“Big words for a little girl,” he snapped.
“We’re on the same fucking side!” I shouted, surprising him. “I don’t really see why you’d be a dick to me at this point! Me and Tommy are married. The deed is done.”
We were silent as we pulled up the driveway, but the minute Grease parked the car by their garage he spoke. “You’ve got balls,” he said, nodding. “That’s good. You’re gonna need ’em.”
“They’re probably bigger than yours,” I mumbled, reaching for my door handle.
“Hey,” he called, making me look at him. “I ain’t got no problem with you. Got problems with some of the decisions my son’s been makin’ these past few years, but I’m startin’ to see you’re not one of ’em.”
“Good to know.” I threw open my door and climbed out.
“Shit’s gonna get harder before it gets better,” he told me as we walked toward the house. “My boy ain’t the same as he was.”
“I barely knew him before,” I replied snarkily. “I was always with Mick, remember?”
Grease scoffed. “Jesus Christ, girl,” he said, shaking his head. “You don’t know when to let shit go.”
“Me and Mick were never a couple,” I said as we walked onto the porch.
“Yeah,” he murmured opening the front door. “I’m startin’ to believe that. Pretty sure my sweet kid woulda turned into somethin’ altogether different if he had to deal with your ass.”
We walked inside and Grease called out to Callie that we were home while I looked around. The last time I’d been there, I’d been so nervous about telling them we were getting married that I hadn’t taken in the changes they’d made in the past few years. Everything seemed less messy. There wasn’t a pile of boys’ shoes by the front door anymore. No backpacks at the bottom of the stairs. No spare car parts from the Nova or bags of chips and candy on the coffee table in the living room.
“Hey, sugar,” Grease said as Callie came out of the kitchen. “Good day?”
“Until you told me my son was arrested,” she muttered, leaning up to kiss him. “What the hell is going on?”
“I’ll fill you in,” he replied. “Nix is sendin’ down a lawyer friend of his, so we’ll know more Monday mornin’.”
“I wish they were still young enough to spank,” Callie said with a sound of frustration. “Damn it.”
“I can do it for you,” I cut in with a nod. “It’s totally acceptable if I do it.”
“Heather,” she said with a smile, moving toward me. She gave me a tight hug and then leaned back, her hands still on my shoulders. “Honey, why didn’t you change out of your wedding dress?”
I shrugged, looking down at my dress. It was wrinkled and sort of dingy looking from wearing it all day. “I didn’t have any other clothes.”
She made a sound of disgust. “You told me not to come down there,” she bitched at Grease over her shoulder. “How everything was taken care of. You couldn’t have gotten the girl something to change into?”
“Had some other shit on my mind, sugar,” he replied as he pulled off his boots.
“Men are idiots,” Callie told me quietly, shaking her head. “Come on, I’ll get you something of Rosie’s to wear. She’s at Farrah’s for the night.”
She tugged me up the stairs and into Rose’s room.
“We’ll just get you some pajamas,” she said as she walked to the dresser. “We’ll go to your house and get you some clothes tomorrow.”
“Thanks,” I said quietly. “Uh, do you think Rose has a snug tanktop or something?”
Callie looked at me in confusion.
“I don’t have a bra on,” I said with an embarrassed laugh. “This dress keeps things in place, but I probably shouldn’t be walking around your house with the girls loose.”
Callie laughed as she rifled through Rose’s drawers. “I’m sure we can find something.”
As soon as she’d gathered up a pile of folded clothes, she ushered me toward the bathroom and waved me in.
“Take your time, our water heater is huge,” she said with a small smile. “I’m making dinner, so just come downstairs when you’re done.”
“Okay.” I smiled. “Thanks.”
“You know,” she said softly, “I always thought you’d marry one of my boys. I just didn’t think it would be Thomas.” She smiled at me again and closed the door behind her as she left.
