Fifteen
Noa
Did one have a funeral for someone when you didn’t know who to invite?
I’d chosen cremation because Ransom was right.
It was much cheaper. But a ceremony where the only friends she’d had weren’t truly friends but addicts seemed pointless.
No one would come except me, and I had nothing good to say about her.
Although I didn’t say it quite that way to the funeral home director, he seemed to understand.
He hadn’t acted surprised at all that I just wanted cremation.
Ransom hadn’t said much, but his being there made it easier. I hadn’t felt alone.
When he was inside the truck and the door was closed, I looked over at him. “Thanks for that.”
He cut his eyes at me. “I didn’t do anything.”
Oh, he had no idea.
“Yeah, you did. You were there.”
He sighed and leaned back in his seat. “And to think, you didn’t want to get in my truck earlier.”
I rolled my eyes, but the smile spread across my face anyway. “Don’t gloat.”
“I love a good gloat. Don’t take that from me. Now, where to, Shakespeare?”
I knew I needed to deal with the trailer and her things, but I wasn’t letting him go with me there. That I was doing alone. I preferred to do it alone.
“Back to my rental car. I need to go check in at the hotel.”
His brows drew together. “What hotel?”
“A Marriott in Jackson,” I replied.
“You don’t have anyone here to stay with?”
I laughed at that. “Did you forget high school? I didn’t have friends.”
He was quiet for a moment before saying, “I was your friend.”
Smirking, I met his gaze. He was serious.
“Ransom, you were a senior I tutored. You never spoke to me outside of tutoring sessions. We communicated via text. I was a loner.”
He winced, but he didn’t disagree with me.
“I was a stupid teenage boy. My main focus was finding a tight cunt or mouth to sink my dick into. I didn’t realize then that the reason I was texting you was because you were different.
You heard me. You weren’t trying to be the next girl in the bed of my truck.
You were smart and fucking witty. But again, I was a kid.
I had growing up to do in order to appreciate it.
I just knew then that I wanted to talk to you.
” He paused. “And as for the not talking to you in person, that was partly because if I had singled you out and talked to you, then you’d have been attacked.
I stopped the bastards who had been harassing you, but the bitches would have been a harder lot to shut down. ”
I tilted my head and studied him for a moment.
He was being honest—or he was an excellent actor.
If that was the real reason he’d not spoken to me in high school, then I understood.
It wasn’t like his attention or acceptance would have shot me up the popularity poll.
My appearance wasn’t going to change for a couple of years back then.
I had to get out of Madison for that to happen.
“You don’t have to explain. I credit that season in my life to a major part of my success. I was used to rejection. It didn’t scare me the way it did most people. I also had something to prove. I wanted to have a reason to be proud of myself.”
A crooked grin curled his lips. “Yeah, well, you fucking did that and more.”
I shrugged. “I think being a late bloomer was a blessing. I hadn’t been distracted by the drama of relationships in high school.”
He chuckled, then leaned forward to start the engine. “If you’d have bloomed early, we’d not be sitting here today.”
“Why is that?”
Ransom glanced at me with a smirk. “I’d have fucked you. Then I’d have missed out on ten years of a friendship I needed, even though I hadn’t known it back then. But I do now.”
And my body went off in many different ways at the words I’d have fucked you coming out of his mouth.
Simmer down, Noa. It was past tense. He isn’t planning on fucking you now.
“I’ll admit that I have always been a little smug about the fact that I’m the only female that Ransom Carver didn’t toss aside,” I told him.
He laughed and nodded his head. “That you are, Shakespeare.”
I settled into the seat while he backed up, and we left the funeral home. Sure, I wanted to strip him naked and lick his body, but this was special. What we had. I didn’t want to lose it. If that meant I never got to experience him sexually, then I’d survive.
“Call the hotel and cancel your reservation.”
I swung my gaze over to him. “Why?”
“Because I can’t let you go stay at a fucking hotel while you deal with this shit.
She might have been a terrible mother, but she was still your mother.
You have to shut down and clean up the life she left behind, and you’re not going to go back to an empty hotel room at night after doing that all day.
We’ve got an extra bedroom at the house you can stay in.
Than moved out, and Halo turned it into a guest bedroom. ”
Halo was married to Bane. He’d told me their story back when it unfolded. Although I’d never met her, I felt like I knew her already.
The death of Crosby had been so hard on all of them, but Halo came into their lives with a piece of Crosby left behind in the form of his unborn son.
Then his older brother, who hated her and blamed her for his death, fell in love with her.
