Chapter Seven #2
From what I’d eaten, I could tell the food he got was
crazy-good and I’d been hungry.
But now I wasn’t. I also wasn’t feeling nervous or shy. I
just wanted him to jump me.
Even so, we needed to stay on target.
“I don’t want you to think I’ll find someone else when I’m
with you,” I whispered.
“Rosie, do you think I’d be sittin’
right here…hell, you’d be sittin’ right here
if I thought that?”
That made sense.
But still.
“I need you to know. I need to say the words. I need you to
understand I know that was there and how it happened and it’s still all about
you. It was messy and crazy and scary but you came through all that, solid and
strong and protective, and it became about that. But it feels wrong because it
was all the first parts.”
“It’s not wrong, Rosalie.”
“I want to make sure you believe that.”
“I can assure you, baby, that I believe that.”
I wished that worked.
It just didn’t.
Not for me.
Because I knew how it was supposed to be.
“My mom…my dad…” I shook my head hard, trying to shake some
sense into the words I had to say so he’d understand how important they were,
“there was no one else for her and no one else for him. It wasn’t about being a
couple and forsaking all others. When they got together, the world just
vanished. They functioned in it and I came along and they made me part of their
world, but it was just us. There was family and there were friends, but in the
end, it was just us. They never shared, either of them, but at least for Mom,
outside going to the prom with somebody, I don’t think there was anyone before
him for her. I know my grandparents were freaked he was so much older than her
but then Dad was Dad and he won them around.”
“You cannot live your parents’ life, honey,” he said gently.
I nodded. “No, I get that. I totally do. That’s not what I’m
saying. I’m saying I’d want the man I decided on to know there was no one for
me but him. That I want our lives and our children to be our world. I want the
end result of what they had but it’s not even that. I’d want my man to know
down to his bones that was what he was getting from me.”
“And you think, we go to that place, because of how this
began, I’ll question that,” he deduced.
“I think you’re brothers with Shy, so that history is just
plain in your face, and then I was with Beck when things started, and I think
life happens, arguments happen, and it would kill me if anything ever shook
your understanding it’s only you.”
“Baby, when we make love later, you’re gonna
find out I’m not comin’ to you a virgin.”
I put my plate to my lap, leaned his way and said, “It’s not
the same.”
“I been along for this ride with you, Rosie. Do you think I
missed that?”
“No, it’s just—”
“I’m totally fuckin’ in love with you.”
I leaned back and stared, a flare happening around my heart
that started to spread throughout my chest cavity.
“Gone, babe. Gone,” he continued. “You’re sweet and
you’re funny and you’re not selfish. How you could think that, I do not know, seein’ as you put your ass on the line to save the soul of
the man you were living with.”
As much as I was rejoicing in what he’d said to me, I had to
lay out where all that was at.
“That wasn’t just for him, Snap, it was also for me.”
“All right, if you tell me there is some form of pure
altruism out there, Rosalie, I’ll tell you you’re wrong because it doesn’t
exist. Even if you get nothin’ outta something good
you do, you still get the satisfaction that you’re the kind of person who would
do it. So in the end, that’s getting something. So yeah, part of your angle was
to get something outta that. You also got your face fucked up and your ribs
busted. You knew that was a possibility and instead of getting shot of that
guy, you carried on. So what do you think that says to me?”
“I was with that guy,” I replied. “The wrong guy.”
“No,” he denied, beginning to sound impatient. “It says if
you care about someone, it’s not about going that extra mile. It’s about giving
everything. Honest to God, I fell in love with your tits and your hair and that
beautiful voice and the way of you that I’ve learned recently you got from your
mother and that cute-as-fuck skip-walk you got goin’
on first, Rosie. But after that, all that is you filled in the rest and I don’t
give that first fuck he was there in between. He isn’t anymore. And that’s
where we are now. He doesn’t factor to me. He only factors to you and you’ve gotta let that go, Rosie. Because for me it’s already
gone.”
“I get into this with you and later, it comes back to haunt
me, that would not be good, honey,” I pushed.
“It won’t.”
“You can’t tell the future, Everett.”
“When it comes to you, I can,” he declared, all flinty.
“We’re gonna finish this conversation and the food.
Then we’re gonna go upstairs and finish what we
started this morning. Tomorrow, we’re gonna wake up
and do more a’ that. Repeat for eternity, tossin’ in
a couple of kids along the way. That’s our future, Rosie. And just to make that
clear, knowin’ now you’re falling for me, my world
shrank to what’s on this couch the minute we both sat on it but you should
know, my world started shrinking long before that. And I’m not only good with
that, it makes me really, fuckin’ happy.”
