“Deal,” she replied instantly and turned to Bubba. “Go home, pack your shit, I want you out by tonight.”
“Have you lost your mind?” Bubba was still shouting, now at Krystal.
“Yeah,” she answered. “Ten years ago.”
Bubba scowled at her then sucked in breath, shook his head and his tone was much quieter when he said, “Darlin’ –”
“Gotta hold onto what’s real,” Krystal cut him off. “This bar is real. I lose Tate and Lauren, I won’t be able to hold onto the only thing in my life that’s real.”
“We –” Bubba started.
“There is no we, never was. You fooled me into thinkin’ there was a we then I fooled myself into thinkin’ it. But now I know, there is no we and never was.”
Bubba pushed close to her. “Darlin’, we gotta talk, let’s go to the office.”
“Not talkin’, go home, get your shit out.”
“We gotta talk,” Bubba pressed and that was when I watched Krystal change.
She turned fully to face Bubba and her body got visibly tight but her face went soft, not with tenderness, not with love, but with anguish.
“It isn’t about the bar,” she whispered and shook her head. “It isn’t about the bar,” she repeated and sucked in breath through her nose. “There’s a maniac out there, Bub. Laurie doesn’t make a move without someone takin’ her back. She doesn’t step a foot out that door unless she’s got a man at her side. She doesn’t walk in that door unless someone who’s lookin’ out for her brought her here. She’s never alone because these days, in Carnal, alone can get a woman hurt. Alone can leave her vulnerable. She didn’t arrange that, Tate did. But you? What’d you do? Tonia’s sliced up and raped and that hippie coffee girl gets attacked, a killer is on the loose in your town and you’re out gettin’ drunk, gettin’ laid, havin’ a good ole time and I’m here, alone, no one at my back. That’s what it’s about, Bub. I’m already alone. I’m just makin’ it official.”
Bubba got closer to her, lifted a hand to touch her and she jerked away so his hand fell.
“But, baby, you can take care of yourself, I know that,” he whispered.
“So could Tonia,” she replied.
“Tonia was young and stupid, you ain’t that,” Bubba returned.
“No, what I am and have been for months is scared outta my fuckin’ brain,” Krystal said softly. “Alone and scared outta my fuckin’ brain.”
“Baby,” Bubba whispered.
“Go,” she whispered back.
“All you had to do is tell me,” Bubba kept trying.
“No, see, that’s what you don’t get. I shouldn’t have to tell you,” Krystal retorted. “You should want me to be safe and do what you gotta do to make that so without me tellin’ you.”
“Krys –”
“Go.”
“Darlin’ –”
“Go.”
They stared at each other and I held my breath.
Bubba opened his mouth to speak but Tate got there before him.
“Bubba, two choices, man. You go or I make you go.”
Bubba’s head turned toward Tate and his face got hard. I braced and Jim-Billy slid off his stool.
“Bub, buddy, I’ll help you at home,” Jim-Billy offered.
Bubba crossed his arms on his chest and declared, “My house, my bar, not leavin’ either. Fuck this.”
That was when I knew the laid-back, biker Bubba was digging in to save face.
And that was when I knew I was done.
“Honestly?” I asked and his eyes came to me. “You put them both through what you did and now, when it comes down to it and you can finally be a man, you’re gonna put them through more?”
“Don’t know what this has got to do with you, Laurie,” Bubba retorted.
“You wouldn’t, since you’ve been gone so long, you don’t know that I love Tate and I love Krys and, since you go fishin’ so often, you haven’t cottoned onto the fact that so does everyone else. If they’re done with you then the rest of us are too.” Bubba glared at me and I kept talking. “We put up with you because we care about them. Now they’re done, so are we.”
Bubba uncrossed his arms and declared, “I don’t need this shit.”
“There it is,” I replied immediately. “That’s your problem. All you think about is you. What you don’t understand is they don’t need this shit and they haven’t needed it for a long, long time.”