Actually, Ransom had said Bane was so obsessed with her that he’d become a psycho.
Which made me laugh. Ransom didn’t understand love.
But then, did I? Sure, I’d written about it, and I enjoyed reading romance, but I’d never experienced it.
At least I didn’t think I had. If love was what I’d had with Arden, then it was sorely disappointing.
“I, uh … will they mind if I stay there? I don’t want to impose or anything.”
The idea of staying in a house with guys who had been gods when I was a teen was intimidating still. Even though we were older now and the popularity thing was no longer an issue in my head, they were still those boys, and I was still that girl.
“They won’t mind. Halo will love it. She always likes having other females in the house. Most of the time, it’s just a bunch of testosterone.”
Getting to see Ransom’s life, watch it up close, was tempting. But then the thought of escaping to a hotel, alone at night, and not having to be around other people also appealed to me. I wasn’t sure what to do.
“You can get that perplexed look off your face. I’m taking you to the house now. I’ll go get your rental car later.”
Sighing, I stared over at him. “This will change our dynamic, you know. We are texting pen-pals, and spending so much time together will make us more … more like real-world friends.”
He chuckled. “We’re already real-world friends, Shakespeare. Relax. It’ll be fine. Plus, we’ve got better food than the carry-out shit or room service you’d have had to eat there.”
“Won’t they all wonder how you know me? None of them will remember Noa Raines. Than was the only one I tutored other than you. And I doubt he knows my name. He wasn’t very focused on the assignments. Or were you planning on introducing me as my pen name and leaving out who I was?”
“I’ll tell them the truth. That you tutored me in Romeo and Juliet and we’ve stayed in touch over the years.”
Okay. I could do this. They weren’t going to snicker at me or make fun of my glasses or braces. We were all adults. This would be fine.
“I also need to tell you a truth. One you might already know and just never asked me,” he said, glancing at me, then back at the road.
That had my complete attention.
“What?”
His shoulders lifted and fell as he took a deep breath and let it out. “Our families aren’t just in business together, and we aren’t just friends who live together.” He cut his eyes at me again. “We’re the Southern Mafia.”
Wait, what? Had I heard that correctly?
“Did you say Mafia?” I asked, almost feeling silly.
He nodded. “Yep, I did. Started in the early 1900s. My family got involved in 1928 when my great-grandfather, Awbrey Carver, began running illegal gambling rings and handling the bootlegging side of the business. Every Carver male since has remained in the family, which is what we refer to it as.”
Holy freaking shit. He was serious.
“Uh, okay,” I replied, needing to say something. “What do you do now?”
Because I was under the impression that the Mafia was organized crime. The Carvers, along with the other families they were connected to, were wealthy, powerful families—
Ohhh … damn. That made sense.
He shrugged. “We all play a part. Ours is the distillery. It’s a legit business, but there are some things that aren’t legal running through it.
” He came to a stop at a traffic light. “We don’t tell just anyone this.
Close friends. That’s it. You’re as close as a friend as I have outside the family.
And there are things about the house that would alert you to the fact we aren’t your normal bunch of guys living in a house with a married couple and a toddler. I also know I can trust you.”
They had a toddler living in a house with the Mafia. But his dad was one. Both his dads. The one alive and the one dead. Was that why Crosby had been shot? Had that been Mafia-related? Could Ransom be in danger like that?
My stomach twisted at the thought of something happening to him.
“Do you, uh, have guns? Need them?” I wanted to ask if he’d killed anyone before, but I didn’t.
“Yes,” he replied, grinning and looking back at the road as the light turned green.
“When do you use them?”
“When they are needed,” he replied.
“What kind do you use?” Because I was picturing machine guns and things of that nature while a mob movie played out in my head.
“Why so focused on the guns, Shakespeare?”
I shrugged. “Oh, probably because I am trying to get a clear image of what it is you do and not allow my imagination to paint a picture for me. Because right now, you are Al Capone with a fedora.”
He threw back his head and let out a deep laugh.
I found myself smiling. I loved to watch him laugh.
“I have a semiautomatic with a silencer at my back. There is a .45 caliber in the glove compartment and another under your seat. Two assault rifles are hidden in a compartment behind us.”
The moment of humor was gone. My eyes flickered from the glove compartment to the seat I was sitting on. That was a lot of guns. Why so many?
“You’ve gone pale, Shakespeare. I don’t plan on shooting you. They’re just for precaution,” he told me, then pulled up to an iron gate, rolled down his window, and pressed a code. When the gate began to swing open, he glanced at me again. “Welcome to my home.”