Right then, I was really fucking happy too.
“I have a feeling,” I whispered, the words uneven from the
emotion stuck in my throat, “that you’re not gonna
let me pay rent.”
A smile bloomed on his face, huge, handsome, amazing.
He knew I was happy too, finally allowing myself to reach
for it, and he was right about there not being any pure altruism because he
also knew he gave me that, and he got something huge out of it.
That was what made him happy.
The chance at a shot of making me happy.
God, that was all just so Snapper.
“You wanna exercise your
independence, we’ll negotiate somethin’ that makes
you feel easy about that but you can still buy garden furniture. The bed, babe,
that’s not gonna happen since, if shit works out the
way it should, I’ll be in it as much as you, so that’s on me.”
“Are you saying that you wanna…” I
swallowed, happy we were there, no…thrilled, but this was maybe too fast, “move
in together?”
He shook his head. “Nope. I think you need some time and
space, and we got more gettin’-to-know-you shit to
do. But yeah, obviously eventually. Definitely.”
And with that, Snap shoveled in more food.
I called his attention back to me. “Snap, Valenzuela and
Bounty.”
“Babe—”
“It worries me.”
He gave me a thorough look and I could tell he was thinking
deeply about this.
It took two mouthfuls of rice and korma with a chaser of a
bite of tikka masala coated naan for him to come to a conclusion about what he
was going to say.
“You know Chaos has been patrolling our turf now for well
over a decade.”
I didn’t know that.
“Okay,” I replied.
“Nothing has happened, Rosie. Not even close. Before
Valenzuela, patrol wasn’t even that big of a deal because everyone doin’ stupid shit in Denver knew to keep it off Chaos. We
just did it regularly to make sure that message stayed out there.”
“Okay,” I repeated.
He studied me again while he was eating and I took another
bite too while he did it.
Finally, he pressed forward.
“Before my time, when they were pullin’
outta some shit they were into, they lost a man.”
Uh-oh.
“Good guy,” he carried on, “way everyone tells it, the
best.”
“Snapper,” I whispered.
“And I tell you that, Rosalie, because that loss did two
things. It tore apart every member who stayed in the club and it solidified the
brotherhood as well as the path they were on to get clean. I know that’s a
dichotomy but it’s the way the story is told and it’s the brotherhood I know.
So what I’m sayin’ is, that last part, we got in
hand, but that first part, every brother is going to do everything in their
power not to let that happen again.”
“Not everything is in Chaos’s power,” I pointed out.
“That man they lost, name was Black, he had a woman and two
boys.”
Uh-oh!
“She’s Chaos lore too, baby,” he went on gently. “The way
it’s told, she never got over that and they loved their brother, they loved
that woman, they loved those boys, so they felt his loss three ways. So when I
say we’re gonna do everything in our power not to
lose anything precious along the way, we’re gonna go
balls to the wall with that.”
He didn’t lean into me but the way he was looking at me
changed so it made it feel like he’d slid across the couch and got in my space.
“We are not doin’ this stupid.
We’re playin’ this smart. Those men have women and
children to protect, Rosalie. I know you get that Club is a family, but maybe
you don’t get that Club is family. We want this done and we’re all in
to do it, but we’re not gonna Butch and Sundance this
shit. We all got different parents but we share blood. Chaos is our blood,
baby, and I’m not sayin’ shit isn’t intense. I’m sayin’ we’re not taking unnecessary chances. And I can’t
tell the future. What I’m askin’ is for you to trust
me.”
“I trust you, Snapper.”
“Then all we got left is to eat and then we can go
upstairs.”
“There’s nothing you have for the agenda?” I asked.
“Nope,” he answered.
Well, that was a relief.
“We have something else to talk about,” I shared as he
shoved food in his mouth.
“What?” he asked after he’d swallowed.
“I want you to get that what I’m gonna
say is real and not about all you’re giving me.”
“What?” he repeated.
“And I’m worried it’s too soon and you won’t believe in it.”
“Baby…” He was losing patience. “What?”
“I’m not falling for you,” I told him.
A look came over his face that made me scramble to keep
talking.
“I’ve already fallen in love with you.”
He froze.
Solid.
Staring at me.
I sat.
Solid.
Staring at him.
Snapper broke the silence.
“Shit, fuck, we’re gonna have to
nuke it,” he growled, practically threw his plate on the coffee table, yanked