Carson Keller used to think her biggest problem was their rivalry against the Kooks, but that was until buried secrets rose to the surface. Now her biggest problems included a dangerous treasure hunt and a hot-headed teenage boy.
✰ season 1-3 ✰
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
THE SOUND OF A MOTORBIKE hitting the gravel as it sped towards the house made Carson walk onto the front porch to see who it was. While nothing was directly happening as of late in the sense that they were no longer running from the cops, she still found herself on edge. Rafe and Ward were still walking free and she didn't trust them. She was relieved when she saw it was just JJ, but the way he was riding in made her immediately recognize that something was wrong. He looked disheveled as he hopped off his bike and threw it to the ground.
"You get fired?" she asked.
"I like to think of it more as having quit," he grumbled.
"Wanna talk about it?" she asked as he leaned on the porch railing next to her.
"It was just Kelce and Topper with their dumbass Kook friends," he said simply, which was enough to tell her what had happened. "I hated that place anyway." The Kooks already treated the Pogues like they were nothing but a piece of dirt on the bottom of their shoe, so having to wait on them at their country club was demoralizing and infuriating.
"How will they ever get their filet mignon without you?" she teased, hitting her shoulder against his with a smile.
"The world may never know," he replied with his own smile. Carson always knew how to put him in a good mood when he otherwise wouldn't be. Though, that smile quickly dropped when his eyes caught sight of Carson's wrists. "What the hell happened to you?"
Carson had almost forgotten about her wrists due to being so focused on her anger towards Ward and Rafe, but when he brought it up she realized how painful it was. Of course she didn't want to admit this though so she was just going to try to play it off.
"I thought I would try something out of the JJ Maybank handbook," she said. "I wanted to see what it was like in the eyes of a criminal."
"What did you do?"
She sighed and rubbed gently at her wrists. "Tried to assault Ward in the middle of the police station."
"Carson."
"What? He deserved it!" she defended herself. "He just lied straight to Shoupe's face and he's going to continue to do that unless we do something to stop him."
"I know that, but that doesn't mean you should try to get yourself arrested doing it," he said.
"I'm sorry, are you really lecturing me about not getting arrested?" She hadn't expected this fight to happen, but no one could deny that the tensions were high. "I was just doing what anyone else would have done. I won't just sit back and let Rafe and Ward get away with this."
"And you think that's what I'm doing?" he asked.
"No, but you can't get mad at me for trying," she said.
"I'm not mad at you, Car. I just can't lose you too," he said, his voice cracking when he said it. And that's when she realized what the fight was actually about. JJ was walking around with so much grief surrounding his heart that the thought of losing Carson made him feel like he would just break. Usually he would have found it amusing that she almost got arrested, but right now with John B gone, she was the one of the only things left that he had.
