickers in a twist?”

  I gritted my teeth as I all but stomped up the walkway to the porch.

  “I’ll only be able to repeat this once,” I said. “Let me go get Dad and a beer, he’s gonna need one. Do you want one?”

  “Of course,” Gramps supplied.

  The moment I breached the door to the house, my father looked up from the table, where he was crushing peanut shells with his fingers and tossing the nuts into his mouth.

  He had a massive mess of shells and stuff all over his lap and the floor around him—something that would’ve made my mother apoplectic if she were still around—and he was looking at me with surprise.

  “You’re early,” he said.

  I’d intended on staying the night with him tonight, as was the usual for a bride on the night before her wedding.

  I sighed. “I need a beer, STAT. I also want to talk to you. Gramps wants to know, too, so we have to go out to the porch.”

  Dad stood up and snatched two beers out of the fridge door and jerked his head toward me.

  I took the beer, and he seized the bag of peanuts as he followed close behind.

  Only when we were all situated, and I exacted a promise out of my dad, did I start the story of how my night had gone.

  When I was finished explaining what had happened, my dad was looking at me as if I’d grown a second head.

  “Let me get this straight,” Dad gaped. “Your fiancé, and his dad, as well as his brothers, wanted to check to make sure you were still a virgin?”

  I swallowed hard. “Yes.”

  “And he does know that hymens are practically a myth nowadays, correct?” he challenged.

  I smirked.

  My dad was a ladies’ doctor.

  He looked at the female anatomy for a living.

  Or he used to. Now he focused on aging women’s hormones, and how to help them live a better life after they’d gone through menopause or had hysterectomies.

  If anybody would know what they’re talking about, it was my dad.

  “I have no clue,” I admitted. “At first, I thought he was joking. Then I jokingly suggested he let you look at his asshole, since that was basically the same thing he wanted to look at on me. When he started to lose his temper, I took that as my sign to leave. He told me on the way out the door that if I left, I wasn’t welcomed back… so it looks like we’re not getting married tomorrow after all.”

  My dad started to chuckle.

  My grandfather followed shortly behind.

  “It’s a good thing that it’s my birthday tomorrow, too,” Gramps took a sip of his beer. “And it’s my ninetieth. That means that since the invitations said come celebrate a special event, everyone can just assume it was my birthday they were coming for, not your wedding. You got that cheap wedding dress from the warehouse, right?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yes.”

  I’d gotten it because I didn’t see the point in making my dad spend a thousand bucks on a dress for me that I’d only wear once.

  Luckily, I’d literally spent thirty-nine dollars. It was a white sheath dress that looked like it could be worn for anything, from prom to weddings, to quinceañeras.

  I’d be able to save it for a different occasion, that was for sure.

  “You don’t seem that upset.”

  I looked at my gramps.

  “I’m… ambivalent,” I admitted. “I should’ve seen that we were falling apart a long time ago. I mean, I thought about it when I was driving home, and I realized there were a lot of things that I hated about him. If I hate that many things… why would I marry him?”

  Because I was stupid, that’s why.

  “You thought that was what you were supposed to do,” Dad said. “You’ve been with him for six years. He’s safe. Marriage is the next logical step. But… yeah. I’ve been trying to tell you for years he was a weirdo.”

  I laughed, relieved.

  “You’re not mad that I wasted your money?” I asked carefully.

  Dad snorted, then cracked into another peanut.

  He held the shell out to me with the nuts in it, and only when I held my hand out, and he dumped them into my palm, did he answer.

  I popped them into my mouth as he said, “Sabrina, baby. You’re a worrywart. Everything that I bought—I mean sure, it’s thirty cases of beer—will eventually be drunk. Food can be eaten. Party favors can be returned, because you bet your ass I was hoping you’d come to your senses. But overall, I don’t give a fuck that we just wasted about twenty-five hundred bucks. All I care about is you. Don’t you see?”

  I sighed, holding my hand out for another nut, which he gave me.

  “Have you told Faye yet?” Gramps wondered.

  I groaned. “I’ll tell her after her chemo treatment tomorrow.”

  “Maybe you could go with her now that you’re not getting married,” Dad suggested.

  I grinned.

  “I can!” I clapped. “I’ll head that way. If I leave now, I can spend the night at her place, and togethe
r we can head to the doctor’s office.”

  Dad stood up. Gramps stayed where he was.

  Only after I got hugs from both of them did Dad say, “I love you, baby girl. Don’t ever forget that.”

  I wouldn’t.

  Not ever.

  • • •

  “I’m sorry, can you repeat that?” Faye looked at me wide eyed.

  I started to laugh. “That’s the exact same thing that I said!”

  “I just don’t know what to say,” Faye admitted. “But I have to be honest. I was pretty ticked off that your fiancé wouldn’t allow you to wait to get married. I mean, I’m your best friend. I should be there. He should’ve been willing to wait.”

  That’d been another red flag.

  Cole didn’t like Faye.

  Not even a little bit.

  And, since Cole wasn’t willing to wait a year so Faye could come to a wedding with a lot of people, allowing her immune system to improve, Faye had suggested I just go ahead and have my wedding. As long as I allowed her to watch over FaceTime.

  It hadn’t sat well with me that Cole hadn’t been willing to wait until she was okay to get married.

  But I’d chalked so many of his oddities up to him being excited and ready to get married that I’d been blinded.

  But I was no longer covering my eyes with cotton wool.

  I had them wide open, and I would never, ever, ever go back to him.

  “I get to go with you to your chemo treatment tomorrow, at least. You won’t be alone!” I promised.

  I’d originally had my gramps going with her tomorrow. It’d bugged the absolute crap out of me that she’d be alone, so my gramps had promised he’d go with her and forgo going to my wedding. Which had been another thing that pissed me off with Cole.

  He’d made me choose.

  I didn’t want to make that choice.

  But I’d had to make it anyway.

  Red flags were everywhere.

  What the hell was wrong with me?

  “About that…” Faye hesitated. “I’m done with chemo.”

  My heart leaped into my throat, and excitement started to flood my veins.

  “Really?” I cried out. “That’s great news!”

  Except, a few seconds after my declaration, I realized that Faye had deflated.

  “Faye…”