Page 55 of Absinthe Dreams
I nodded slowly, and still felt chilled and somehow un-reassured.That’s your history talking, I thought to myself – and maybe it was true. I’d only just found Chainsaw. I didn’t want to fall this hard, this fast, and this deep only for it all to be snatched away in an instant. I don’t think I could honestly bear it.
“Abashed the devil stood, and felt how awful goodness is,” Chainsaw said and held up his beer. The other three men raised theirs and clinked glasses, and I slowly lifted mine and clicked my tea glass uncertainly against theirs.
“He never will hurt anyone ever again, will he?” I asked softly.
“Nope,” Axe affirmed, and I swallowed hard, those tears of relief springing right back into my eyes and the pent-up emotion off my coast crashing into shore.
Axe wordlessly handed me a napkin, and I sniffed, taking it with a nervous laugh of thanks and sopped at my watering and tearing face.
“It’s all good,” Cypress reassured me.
“Take as long as you need, baby. I got you, we’re here.” Chainsaw covered my hand with his, where I placed it on the table. I laughed, as more tears bubbled up from my chest, where I valiantly tried to build levees to keep out the crashing wavesand storm surge, but I eventually just had to give up and let it out and have a good old-fashioned, extremely girly cry.
Without missing a beat, Chainsaw slid out of his seat and went to his knees on the floor next to mine and gathered me up, holding onto me, and letting me cry it out into his shoulder. He had his back to the restaurant, shielding me from any unwanted onlookers while his brothers sat mutely and waited with indifference, keeping an eye on things to stymie any stray inquiries or comments.
“The fuck you looking at?” Cypress demanded of a woman at a table over, and she quickly turned away. He winked at me when he caught me looking, and I gave him a watery smile.
When I was steady, Chainsaw retook his seat, and when the woman looked again, I tried to give her a reassuring nod as Cypress commented loudly, “Y’act like y’all never had a bad day at work. Mind your fuckin’ business.”
I laughed a little at that and felt so much better.
They were right,ding dong the witch was dead.This was supposed to be a celebratory dinner. I suddenly felt bad that it’d taken me this long to catch on to that fact.
Our food was set down a moment later, steam wafting up from the jambalaya I’d ordered. With how stuffy my nose had become from the good cry I was looking forward to its spice to help clear me out.
I even remembered to take my medicine… better safe than sorry on that.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Chainsaw…
“You good?” I asked her, when she pulled out a new script bag and tore into it, pulling out a rattling pill bottle from within.
“I’m good, I promise. Just heading off a UTI at the pass.” She smiled, and I raised an eyebrow.
“Noted,” I said, and I would make sure from here on out she got up to at least take a leak after our bedroom aerobics.
Axe and Cy wisely ignored the whole exchange and said nothing, but they did trade knowing looks, which I, in turn, ignored.
Dinner was pleasant, though I could tell my girl was tired, and I couldn’t wait to take her home, shower with her, and tuck her into bed torest.
She looked like she needed it, and yeah… I guess we needed to talk and make a few decisions along the way – but there was no rush on that.
We finished up and parted ways with my boys, who’d helped me put a swift end to Gen’s torment. I was grateful to them, and definitely owed them one. Axe for jumping in with both feet and tracking the jack wagon down so swiftly, and Cy for standingby ready to deliver another blow if mine hadn’t landed doing enough damage.
I couldn’t tell you how satisfactory it’d been to get that solid connect in with that fuckwit’s skull. The chain had been heavy, the lock on its end even heavier, and the blood that’d splashed and dotted the throwaway clothing I’d divested of and had trusted Axe and Cy to burn had told me I’d done the job.
If the blow hadn’t outright killed him, and if by some miracle he’d survived beyond making it to the hospital and they’d put Humpty Dumpty back together again, I was damn sure he wouldn’t have been right afterward. Best-case scenario, he would have been in a chair or in some kind of care facility the rest of his life. I was almost disappointed he’d died and hadn’t gotten to suffer more.
Yet more proof that if there was a God, he was an apathetic and capricious son of a bitch. Why let a fucker like that off the hook so easy otherwise, and yet let some little kid die a painful, slow death of bone cancer in Genesis’s hospital?
It was all bullshit, and I, for one, refused to believe the schlock about him working in mysterious ways or whatever.
If anything, he was either asleep at the wheel or he’d just handed the keys over to Satan and washed his fuckin’ hands of us, his most disappointing creations.
I had some real mixed views on God and whatever afterlife there may or may not be. Call me jaded. Call me whatever you’d like, but I just didn’t know or care beyond surviving this shitshow as long as I could, and making sure my brothers and my woman were safe and taken care of.
We rode back to her place, and I parked the bike.