As soon as I’d locked the door, I dropped down onto the closed toilet seat and stared at the wall across from me, trying to get my emotions under control. The bathroom was the same. It still had the same colored walls and the same raindrop shower curtain. There was still a little scent warmer thing plugged into the wall.
But it was different, too. Toothbrushes were missing. There weren’t any wet towels hanging over the curtain rod. I reached over and slid the shower curtain open. There wasn’t any boy body wash on the corners of the tub against the wall.
My eyes watered and I tilted my head back, inhaling deeply.
I was in a time warp. I’d taken showers, and brushed my teeth, and had once watched Mick putting on deodorant in that bathroom. I’d been in there a hundred times, yet it somehow felt foreign.
Everything was the same and everything was different, and I suddenly missed my best friend so badly it was a physical ache.
I stripped out of my dress and climbed into the shower, letting the hot water pour over my tight shoulders. I felt jittery. Like there was something I should be doing but wasn’t. I knew I couldn’t help Tommy. My job in that area was done the moment we’d signed our marriage license and I was no longer a threat to him. God, that sounded bad. There had never been any danger of me speaking against him. If my loyalty to Mick hadn’t been enough to keep my mouth shut, my absolute support of Tommy taking care of Mark Phillips would have kept me quiet.
Tommy was so sure our marriage would work in his favor that I’d gone along with it, but I was scared it had only put a target on my back. The police could still question me, and I was sure they would. It was only a matter of time before they caught up with me and I knew I would have to answer the detective’s voicemail at some point.
I finished showering and got dressed in Rose’s pajamas, wrinkling my nose at the boy band faces on the front of the t-shirt. At least, I assumed it was a boy band. No guys were that pretty unless they were getting paid for it.
I left my dress hanging on the towel rack and went downstairs where I could hear voices drifting out of the kitchen.
“Is she okay?” I heard Molly ask, making me breathe in a sigh of relief. One of my people was there. I liked Tommy’s parents, but their concern was Tommy. Molly, though, she belonged to me.
“She seems to be holding up,” Callie answered. “She’s doing better than I did the first time Asa got arrested.”
“Wasn’t the first time, sugar,” Grease pointed out.
“Well it was the first time I had to deal with it,” Callie said with a huff.
I rounded the corner and found Grease and Will sitting at the table, Rebel standing next to it, and Molly and Callie carrying dishes over from the counter.
“Yeah, yeah, you’re such a badass,” I said with a snort, making Will choke on whatever he’d been drinking.
“Keep pushin’,” Grease grumbled, but his lips were twitching with suppressed humor.
“I would have been over earlier,” Molly said as she came over to hug me. “But Will didn’t think it was important to let me know what was going on until he got home tonight.”
“It’s okay,” I replied as I gave her a squeeze. “There was nothing you could do anyway.”
“Well I could have at least kept you company,” she said as we sat down at the table. “You were at the clubhouse all day.”
“I pretty much lied in Tommy’s bed and stared at the ceiling the whole day,” I said with a short laugh. “I wasn’t good company.”
“You did fine,” Grease said. “Kept your head together, came straight to us, even gave your
husband shit when he called. You did just fine.”
“Were you listening in on our conversation?” I scowled.
“We all were,” Will mumbled around a bite of homemade macaroni and cheese.
“Awesome.” I shook my head.
“There’s no secrets with that group,” Callie laughed. “You think you’re keeping things quiet, but everyone knows about them anyway.”
My stomach lurched but I gave her what I hoped was an easy looking smile. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“That’s how they all knew you weren’t pregnant,” Molly said with a snicker, handing Rebel her macaroni sans cheese.
“We weren’t even—” I snapped my mouth shut before I finished my sentence. Grease and Callie didn’t need to know about my and Tommy’s sex life.
“That’s how they knew,” Molly told me out the side of her mouth.
“You guys need to get a life,” I announced, pointing around the table with my fork. “Seriously.”
