Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
C hainsaw…
It started to rain in the middle of the night. I listened to it patter against the window over the side of the bed I occupied. The frogs were in full swing out there, and while it usually put me right out, I couldn’t sleep.
I’d made love to my girl, and she’d whispered the stark confession of how she felt into the ether and into my ear, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
We’d parted. I’d put her in my shirt to cover up, and had sent her off to the bathroom to take care of herself, and when she’d returned? She’d had a hard time looking at me, her cheeks flushed with something like embarrassment.
“What did you mean by that?” she asked, hugging herself.
I’d gotten up, taken her into my arms, and told her the truth – that I’d caught feelings for her the first time I’d heard her voice, before I’d even laid eyes on her, for the way she’d defended and cared for me in the hospital all those years ago.
How I didn’t think a day had gone by where I hadn’t thought of her at least once since then.
She’d met my eyes and seemed speechless, and I saw a deep and ancient hurt in their green depths.
From what she’d told me, I gathered that she was somewhat of the glass child when it came to her home-life growing up.
The one that no one ever worried about, or thought much of.
It seemed as though her brothers took the limelight, and for sure, she’d adored her brother who had drowned.
I had to guess he was one of the only ones to really pay her any mind.
She wasn’t used to being remembered, let alone thought of, and I think my confession may have healed a sore spot in her heart.
We lay in the dark, cuddling close into my broken-down, old bed, after I’d switched out the light, and we’d talked. She’d shared hopes and dreams of someday living together – and what that might look like.
She wasn’t married to the city, and I was glad for that.
The older I got, the less I minded the drive, but I seriously wanted a place like this one.
On the edge of the swamp, only maybe not ground level, and prone to flooding like this one.
It was up a little higher, sure, but I was thinking more like something on stilts, with a view into the trees and plenty of room to keep the house itself up out of the wet.
It was a long and good talk. One that she fell asleep, though there were still some things to discuss…
for sure. Still, she was exhausted from a long day that hadn’t been so great.
She’d confessed she’d had a difficult and depressing pediatrics case come through – but wouldn’t elaborate.
She was a lot like me in that regard. Probably saw plenty of horrors and dealt with it by bottling it up.
I got that she couldn’t really talk about it, HIPAA, and all, but I would be lying if I said it wasn’t worrisome. She did a great deal to heal others, and I wanted to do more to ensure she could, even if it meant listening to and adding a whole host of new horrors to the ones I already harbored.
She wanted a lot of the same things the club did. Peace. Quiet. Family …
Long rides and nights around the bonfire, companionship, and a steady income, where we were all thriving instead of just surviving.
She listened as I told her about the distillery, how the girls were doing their thing with Swamp Witch Designs, and everyone was just interested in living a life outside of the drugs, shakedowns, and other fuckin’ bullshit.
No one had any interest in risking it all and going to prison, but likewise, we didn’t have a whole lot of interest in dealing with society and their bullshit, made-up constructs of rules.
Especially not by a corrupt-as-fuck legal system and the absolute jokes for politicians the citizens kept electing into office, like they actually gave a shit about the public and not lining their own pockets.
Seriously, the state of American politics boiled down to this – People believing wholeheartedly that the stripper actually liked them. I’m not talking right or left, either. I’m sayin’ the whole fuckin’ bird is rotten and shittin’ maggots out of its butthole.
There wasn’t a lot that would change my mind on that, if anything.
I just wanted to go my own way, make an honest living, and I didn’t mean chopping trees and playing with power lines for the rest of my fuckin’ life, either.
I wasn’t a spring chicken. I knew I was slowing down. I knew that the shots I’d taken had considerably sped up the timeline on my slowing the fuck down.
I, like the rest of my brothers, wanted Ruth in the ground for fucking good and the rest of his merry band of idiots he had fooled to be nothin’ but the dust of memory.
…and now, with Genesis in my arms, I had even more to fight for. I could see it with her. Just me, her, a house on the edge of the swamp, her damn cat, and maybe a dog – a big one – for when I couldn’t be home with her.
The phantom giggle of children’s laughter entered my thoughts, and yeah… I could see that too, for the first time ever. I hadn’t thought twice about kids of my own until her.
