Chapter 40
Boom. Boom. Boom.
The knock didn’t come gently.
To me, it sounded like a damn gunshot compared to how Sayuri has pussyfooted around me this week.
My body reacted before my mind did. My muscles tightened, and my breath caught while my hand curled into a fist at my side, as I might need it.
I hated who I’d become.
I hated that a sound could still do this to me a week later.
A fucking knock turning into a bomb.
But it was the sound of the door out of the club that I could hear, not the knock of the parish.
“Want me to get it?”
Sayuri wasn’t rushing me. She was kind and gentle.
So much of this week felt like I was being treated like I was glass, but she was doing her best.
I had to be careful around her.
There was so much rage pent up in my body, every instinct demanding I get payback.
“Nah, I got it, Mortifera. Thank you.”
Standing up and walking to open the door was a task.
My ass didn’t have sores, but I finally understood the turning rules for people who just lay in bed until they died.
I never want that.
I never want to be trapped in my own mind.
It already feels like I’m drowning without any water around.
Jerry stood on the stoop as he’d always stood in my life, the moment he dragged my ass off that cardboard box ten years ago—solid, grounded, and fucking unmovable.
As a retired soldier, Jerry’s posture exuded authority. It screamed, “Don’t fuck with me, I fuck back.”
His big combat boots were planted firmly, as his gray-blue eyes already started assessing the visible damage.
He took one look at me and exhaled through his nose.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “You look like shit.”
I let out a weak, humorless breath. “Good to see you too, Brother.”
“No,” he said immediately. “It’s not good seein’ you like this and by the end of the night I am sure you won’t think seein’ me is so great either, but that’s neither here nor there, c’mon.”
He stepped inside without waiting to be invited in, and I shut the door behind him.
The sound landed heavy in my chest, and I tried not to let Jerry see me flinch.
The couch had an indent for my ass, and I was already walking back to my spot when I felt Jerry’s thick arm block my path.
“Uh-uh! You’ve been horizontal too long,” he said, dropping his big bag by the door. “Your ass cheeks are gonna become a permanent design in that poor couch.”
“I’ve been healing,” I shot back, defensively.
He turned on me fast and locked me in his stare. “You’ve been hiding, Jed. From your congregation, your responsibilities, and even fucking me.”
Silence stretched between us, and I felt my jaw ache.
Bastard is right…
I looked away first, aggressively swiping the damn tear that dared fall from my eye.
Sayuri stood, and Jerry looked over at her in surprise.
“Well then. Now I know why you’ve been healin’ ”
Jerry didn’t touch me or ask me to recap. He knew everything that happened that night. I left out Sayuri staying with me because…
I didn’t know. I guess because she’s been my little secret for so long, and having her to myself is the only thing that feels right.
Everything else is broken.
“He has mostly healed from the more crucial injuries. Bruises are turning now, and his ribs are less tender. I have kept up a strict regimen that seems to be helping.”
My girl was so happy to have stitched me up. I didn’t have the heart to say my body was fine…it was my mind I wanted to reboot.
Jerry nodded and smiled at her, his gentlemanly side coming to the forefront. Good, maybe he could stop being such a hard ass on me.
I made an effort to skirt away from him and get to my chair, but Jerry chirped in my ear like a drill sergeant.
“I don’t think so. March your ass back here.”
“Jerry, for fuck’s sake—”
I didn’t finish my sentence before he wacked the back of my head.
“Ow. What the hell was that for?”
Jerry nodded to Sayuri.
“Have you lolled yourself into forgetting how to be a gentleman? Your woman is present. Behave.”
Sayuri and I both cleared our throats at the statement, looking at anything but each other. The number of times I claimed this woman was insurmountable, but not out loud.
At least not to her.
“Oh, hush, you kindergarteners. My boy has got more balls to fess up to his crushes, Jed. This girl has been staying with you for weeks. Knitted you back together by herself while dealin’ with your mood swings. If that ain’t a claim to your heart, what the hell is?”
I swallowed a knot in my throat and cleared my throat again.
Saying it out loud…no.
She needed someone better than me.
She needed stability to get her son back and never deal with that monster, Kaito, again.
“How is Elias? Did Maria get the dress she wanted yet? You always fall for her big brown eyes in two seconds. I’d be surprised if you held out this long.”
Jerry gave me a pointed look but shook his head and let it go.