I watched a muscle jump in Bubba’s cheek then he looked at Jim-Billy. “Don’t need your help, old man,” he announced then strode right out of the bar.
We all watched the door close behind him and then I looked at Jim-Billy to see he was looking at Krystal. My eyes moved to Tate to see he was watching me and looking far from happy then both Tate and I looked at Krys.
“Krys, honey –” I started.
She cut me off. “Tomorrow mornin’, I’ll show you the office work.”
“Why don’t you and I have a drink now?” I suggested.
“‘Case you missed this, darlin’, I ain’t like your other girls. I don’t process over girl talk. Life happens and I move on,” she returned. “Life just happened and I’m movin’ on.”
After she finished speaking she turned and again disappeared down the hall.
I looked to Tate. “You okay out here alone?”
“Yeah, babe,” Tate answered.
I nodded, my eyes went to Jim-Billy who nodded at me, then I went behind the bar, grabbed a bottle of vodka (Krystal’s preference), two glasses, which I filled with ice, and I followed Krystal.
It took fifteen minutes to talk her into a drink.
It took half a bottle to talk her into talking.
Dalton, Wendy and Jonelle came on at seven and Tate rode his bike back to the house and got the Explorer.
A mostly drunk, very exhausted, girl-talked out Krys came home with us and slept on the couch.
* * * * *
With Krys snoring on the couch, Jonas asleep in his bed, I sat cross-legged on Tate’s bed in a pair of panties and a shelf-bra camisole while Tate brushed his teeth.
He came out of the bathroom naked which was a hit to my resolve to have a serious chat with him, one that got my point across but didn’t make him mad, but I sucked it up and looked from his body to his eyes.
“Can I ask…” I started, speaking softly, “that you discuss my future with me before you decide what I’m going to be doing, where and for whom and then announce it to the world?”
Tate held my gaze then he bent, pulled back the covers and got in bed. He lay back against the headboard and his eyes came to me.
“I didn’t announce it to the world.”
“You did.”
“I said it to Bubba, Krys and Billy. That’s not the world, Ace.”
“It’s most of my world.”
He sighed then his hand shot out, wrapping around my wrist and he tugged. I came forward on my knees, my free arm moving out automatically to control my fall. My hand landed on his chest about two seconds before he curled up slightly, both his arms went around me and then my torso landed on his chest.
I pulled back, snapping, “Tate –”
“You missed it, babe.”
I glared at him and asked, “Missed what?”
“I don’t give a shit about the bar.”
“Sorry?”
He didn’t answer me, instead he stated, “I give a shit about Krys and I give a shit about you. I don’t want outta that bar. It’s turnin’ a damn good profit now with you and a stable of decent waitresses who sell booze instead of socialize. Boys’ll be puttin’ their bikes away for the winter soon but the mountains come alive when the snow falls. We got three slopes within an hour’s drive. Be stupid to get bought out now that we got decent help.”
“So, what –?”
His arms gave me a squeeze before he whispered, “She needed motivation.”
His intent dawned on me and I relaxed against his body.
�
��You wanted her to get rid of Bubba,” I whispered back.
“She’s a good woman, deserves more than that,” he muttered. “Can’t find it, then she still deserves a life without that.”
God, but I loved this man.
I lifted a hand and laid it on his bearded jaw.
“Tate.”
“And you like it there but you also like it here. I knew you wouldn’t ask for special treatment and you wouldn’t put Krys out. So, I made it so you could keep workin’ there, share the load with Krystal and feel good about that but be home for me and Jonas.”
I relaxed more against him and my face came closer to his.
“Tate,” I repeated softly.
“And I wasn’t lyin’. The office is a fuckin’ mess. I know you got the skills to sort that out, I don’t have the patience, the time or the inclination for that shit so I could use your help too.”
He could use my help. I liked that.
My face got closer.
“Captain,” I whispered.
“To fix what Neet broke in Jonas, I need to build a family. I’m guessin’ you wanna be a part of that.”