Maybe it was true that when you were with the right one, you could suddenly see it. A new world or worlds of possibilities in front of you.
I held her close, her warm and even breath blushing rhythmically against my chest, and I finally closed my eyes and felt like I could sleep.
My entire life, I had been fighting up to this moment. To have a woman in my arms that I could see a real future with, and she was finally here, and I didn’t know what to do.
I guess God or Fate or whatever it was out there with power over us mere mortals and our lives really did have a sense of humor after all.
I woke with a soft jolt when Genesis stirred in my arms.
She sucked in a sharp breath when I moved and looked at me, green eyes wide and still shaking off the remnants of her deep slumber.
“Hi,” I murmured, and her lips parted in a wide smile.
“Good morning,” she murmured, shifting against me. “How did you sleep?” she asked.
“Not gonna lie,” I said. “I slept like shit.”
She pouted. “I’m sorry,” she drawled, and I shook my head lightly, tucking some of that long blonde hair out of her face, behind her ear.
“Not your fault, baby. Just a lot on my mind. You gave me a ton of things to think about.”
“Yeah?” She looked like the shutters closed behind her eyes, and I got the impression that when someone talked vaguely like that, nine times out of ten, news followed that had hurt her.
I smiled, caressed her cheek, and said, “Just trying to figure out how to make all your dreams come true.”
She snorted, laughed, and lay back down on my chest with a sigh.
“One thing at a time,” she said. “How about we start with a date – making a day of it today, just you and me?”
“Mm, I like the sound of that,” I said.
“Nothing with the club today?” she asked.
“Nope. We had church just a couple of days ago – only thing I really was supposed to do was stop by and check out the distillery, which I wanted to show you, anyway. You up for driving back to the city, parking it, and going for a ride with me?”
“Hell yeah,” she said. “Sounds perfect, actually.”
“Well, alright, then.”
We got up, dressed, and took turns in the bathroom getting ourselves together, then I led her up the hall, gently by the hand, toward the front of the house.
“Ho, got some breakfast goin’ here, now! Y’all go on an’ have a seat,” Cypress called out from the galley kitchen behind the wall that made up the hall and part of the living room.
The smell of bacon hung heavy in the air, and I looked to Genesis, who nodded her head.
We rounded the corner and looked into the kitchen from the front dining room, where Cypress was standing barefoot and shirtless in just his jeans, wallet chain rattling off his belt as he shifted around, pulling a couple of pieces of toast out of the toaster and dropping more bread into it.
He buttered the toast and added it to the stack growing on a small plate.
“Look at you, Ms. Suzy Homemaker,” I jabbed at him, and his arm flashed out, slapping my weak-ass punch at his shoulder away.
“With all that hollerin’ an’ moanin’ y’all was up to, I figured you’d need a good breakfast.”
“Oh,” we both turned to Genesis, who had covered her mouth with her hand and was blushing furiously – which was adorable.
I was sure she’d grown up around a shit ton of partying and fucking growing up in the life, but that didn’t always turn out the way you expected it to.
Sometimes you got a kid who came out as an adult just as free about sex, but more often than not, they turned out like my woman – a little shy about it and wanting to keep things private and behind closed doors.
Me, I didn’t particularly give a damn either way, but still, Cy and I traded a look, and we silently agreed to knock it off for her sake and comfort.
“Sorry, cher. Didn’t mean to cause you any trouble.”
“None at all,” she said and slipped into a chair at the table.
Cypress handed me a stack of plates and said, “Make y’self useful.”
I shook my head and said, “Man, fuck you,” but set the table anyway.
One of the nice things about living with Cy was yanking each other’s chains.
I totally got why he didn’t want to stay at his parents’ or with his sister anymore.
Plus, this place had the benefit of plenty of yard and the private dock and boat launch to get him off huntin’ gator faster out in the swamps.
“You going out today?” I asked, knowing it may not be gator season quite yet, but he’d been going out and trapping nutria lately, as well as checking on the stills we had going illegal out there still trying to perfect our shit even though we were just days away from getting the stills we’d put in the old warehouse out back of the clubhouse fired up and going.
Shipments were coming in, ingredients been got, and the liquor would hopefully be flowing in a matter of weeks.