Swamp Happens: The Complete Swamp Bottom Series

by Cora Kenborn

  My mother made a strangled choking noise in the back of her throat, flooding me with guilt. She hated when we fought.

  The waitress approached with our drinks, saving me from having to engage my father, at least for a moment.

  Her eyes lingered as she set my glass of sweet tea down, her smile just a little too bright. “Here you go. What can I get you this morning?” She directed the question to the table, but her gaze didn’t waver. She’d locked on like a pit bull, and it didn’t look like she had any intention of letting me leave without her number.

  She seemed like a decent waitress, but I was pretty sure eye fucking the customers wasn’t in the employee handbook.

  I kept my eyes focused on the menu as I ordered. It was a fine line to be toed. I didn’t want to come off as a dick, but I also didn’t want to encourage her.

  Kat elbowed me in the ribs and shot me a smirk as our parents ordered. “She’s looking at you like you’re a ribeye and she hasn’t eaten in a week,” she muttered out of the corner of her mouth.

  “I hadn’t noticed,” I deadpanned.

  She snickered and shoved at my shoulder. “Welcome to my world.”

  My molars clicked together as my jaw clenched. What the hell did that mean? “Has someone been bothering you?”

  She rolled her eyes and bypassed her lemon water to steal my tea. “Relax. I’m twenty-one, Q. I do get hit on from time to time.”

  “You’d better not be going out on Bourbon Street,” I warned.

  “I’m always careful. No need to worry.”

  I saw way too much shit on the streets of New Orleans, and I didn’t want my baby sister anywhere near it. “I don’t like it.”

  She patted my shoulder as the succubus moved away from the table. “You don’t have to like it. You just need to accept it.”

  Without the waitress distracting him, our father caught the tail end of our conversation. “Accept what?”

  “The fact that I’m growing up, Daddy. Q seems to be having a tough time with the thought of me graduating next year,” Kat answered smoothly. Her lack of hesitation gave me pause.

  From the outside, it looked like she was still letting our father dictate every aspect of her life. She said it was because he threatened to stop paying for her tuition if she didn’t fall in line, but he’d pulled the same shit on me, and it didn’t work. The only thing worse than a senator’s kid who didn’t bend to his every demand was an uneducated one.

  When I went to college, Kat was still just a kid, but ever since I’d joined the police force and high tailed it across the state, she’d grown up. I called her at least once a week ever since moving to Shreveport, but there was only so much you could pick up from a phone call. I hadn’t been around much in the past five years, and it seemed that even though I’d been back almost six months, there were things I still needed to learn about my little sister.

  “You may be graduating soon, but you still have law school and much to learn about how the world works,” he chided. “You’ve never paid a bill, darling. I wouldn’t call you an adult just yet.”

  She laughed, her smile not reaching her eyes. “Of course not, Daddy.”

  Pigs eat anything, right? Like a body?

  I remembered hearing about a case where a serial killer fed the bodies of his victims to his pig and found myself wondering if Kevin would be able to destroy the evidence should I reach across the table and strangle my father.

  Sensing the growing tension, Kat jumped in to change the subject, but instead of alleviating the animosity, she threw gasoline on burning embers.

  “You’re taking Savannah to the ball, right? When do I get to get to meet her?”

  I laughed nervously and willed her to stop talking. “I’m not sure. We’ll figure something out.” I wanted to keep my father and Savannah as far apart as humanly possible. She wanted to meet him, and that was fine, but I wasn’t going to put her on his radar more than necessary.

  “Oh, come on. You’ve practically got hearts in your eyes. I want to meet the woman who brought my big brother to his knees.”

  My father cleared his throat and adjusted his jacket, a habit I recognized as a sign of annoyance. “Can I count on your companion to behave herself?”

  Fire shot through my veins, and my heart hammered in my chest. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you’ve told me nothing about this girl you’ve been seeing, and since she’s clearly not from our circle, I want to make sure you’ve prepared her for how she’ll be expected to carry herself.”