“I do,” I replied quietly.
“Then I gotta do what I gotta do to build that for Jonas. I played Krys, for her, for you, for Jonas and, yeah, for me.”
“Okay,” I agreed.
“You still pissed?”
“No,” I answered, though he had to know I wasn’t considering I’d all but melted into him, but I went on. “Though, you could have spoken to me first.”
“Didn’t know I was gonna do it until Bub walked in.”
My head tipped to the side, I decided our current conversation was over since I liked his responses so much and therefore I changed the subject. “Why do you call Jonas ‘Bub’? Is it because of Bubba?”
One of his hands slid up my back into my hair, the other one slid down then up, into my camisole.
“Yeah, Bubba’s real name is Jonas. I talked Neeta into namin’ him after Bubba and then I gave him Bubba’s nickname. When he was younger, called him Bubba. Shortened it to Bub later.”
This surprised me. “Bubba’s that good of a friend?”
“We played ball together in high school. Him, Wood and me were tight.” His hand slid through my hair and the fingers of his other hand drew patterns on the skin of my back as he finished quietly, “He was a great friend, Ace, just a shit business partner. Shoulda known but I got a habit of thinkin’ the best’ll come outta people when it won’t.”
“Sometimes it does,” I replied.
His hands stopped moving when he muttered, “Right.”
I pressed into him by giving him all my weight. “It does.”
His eyes locked on mine. “You know, part of me was hopin’, faced with the prospect of losin’ her son, Neeta’d get her head outta her ass.”
“Tate –”
“She didn’t and in the end it was worse than I thought.”
“She isn’t a good example,” I told him.
“Bubba is?” he asked.
“I am,” I answered.
His brows drew together. “What?”
“You bring the best out of me.”
He stared at me a second then both his arms wrapped tight around me and he gave me a hug as he chuckled.
“What’s funny?” I asked.
“Babe,” he replied and said no more.
“Babe what?” I pushed.
His hand slid back into my hair, he cupped the back of my head and brought my lips to his for a light kiss.
Letting me pull slightly away, he murmured, “I was thinkin’ it was the other way around.”
My heart turned over, I liked that he thought that so I stroked my thumb along his bristly beard and smiled but said, “No.”
He grinned back and replied, “Ace.”
“The way I see it,” I told him. “You haven’t changed at all, just your focus has. For me, I’m completely different.”
“No, Lauren, you aren’t.”
“Yes, I am.”
“How you figure that?”
“Never,” I said then dipped my head so my lips were at his ear. “Never has sex been so good for me.”
His fingers fisted in my hair, his head turned and his lips slid along my neck until his mouth was at my ear. “All right, Ace, I’ll give you that.”
Arrogant, but… whatever.
I lifted my head and looked down at him. “And never, never, not even with my boyfriends who were nice to me, did I feel safe enough with them, safe enough with how they felt about me, to throw attitude.”
His body went still but his face registered surprise and I continued.
“I was scared of losing them. I was scared of them not thinking I was good enough.” I bent and touched my lips to his and then said there, “See? You bring out the best in me.”
He rolled us so I was on my back, he was on top and he was looking down at me.
“Not sure I’m big on the best in you bein’ attitude,” he said but I knew he was teasing, I knew it because his face was warm and his eyes were dancing.
“I am since it’s the real me and I feel safe being just that with you.” My hand went to the side of his head and my fingers slid into his thick hair. “It was exhausting, trying to be perfect. It feels good being able to be just me.”
“Laurie –”
“Kiss me, Tate,” I demanded softly.
“Baby –”
I lifted my head and put my lips to his, encouraging on a whisper, “I wanna catch fire, honey, and only you can bring that out for me.”
I watched up close as Tate’s eyes went intense then his head slanted and he muttered, “You got it, Ace.”
Then he kissed me.
Then he made me catch fire.
