Page 90 of Moonshine Lullabies

“If I wasn’t on the boat with Daddy as much as I am, then yeah.”

Jess shook her head ruefully. I’d about lost my shit when I found out that Cy had a room still at their folks’ place and they’d made a room for Tate, but that Jess’s old room had been turned into her mom’s sewing room.

That was a real “what the fuck” moment for me.

“Right, so what I’m hearin’ is we’ll stay the course and worry about the bathroom later when your turnin’ a fair profit on this witch shop thing,” Cy said. Jess nodded.

“It’ll be a trick, for sure, but that’s the best I got.”

“You’re doin’ great,” Cy said.

Jess said to him, “Be doin’ a lot better if you would stop callin’ it a witch shop in front of Mamma! You big asshole.”

Cy laughed and I had to, too. It was such a big damn brother thing to do but yeah, it was givin’ poor Jess all kinds of fits.

“Guess that just leaves one thing,” Jess said and Cy and I both looked her way.

She looked up and asked bold-faced, “When the place is done and we can move back in it, would you have a problem with Collier movin’ in with us?” then she fixed those golden-brown eyes of hers on me and asked, “Would you wanna?”

“Fuck yeah, I would wanna,” I said.

Cy looked at the ground then back up and said, “I ain’t got a problem with that, so long as I don’t have to listen to you fuck my sister.”

I laughed and Jess rolled her eyes.

“Well good, that’s settled then, ain’t it?” she asked.

“I guess so,” Cy said.

I smiled and nodded slowly.

“So, when’s the fence go up, then?” I asked and Cy looked over.

“Starts next week.”

I nodded.

“Awesome.”

I held out my beer over the fire neck out and Jess and Cy leaned in and we clicked bottles.

“Still don’t like the idea of puttin’ a fence around the house and a gate at the end of the driveway, but I can’t deny it makes sense,” she said.

“Keep ‘em from getting so close, the fence is a lot less expensive to replace than all this bullshit, that’s for sure,” Cy reminded her and she nodded.

She heaved a sigh and said, “I can’t wait to come home.”

“I know, baby. Just a little while longer.”

She smiled up at me and no, taking a drink of her beer.

* * *

It only tooka couple of weeks and Spring had sprung. Summer was comin’ in like a lion if the heat and humidity of the right now was to be believed. With the changing of the season, I was just reminded we were that much closer to the sweet vengeance that would be settin’ ol’ Ham Bone up to die.

Thankfully, we’d managed to avoid the son of a bitch since that one night he’d dropped by Jess’s folks’ place when we’d been there.

The first batches of ‘shine was done, they’d been mediocre at best, but serviceable to get the lot of us messy drunk one night at the club. None of us had gone blind, so that was something.

---