“Eventually, it gets better,” Callie said from across the table. “They’ll still know everything, but they just won’t care as much.”
“That’s comforting,” I mumbled.
“Asa, can you please pass the broccoli?” Molly asked, lifting her hand in a ‘give me’ gesture.
My mouth dropped open and I stared as Grease passed her the bowl of broccoli.
“Hey,” I blurted, glancing between the two of them. “How come she gets to call you Asa?”
“Cause I like her,” Grease mumbled, stuffing a bite of food into his mouth.
* * *
“Hey, you have everything you need?” Callie asked a couple hours later from the doorway of Mick and Tommy’s old room.
I looked down and gave her a small smile from the top bunk of the old bed. I’d never been up there before. Mick always had the bottom bunk because Tommy had joked that if the bed broke, Mick would crush Tommy on the way down.
It was weird how things had changed. Years ago I wouldn’t have gone near Tommy’s bed, but when I’d gone in to sleep earlier that night, I hadn’t even considered sleeping on Mick’s bunk. I’d crawled up the broken ladder at the foot of the bed and immediately crawled beneath the covers.
“I’m good,” I told Callie. “If I can fall asleep, I’ll be perfect.”
“I know how that goes,” she replied, moving into the room. Then without a word, she disappeared from view and I felt the bunk bed sway a tiny bit as she settled into the bottom bunk. “I haven’t been in here in a long time,” she said quietly once she was settled. “I slept in here for a while after we lost Micky, but eventually Asa put his foot down and made me move back into our bed.”
“Sounds like your husband,” I mumbled, making her laugh.
“Well, he put up with a lot,” she said ruefully. “I’m sure it wasn’t easy taking care of someone with a huge surgical wound when she wouldn’t get out of the bottom bunk of a bunk bed.”
“Oh, shit,” I said. “I didn’t even think about that.”
“It was…” she sighed. “It was the worst moment of my life. Asa and I had been through a lot by then, but nothing had prepared us for that.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t come to visit,” I said.
“Oh, honey, don’t be sorry.” She paused. “I didn’t expect to see you and I’m not sure I would have even realized you were there. By the time I was home from the hospital I was so out of it, I don’t remember most of what happened afterward.”
“Still,” I murmured. “I should have stopped by.”
“Well, you would have found a mess, I’ll tell you that.” She shifted on the bed, making the entire thing creak. “I was sleeping most of the time, Will was hovering like he couldn’t figure out what to do with himself even though he was still healing, too, Tommy was angry and going off at the slightest thing, and Rose was silent unless she was up visiting Lily. I think Asa was the only one who was even functioning back then. I’m pretty sure he’s never even dealt with everything that’s happened.”
“He’s a do-er,” I said.
“Exactly. When things are horrible, he’s the one you’ll see making sure life keeps moving. It’s his way of processing things.”
“Or not processing them.”
“Or that,” she agreed.
We were quiet for a while and just as I wondered if she’d fallen asleep, she spoke again.
“Did you know Asa got arrested when I was pregnant with Will?” she asked.
“I don’t think I’ve heard that story,” I replied, rolling onto my stomach so I could prop my head on my hands.
“We weren’t living together then,” she said with a small laugh. “I was stupid and I’d been putting off moving to Oregon from Sacramento.”
“I don’t blame you,” I replied, making her snort.
“Anyway, he was headed down to see me and he got pulled over. He had some stuff on him he shouldn’t have, and that was that.”
“Damn.”
“What made it even worse was that it was the day we did our ultrasound to see the baby. So there I was, waiting with my gram for him to show up at our appointment, and he never did.”
“Oh, shit,” I muttered. “Were you pissed?”
“Hell yes,” she chuckled. “But I was worried, too. It wasn’t like him to just not show up. Eventually Poet called and told me Asa had been arrested, but that didn’t really calm my anxiety.”
“I bet.”