  No, she’s nothing like you or your friends. She’s a decent human being.

  “Savannah is none of your concern.”

  “There’s a lot at stake here, Quentin. I don’t have the time or patience for your righteousness. This election—”

  Having had enough of his shit, I let my hand fall heavily on the table, making the glasses and silverware rattle. “Has nothing to do with me or my girlfriend.”

  “You’re my son. If I'm to be the governor of the great state of Louisiana, you will certainly have a role to play.”

  “I’m well aware of your expectations, but what you fail to understand is that I don't give a rat’s ass about your political aspirations.”

  My mother gasped and lifted a shaky hand to her throat. “Quentin!”

  The senator looked like a bull getting ready to charge, his face reddening and his nostrils flared. But it was the tears in my mother’s eyes as she silently begged me not to make a scene that had me reeling in my temper and excusing myself to the bathroom.

  I stalked through the restaurant, anger rolling off me in waves. I’d almost reached the hallway that led to the bathrooms when a small hand landed on my arm, stopping me in my tracks. I lowered my chin to see the tiny hand still wrapped around my bicep. Perfectly manicured fake talons graced each fingertip, so unlike the chipped rainbow polish Savannah wore. Irritated, my eyes flicked up to see who owned the hand that was touching me.

  The fucking waitress.

  “Is everything okay, sugar? Things seemed to get a bit heated out there.”

  Before I could tell her to fuck right off, another female voice spoke from behind me.

  “Oh, we’re fine. We like to debate as a family, and sometimes things get a little intense,” Laughing, Kat circled around and positioned herself between the waitress and me, smoothly untangling my arm from her claws. “My big brother’s a bit of a sore loser. Would you be a dear and bring more sweet tea to our table? Mama just can’t get enough of it. Thank you so much.”

  Before she was done with the practiced, but polite kiss-off, she was steering me away from the bathroom and toward the lobby.

  “What are you doing?” I hissed. She didn’t respond, and I had no choice but to let her herd me across the marble lobby and out onto the sidewalk.

  Once we were clear of the door, she slowed her pace and started to dig in her purse.

  “Are you going to tell me why you dragged me outside?”

  Setting her purse on the retaining wall, Kat let out a huff while continuing to dig inside it. “You, my dear brother, needed a breather, and I needed a cigarette.” I heard the flick of a lighter and watched as a puff of smoke enveloped her before she turned around.

  Crossing my arms over my chest, I gave her my best disappointed look. “Since when do you smoke?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Since I was fifteen, and don’t look at me like that,” she demanded, pointing the two fingers that held her cigarette at me. “You don’t get to be all pissy about Daddy trying to control our lives and then do the same damn thing. You’re a lot of things, but a hypocrite isn’t one of them.”

  I nodded in agreement. She was right, of course, but it didn’t mean I liked it.

  “You’ve got to stop taking the bait, Q. You’re just making things worse.”

  The more we talked, the more pissed off I became, pacing in front of her as she puffed away. “Did you hear how he talked about Savannah and you?
”

  She took a drag off her cigarette and cocked her head to the side. “I was sitting right next to you.”

  Stopping, I glared down at her, incredulous. “Doesn’t it bother you?”

  She raised her hands and let them fall to her sides. “Honestly, I don’t give a fuck what Daddy thinks of me. In fact, I prefer that he underestimates me. It makes it easier to fly under the radar. I love you, but you showed me exactly how not to handle our father.”

  “But you still let him dictate where you live and what classes you take, and well, everything. He still runs your life. If you need money for tuition, I’ll pay for it.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. I wanted to go to Tulane. All my friends are there. I want to go to law school and live in the sorority house. Is Dad a dick? Yes. Does he drag me to charity events I don’t want to go to? Yes. Does it annoy me that he thinks I’m helpless because I’m a woman? Of course. But none of that stops me from enjoying my life.”

  “Why would you want to hide who you are when you can do what you want freely? I’ll pay for college and expenses. I haven’t touched the trust fund Grandpa set up.”

