Bounty(141)

“Good to know you’re not down with havin’ a felon in the family,” he remarked.

It was good to know that Deke understood the concept of friends being family.

I shared that thought with a big smile.

Deke enjoyed my smile for another millisecond before he kissed it off my face.

He went to work.

I went back to my phone, leaving a message for Lacey, doing this thinking I was glad she was on her tour. She couldn’t drop anything to come and look Deke over.

Then again, I didn’t want them to come not because I thought they’d see something I didn’t see.

It really was just that I wanted time, just Deke and me.

I suspected I wouldn’t get it.

So the time we did have, I was going to make the most of it.

Totally.



* * * * *



“Can I ask…?” I started, trailing off because with what I wanted to ask, I shouldn’t have started in the first place.

It was late, after dinner of leftover Steph’s chicken (just as good, maybe even better). After zoning out in front of the TV. After great sex. Deke and I were in his bed in the dark, me lying on his chest, Deke’s hand playing in my hair.

It was mellow.

It was good.

I should leave it that way.

“Can you ask…” Deke prompted when I didn’t go on.

I turned my head, putting my cheek to his chest, muttering, “Nothing.”

“Baby, you can ask,” he said quietly. “You can ask anything.”

Yep. So falling in love with Deke.

“We’re in a good place,” I noted.

“What you’re gonna ask gonna take us out of it?”

I lifted my head but only to put my chin on my hand on his chest. When I did I saw he was resting his head and shoulders up the wall behind his bed so I felt his eyes on me in the shadows.

“Yes,” I answered. “Maybe,” I went on. “Or I should say probably.”

“Ask, Jussy.”

“Let’s just have a good night. I’ll ask later.”

“You wanna know somethin’ about me, ask,” he pushed.

“But we’re mellow,” I pointed out.

“Then we’ll talk about whatever you wanna know and get back to the mellow.”

I searched through the dark to find his face. I saw it, not clearly, but I felt the vibe was not upset, tense or irritated.

He wanted me to ask. He wanted me to know about him.

He liked my open.

He was offering the same thing.

And I liked that.

So I asked.

“You said you got your mom fired. You were fifteen. How did you do that?”

It took a moment before he rolled us, me on my back, his chest pressed to mine, his face much closer.

But that was all he made me wait.

Then he gave it to me.

“She was a live-in maid. We didn’t have a lot, even before we lost Dad. But we had what we had and they went with it so she could stay at home with me. When he passed, they were also trying for another baby.”

“Oh God, Deke,” I whispered, unable to wrap my head around the idea of losing a husband at all, definitely not that young, not with a toddler in the house, not while we were looking to the future, trying to build our family.

“She didn’t wanna work,” he said softly. “Wanted to be at home with her kids until we got into school. They got together young. She didn’t have a lot of skills. When he was gone, all she knew was that she had to do something that kept a roof over our heads and the only work she could find to do that was work that put a roof over our heads.”

“Right,” I replied when he stopped talking.

“She got that job and kept it for years. Wasn’t a good one. Wasn’t workin’ for good people. We weren’t like those TV shows where the help was a part of the family. We had our place, they had theirs and we did not mix.”

I nodded, and I knew he saw it when he continued.

“We didn’t mix but that didn’t mean the daughters of the man who employed my ma didn’t see me. They saw me.”

Daughters seeing all that was Deke, perhaps with the understanding of all he was going to be?

This didn’t give me a good feeling.

“Oh shit,” I murmured.

“Yeah,” he said, knowing I got it.

“Big, strapping, growing-up Deke, right?” I asked.

There was a smile in his voice as he tangled his fingers deeper into my hair and muttered, “Somethin’ like that.”

“Were they pretty?”

“They were cunts.”

I felt my body stiffen beneath him at his blunt, coarse, offensive word.

“Treated me like shit,” he went on. “Treated Ma worse. Until one of them got a thing for me. Then things changed.”

Yep.

I got where he was going.

I also started to understand what kept him from moving on his feelings for me.