* * * * *
Two days after that, Tate was back out on the road, the blinds guys were up in our bedroom installing Tate’s new, cool as heck, dark wood venetian blinds and I was in his office sorting through his stuff.
I was coming to the realization that I could spend four, sixteen hour days organizing his office and I still wouldn’t have it in hand when a thought occurred to me, it involved the computer, the computer was right there so I followed through with that thought.
I turned on the computer, typed in the password Tate gave me, pulled up the search engine and typed “Tatum Jackson”.
Then I hit enter.
A listing of sites with Tate’s name in them instantly appeared.
The top listing was an online encyclopedia entry. I held my breath and clicked on it.
At the right top side was a photo of Tate, surprisingly not from his football days, relatively recent. It was torso and up, mostly his side, his neck was twisted and he was looking in the direction of the camera. In shot, but turned away, his back to the camera, Tate’s hand wrapped around his bicep, was a blond man in handcuffs. Under this photo was a caption that said, “Jackson, after apprehending now convicted murderer Cleeg Johansson” and under that were Tate’s stats.
The rest of the site contained a good deal of description mostly of Tate’s short-lived football career but also Tate’s accomplishments as a police officer and bounty hunter with some alarming information about the fugitives he’d found, a goodly number of them being very high on the armed and dangerous scale.
There were photos of him playing football but they were small so I clicked backwards to the search results and randomly chose a site further down the list.
It came up with a black background, “Tatum Jackson, God” in green writing at the top with blue footballs dancing on the left side of his name and red hearts dancing to the right by the word “God”.
I stared at the page and the two side by side photos of Tate prominent on the front of it. One was of him walking from the field what appeared to be at halftime or after a game, helmet held by the faceguard dangling from his fingers, hair wet with sweat, eyes still intense with residual focus on “the game”, body lean and fit and spectacular
in his Penn State jersey and football pads. The other was a black and white, taken from the back, a football field with a bunch of equipment was in front of him. Tate was standing on the sidelines wearing a pair of loose-fitting athletic shorts that hung down his thighs and he held a t-shirt bunched loosely in his hand. His muscled back was bared and the eagle tattoo was on prominent, glorious display. His neck was twisted, his head slightly tipped down, you could see his profile and he was grinning at someone out of shot.
Wow, but he was something.
“Cool!” I heard Jonas cry from behind me, I jumped and turned to see him rush into the room. “You found Loretta’s site.”
It was way too late for me to hide the fact that I’d internet searched his father and I knew this because Jonas had pushed my hand away and was clicking through “Loretta’s site” with what looked to be great familiarity of what it held.
“Loretta?” I asked him.
“This page is my favorite,” Jonas said and looked at me as I looked at the page and he went on, “Yeah, Loretta. She’s Dad’s stalker.”
I knew my mouth was hanging open but I couldn’t close it because I was staring at a page that was a mélange of photos of Tate from what appeared to be high school, through Penn State (not just playing football but also walking to class and sitting on barstools and the like) – I shoved Jonas’s hand out of the way, commandeered the mouse and scrolled down – through Tate at awards ceremonies, his short-lived career with the Eagles (mostly shots during practice) – I scrolled down further – and shots of him in Carnal and doing bounty hunter things, like dragging fugitives into police stations or standing over them with their bellies to the pavement and their arms cuffed behind their backs.
“Oh my God,” I breathed.
“She’s harmless,” Jonas told me.
“Oh my God,” I repeated.
“Dad’s talked to her. She’s agreed not to put pictures of me on there but I think that sucks, since the kids at school thought it would be cool. Hey, wait!” he cried. “She’s got a new page.”
He pushed my hand away, clicked on the “3” at the bottom of the page which was next to the “Pages 1 2” and then a site came up with one picture.
Tate and me on his bike.
We were waiting to pull out of Bubba’s parking lot, Tate’s booted foot was to the ground, his head was turned to look down the street and I was tucked close to his back, my arms around him, my thigh against his, my chin to his shoulder.
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