Page 48 of Bourbon & Blood

“What?” I asked, dabbing my mouth with my napkin, trying to hide the creeping blush.

“Why aren’t you with that guy anymore?”

I glanced back down at my plate, putting my napkin back in my lap and took up my fork again. I said unhappily, “He cheated on me. I found out and it hurt. I ended it.” I sighed, and when I looked up, he was staring at me, the intensity of his eyes more, not less, and he’d literally stopped mid-chew.

“What’s his name?” he demanded, and I blinked once, long and slow, taken aback. He’d asked so calm and quiet, in such a way that left me totally perturbed.

“Does it matter?” I asked softly.

“It does to me,” he said.

“What?” I asked. “Would you hurt him?”

He remained silent, and I waited him out… but then I realized –silence is better than bullshit,and La Croix had no intention whatsoever of bullshitting me, so he simply wouldn’t answer me.

I swallowed hard and said, “Anyway, I was crying about it on Maya’s couch and she said she’d had it with her roommate. She asked me if she could get her out, if I would come live with her. You know, sort of a fresh start. The beginning of a new chapter. I guess I was a little desperate for change by then so I agreed.”

“She a good friend to you?” he asked and his tone had hushed.

“The best,” I said with a wan smile. “We hexed the shit out of my ex while drunk my first night after I moved in.” I couldn’t help my little laugh at the memory that wasn’t all too long ago. “I just want to find her,” I finished.

He nodded evenly. “Got the whole club lookin’,” he said, and I cocked my head.

“How many of you are there?”

“Nine,” he said. “Now that the prospect’s patched in.”

“Patched in?” I asked.

“Earned the big colored patch in the middle,” he said, jerking a thumb over his back.

“Ah.” I nodded and resumed eating.

We lapsed into silence for a while again while I thought about his demand for my ex’s name. I had half a mind to give it to him, but not without knowing the precise consequence of that action, no way… Did I want his dick to rot off from whatever disease he picked up from one of his side hos? Yes. Did I want him to die, or be crippled forever, or something like that? No, no I didn’t think I did. I didn’t think anything needed to gothatfar. I mean, he’d cheated… he hadn’t murdered the pope or whatever.

When dinner was through, La Croix paid, and with a wave over his shoulder at the restaurant staff, we departed the bar and grill for the sultry Louisiana night and the ride… well, I don’t know where he was taking me. We hadn’t discussed it, and he didn’t turn back the way we’d come from.

“Where are you taking me?” I shouted above the wind.

He shouted back at me, “Home!”

I supposed he meanthishome because he certainly didn’t mean mine… I mean, we weren’t going anywhere near that direction.

We were out in the swamps, and I wasn’t exactly keen on that. I mean, I was a city girl through and through and the only time I had ever been to the swamps and bayous had been on field trips as a child during the day; to the gator farms and such. You know, one of those trips with the science teacher that was supposed to be educational; and it was, but it was also more on the side of the fantastical for the kids. You know what I mean?

We pulled into a long driveway down a dirt and gravel track and I held on to La Croix nervously, breathing just a little easier when a house with a light in the window loomed into view.

“Is this your place?” I asked when he killed the motor and I’d dismounted the back of his bike.

“No, we got a way to go, yet,” he said, and that made me silently gulp.

He held out a hand and waved me forward. I let him lead me to an old but still serviceable dock to the side and into the back of the house.

“I don’t know about this,” I said apprehensively, scrubbing my sweating palms along the tops of my jeans-clad thighs.

“Just a short boat ride, cher.”

He stepped down into the aluminum flat-bottomed boat and held out a hand to me.

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