Rattle Some Cages
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…”