Page 24 of Fearless
“Tessa!” I pulled the eartips out and let the stethoscope hang around my neck as I grabbed for her hand. “You are still young andsobeautiful! No matter what Big G does, it doesn’t reflect on whoyouare.”
“I know what he does when they go on rides,” she said flatly. “Everyone just looks the other way and doesn’t say anything, but it’s so obvious. His clothes smell like cheap hooker and he’s a shitty liar.”
“Tess…” I sat on the table next to her, squeezing her hands as if that would prevent her heart from breaking any further. “Honey, I’m so sorry. I wish I could do more, but I don’t know what to say,” I sighed. “I can heal cuts and fix broken bones, but there’s no fixing men being idiots.”
She huffed out a dry laugh. “It’s all right, Mari. I knew what I signed up for, even though I hoped for better. Every other man in his family was the same way.” She leaned her head back with a sigh. “If he wasn’t so good with the kids, if they didn’t idolize him as much as they do, there would be no question of what I’d do.”
We sat together in silence for a minute, while I tried to figure out how to broach a solution for her.
“You can still let him be their father without being with him yourself,” I said cautiously. “What if you moved out and agreed to split time with the kids?”
She shook her head. “He’d never allow that. For a woman to leavehim? He’s too prideful for that.”
“What, is he going to physically prevent you from leaving? Keep you trapped in the house?”
“He might, I don’t know.”
“The other guys wouldn’t allow that.” I looked intently into her eyes. “Reaper wouldn’t allow one of his men to mistreat his woman.”
“We see it as mistreatment, they see it as keeping a family together,” she whispered sadly. “That sums up why the Collapse happened in the first place, Mari. Men have never been able to see things from our perspective.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but no sound came out. I never thought of it from that perspective before, but realized she was right.
Nine
REAPER
What a fucking day.
I needed to find Heather and Bones, and find out if they were in on Python’s scheme. But the two of them had mysteriously disappeared. They didn’t leave Sheol, of course. Gunner with his people at every exit made sure of that. After wasting a day of trying to find them at their usual haunts, I sent a team of envoys to search for them more diligently.
They weren’t guilty of anything. Yet. But hiding from me wasn’t doing anything to help them. I didn’t give a shit that Heather was a woman, or that I fucked her. If she was in on this, she deserved to be punished just as much as Python.
The day dragged on until I finally had enough, and broke out the cigars, whiskey and deck of cards by the pool. Some of the off-duty guys joined me, along with Hades, of course.
He laid at my feet like normal, facing the clubhouse door with his chin on his paws. He didn’t start doing that until Mariposa came into our lives, like he was waiting for her.
Me too, boy, I thought, leaning down to scratch him. After the difficult, but amazing, time we had yesterday, I couldn’t get enough of her. Never in a million years would I have imagined going back to that place, nor taken a woman with me. But I was serious about this and I wanted her to know that.
Telling her I loved her was easy. Almost too easy. Easy enough that those words didn’t seem very meaningful at all. I never was much of a poetic, wordsy guy anyway. I had to show her what she meant to me. And fuck me, it felt like she actually understood and felt the same way.
Halfway through the second card game, as dusk began swallowing the landscape in darkness, Hades lifted his head. His nose pointing stiffly at the door, I followed his gaze, waiting.
The door opened and he was off running, not even giving Mari a chance to poke her head through before jumping on her with excited whines and yips.
“Ha-des,” I called, adding a high-pitched whistle. “Don’t knock her over, you big oaf.”
“Ohh, it’s okay!” She laughed as she came toward us, walking my big mutt backward on his hind legs with her arms around him. “He’s my favorite boy. Aren’t you, Hades?”
He gave her a slobbery kiss, nuzzling and sniffing her as his stubby tail went nuts. Jesus, standing upright, he was almost as tall as she was.
“What am I, chopped liver?” I grunted around my cigar.
“That’s what you get for having a dog, Pres,” Benji, one of Gunner’s younger guards, chuckled. “They seem like a chick magnet until you get the girl. Then you realize she loves the dog more than you.”
“Unfortunately, I think you’re right, kid,” I sighed.
Gunner himself had been oddly silent at the table. Usually he talked the most shit during our card games as he tried to swindle us out of our chips. Now that Mari was here, he studied his hand like he wanted to disappear into the cards themselves.