“I’m not makin’ you rehash anything, alright,” he said. “I’m not here to interrogate you, absolve you, or feel sorry for you. That ain’t me, and you know it. You called me, and that means I am gonna take this by the balls—your balls, Preisty Pop.”
I swallowed, and my throat burned.
Instinctively, my hand covered my crotch, and Jerry laughed.
“Good,” he continued. “No complaints. Because none of that fixes this shit.”
He tapped two fingers against his own sternum and smirked.
“This is gonna fix it.”
I didn’t have the energy to argue with Jerry. I couldn’t figure out his riddles any more than Sayuri could based on her facial expressions.
“What are we doing?”
Jerry shushed me, his finger tapping my lips and shaking his annoying head.
“Nope. Get a move on. Trucks still warm.”
I laughed once, sharp and bitter. “You think dragging me out of my comfort zone is going to be fine, and—”
“I think you’re stuck in a deep freeze,” he cut in. “And if you stay there, it’ll rot you from the inside out without you knowing you ever started to become ripe.”
That hit harder than anything else he could have said because it was the fucking truth I didn’t want to admit, much less accept.
He grabbed my jacket off the chair and shoved it into my chest. “Get this on. It’s cold out. Don’t want you becomin’ a preisty popcicle now do we?”
“What?”
“Jed. Move your ass. Say bye to your…friend, and let’s go. Must I throw you over my shoulder?”
“I don’t—”
He leaned in just enough that I could smell dust, coffee, and something metallic on his clothes. “I didn’t come here to ask. Easy way goin’ once.”
“I didn’t call you to come bully me out of my own home—”
“Easy way goin’ twice!” he interrupted.
“God Dammit, Jerry!”
Fear spiked in my blood, and that made me angry.
“Sold! For the hard way.”
I didn’t have a second to argue. He picked me up like a toddler and chucked me over his shoulder as promised.
We drove for nearly an hour.
Where the fuck was he taking me? It was getting dark outside.
No music.
No talking.
Jerry had a way of knowing what I needed before I did.
The sky was the color of my bruises, and the sun was falling lower with every second.
“You really not callin’ your girlfriend at the very least, Jed? You two have been smooshed together for months. What gives? I can see you love her. You got the same look I give Dawn.”
“I don’t—”
I stopped myself. No point in lying.
“I can’t love her, Jerry. I’m no good for her. She needs a stable man and a good husband to get her baby back.”
“Her baby?”
I spent too long avoiding my best friend. I should have talked to him so much sooner.
“Oh, damn, that’s fucked,” he said after I finished my word vomit of explaining the last three months.
“And you don’t know where he is to grab the kid? I wouldn’t be asking for a welcome wagon.”
I sighed. “It’s not that easy. She has to do this the right way. Kaito is dangerous…”
Saying that monster’s name made bile rise in my throat, and I choked on the burn.
“Hey, take it easy, brother. You don’t need to explain anything to me, just let me know where you keep your extra shovels, and you know I’ll be there.”
I felt myself smile. Jerry was literally my ride or die.
The man didn’t ask before jumping into flames for you.
He did so without so much as an explanation.
Trust like that didn’t exist anymore. Maybe one of the only reasons I still believed in God was Jerry Cross.
A God-given angel didn’t come from hell.
The road stretched longer and emptier the farther we went until the town disappeared entirely. The houses became scarce, and only the Utah plains remained. Even the trees thinned out until it was nothing but dirt, rock, and sky.
“Listen, there’s an option you may not have thought about.”
“What do you mean?” Now, I was curious.
“The people you left back in the fancy city. They are the same kind of people this Kaito guy is. Maybe they might know somethin’ about where he took her kid.”
I swallowed.
Go back to my gang?
“They’ll kill me.”
Jerry frowned. “Hmm. Well, that’s no good. Don’t do that. Maybe I am getting too old.”
“Jerry, you are a good man. I honestly…I will give my life for her.”
“Damn. You got it bad, kid.”
Yes. Yes, I do.
“I just want her happy, ya know? Even if that isn’t with me. I want to get Jujiro back. No mother deserves to lose her baby all because some asshole has better connections. It’s not right.”
Miranda flashed in my mind, and I sighed again. Sayuri was right. Miranda knew she wasn’t leaving Jack unless it was in a body bag. And she didn’t want to lose the one thing she still had in this world. Ronan.
Those two had each other if nobody else.
Fuck. I had to get them free.
That was another lifetime, Jed. Focus on one soul at a time.
“You really think they’d know?”