  Kat laughed and dropped her finished cigarette on the ground, stamping it out with her fancy shoes. “First off, that’s your money. Secondly, I like the idea of making Daddy pay for shit. It makes me feel like I’m sticking it to him. And lastly, I’m going to be a corporate lawyer, Q. I don’t want my crazy college days documented and broadcasted. People don’t want to hire the chick from Girls Gone Wild: Mardi Gras to handle mergers and acquisitions.”

  I hooked an arm around her neck and pulled her into a hug. “How did you get so smart?”

  She smirked, pulling out of my grip and flipping her long blonde hair over her shoulder. “From watching you fuck up. Now come on, let’s go pretend to be a happy family for another twenty minutes.”

  Heeding my sister’s advice, I bit my tongue and suffered through thirty more minutes of torture. Thankfully, by the time we got back, our food had arrived, and my father was too busy chewing to say anything that made me want to body slam him.

  Plus, I have to admit I smirked as I watched him pull out his card and pay for the meal. Maybe Kat was onto something.

  After giving my father a curt nod, I hugged my mother and sister and made my way back to my car as fast as I could.

  Climbing into my jeep, I loosened my tie with one hand and scrolled my phone with the other until I found the contact I was looking for. There was only one voice I wanted to hear—the only one that would cause my heart to thunder in my chest for an entirely different reason.

  “Madam Savvy's whore house, if you’ve got the dough, we've got the ho. What’s your flavor, sugar?”

  I snorted and shook my head. Only Savannah. “Hey babe, I just—”

  “Uh-oh, what happened?” she interrupted. It didn’t surprise me that she knew something was up. We’d only met less than six months ago, but she knew me better than anyone. She knew the real me, not my name or the reputation that came with it. I hadn’t told her the particulars about my family, but it wasn’t because I didn’t trust her. I wanted to shield her from the hurricane that was my father.

  I sighed, needing a distraction from the foul mood I always found myself in after an encounter with the senator. “Just a long morning. Tell me something.”

  “Like what?”

  I let my eyelids drop briefly, the weight of the morning finally settling over me. “I don’t care, anything. I just want to hear your voice.”

  “Kevin learned how to change the channel.”

  “What?”

  “I had the TV on this morning while folding laundry—”

  I must have entered The Twilight Zone. “You were doing laundry?”

  She scoffed. “It was under extreme duress. Addie practically had me at knifepoint the entire time.”

  I tried to stifle my laugh. “Was anyone injured during this standoff?”

  “Unfortunately, no. My knife throwing skills could use some work.”

  This time I didn’t hide my chuckle. There was something so refreshing about Savannah. She was unapologetically genuine and would never conform. It was the thing I loved most about her. Not that I had the balls to tell her that.

  “My sister and me going all West Side Story in our living room isn’t the point here. When a commercial for pork came on, Kevin straight up reached over and slammed his little foot down on the remote until he found the Animal Planet. I swear to fuck, that pig is smarter than most people I know.”

  “That's probably true.”

  An image of Savannah and me ten years down the road flashed through my mind. It included a house, a few kids, and a pig.

  My lip curled on its own volition.

  My father would love that.

  32

  Purely Textual

  Zephirin

  I-90 Toward New Orleans, Louisiana

  “Are you sure, son?”

  “Yes, Ma,” I kissed her cheek and answered with more conviction than I’d felt in thirteen years. “I’m not letting her go twice in one lifetime.”

  Nodding with that knowing finality only mothers had, she clasped her hands together as a smile curved the corner of her mouth. “So, you’ll bring her to dinner next Sunday?”

  “I’ll have to see what she has planned.” I glanced down, tightening my hold on the pan in my hand. “I can’t just tell her what to do. That asshole she married did that. I won’t be like him.”

  “She knows that, Zephirin. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t have let you in here.” Her smile widened as she placed a hand over my heart. “I’ve known Adelaide Dubois since she was a little girl. She’s smart—sometimes so smart she’s too stupid to see what’s right in front of her.”