“He eventually got to call me and smooth things over a little, but it was a long time before I got over it. He ended up doing two years.”
“Say what?” I blurted as I lifted my head in shock.
“Yep. I had Will while Asa was inside. It was a clusterfuck.”
I choked a little at her words. “I didn’t know that.”
“It’s not something we talk about a whole lot,” she said easily. “I just thought it might help. You know, coming from someone who’s been there. All of it may seem completely impossible now, but it’s not.”
“I think they’re trying for a lot more than two years,” I said quietly, closing my eyes as my throat tightened.
“They won’t get it,” she promised. “The boys’ll do their best to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
I didn’t reply. We both knew if things played out the way the district attorney wanted them to, there wasn’t a damn thing the Aces could do about it. I was surviving on nothing but blind faith that Tommy knew what he was talking about when he’d said they didn’t have any evidence.
We lay in silence for a long time, and just as I was finally dozing off a large shadow blocked the light pouring in from the hallway. I didn’t lift my head as Grease moved toward us, but I did watch him through half-closed eyes.
“Come on, sugar,” he said softly, leaning down into the bottom bunk. “You ain’t sleepin’ in here.”
“I was keeping Heather company,” Callie said as he lifted her from the bed.
“She don’t care about your company when she’s sleepin’,” he answered, turning to carry her toward the door. “And I doubt she wants to hear your snorin’.”
“I don’t snore,” Callie protested, tucking her face into Grease’s neck.
“You sleep with me,” he replied firmly. Then they were out of sight and all I could hear were Grease’s heavy footsteps moving down the hallway.
I closed my eyes and told myself over and over again that Monday night I’d be crawling into bed with Tommy again.
Chapter 14
Thomas
“I didn’t think I was gonna get bail,” I muttered, glancing at my new attorney. He’d shown up in court that morning, surprising the fuck out of me with his slick suit and fancy fucking hair cut. I’d been dealing with a public defender for the past couple of days, and that guy had worn khakis and shirts that were two sizes too small and hadn’t known or cared what the fuck he was doing.
“I’m good at my job,” the lawyer muttered. “I’m parked over that way.”
I foll
owed him to his car and climbed in after him, rolling down the window so I could breath. I hated riding inside anything but the Nova. They didn’t make cars that gave you room to breath anymore. Everything in the newer cars was crowded and full of levers and buttons. Fucking suffocating.
“Like I said inside, my name’s Carter Lincoln,” he said as he turned the car on.
“Nice.”
“My parents liked the whole president thing.”
“Obviously.”
“My little sister is named McKinley.”
“Mine’s Rose,” I replied, glancing at him. “Now where the fuck did you come from?”
“Owed a favor,” he replied, pulling onto the highway. “Figured this was as good a way to pay it back as any.”
“Not sure I can afford you,” I muttered, looking over his suit.
“We’ll work it out.”
“Alright.”
“I hear you just got married?”
I chuckled humorlessly. “Yeah, they picked me up the day after my wedding.”
“You knew they were coming before that?”
“Yep.”
“Smart,” he said with a thoughtful nod. “You trust her?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.”
We were silent the rest of the way to the clubhouse, and I lifted my eyebrows in surprise as he made his way there without any direction from me. He’d obviously done his homework.
I waved my hand at the prospect on the gate and nodded my thanks as he let us in. I wasn’t going to piss this guy off by asking to search his car. I knew he was legit from a conversation I’d had with my dad the night before, and I highly doubted he was trying to smuggle anything onto the compound.
He pulled to a stop and glanced at me to make sure he’d parked in the right spot, then shut off the car and climbed out like he fucking owned the place. No hesitation. He didn’t even look around before leaning into the backseat and grabbing his briefcase. The guy was either a complete idiot, or had balls the size of watermelons. I was betting on the second one.
I turned my head as someone came out of the front door of the clubhouse and barely braced myself before Heather was jumping on me, her legs and arms wrapped around my torso.