  “Addie’s not stupid, Ma. She was mistreated by someone who didn’t deserve her.”

  Patting my chest, she cleared her throat as if swallowing the rest of her speech. That alone made me suspicious. I’d lived with the woman most of my life. Speeches were her specialty. Instead, she lifted onto her tiptoes and kissed me on the cheek as she shooed me out of the door. “That’s how I know it’s real this time.”

  My brows knotted in confusion. “Huh?”

  “When a son defends another woman over his mother, it can’t be anything but forever.”

  Forever.

  Was that where Addie and I were headed? I had no idea. I wanted it. I’d waited for it. She admitted to wanting me two weeks ago, and since then we’d fucked like Viagra-spiked crack rabbits, but she still held something back. I still didn’t have all of her, and this time around, I wouldn’t settle.

  Shifting into a higher gear, I hit the open road and relaxed while the conversation with my mother replayed in my head. Sunday nights had always been reserved for dinner with my mother. Since I’d moved out of our small apartment in Terrebonne Parish at eighteen and left her on her own, I’d wrangled with my guilt.

  I worried about her working crazy hours as a bartender for the local drunks, but I couldn’t do anything to help her. She wouldn’t let me. Any attempts at sending her money resulted in a slap on the back of my head and my truck packed with more groceries than one human could ever consume. My mother either wanted to prove a point or feed Bourbon Street. Either way, my need to take care of her usually met with a middle finger and a story about a cow needing to chew her own grass.

  Whatever the hell that meant.

  The only way for me to sleep at night was to keep our Sunday dinner routine. The one where we played the part of the happy Southern family, minus one obvious missing piece. Plus, I fully admitted to being somewhat of a mama’s boy.

  “Watch it, dickhead!” I yelled, swerving to avoid an asshole in a Hummer 2 who tried to take over my lane. The outburst barely passed my lips when a pan full of Creole bread pudding flew from the passenger’s seat onto the floorboard.

  Fuuuuuck.

  Anyone caught dead driving an H2 should be tortured on the spot as far as I was conce
rned. They were obsolete douche wagons complete with mini truck nuts swinging off the back and an enormous chrome grill that, when reflected off direct sunlight, could easily set fire to small animals.

  After flipping him off, I drove with one hand and salvaged what I could of my food while grumbling about pretentious assholes and their daddy’s money.

  Of course, I wouldn’t know. Daddies nor their bank accounts were concepts I’d ever been familiar with.

  Salvaging what I could, I wiped my hand on my jeans and licked off the rest. My mother never allowed me to walk out of the door empty handed. Even if we polished off the meal she’d made, the woman always managed to do some Houdini shit and pull out a brand-new casserole to shove in my hands before leaving. Nothing beat Ma’s cooking. It was a staple in my life I couldn’t do without.

  It had nothing to do with the advice that always accompanied it.

  Okay, maybe this time it did.

  Only tonight, I wasn’t in the mood for it. As soon as the conversation turned toward Addie, I took my dessert and left. The two of us had been sneaking around as if she were still married. Yeah, technically she still was—an annoying fact I tried my best to ignore. The thought of another man’s hands on her drove me crazy. I’d never been a particularly jealous man, except when it came to her. Something about that woman drove me to the other side of insanity.

  I didn’t argue when she pleaded with me to take things slow and not parade ourselves around town. To tell the truth, while balls deep inside of her, I would’ve agreed to anything she’d said. But now, it annoyed the fuck out of me. I may have loved her since I was eighteen, but being lead around by my dick wasn’t high on my priority list.

  However, until she divorced her shithead of a husband, I’d play her game and ease her into a public announcement. I knew Addie better than she knew herself. She was gun shy. She didn’t like to admit to making mistakes, and the last ten years of her life had been a big one. I had to show her the next fifty with me would be what her life should’ve been.

  Easier said than done.