Her gentle ungloved hand touched the leather of the old black jacket he loved to wear. In his mind, coupled with the scar on his face, the old coat made him look like a badass. Half of his luck stemmed from his look. Yet this little slip of woman had broken through the barrier. The man who never yielded in his views or stances had started to bend a little.
“If I am to be totally honest with you, and I will be,” she said, “Chad isn’t the result of a bad decision.”
Brody turned his head to look her in the eyes.
“Chad is the result of a calculated move by me and Jebbie to cool his brother down and get him off my scent,” she said. “Jebbie wanted to get even with Big Mike by having the object of his latest obsession. You see, it’s a pattern with the Sheriff. He rescued me, which shifted his focus, and I gave another woman, whom I hear he tortured sexually, an opportunity to escape.”
“Tortured?”
“Yes, it is a slow dance with that cat who likes to tenderize his mice before he consumes them,” Millicent said. “Imagine seven years of trying to escape. I figured if I was fat and pregnant with his brother’s child, he wouldn’t want me anymore. He’d see me as tainted and ruined, but then Jebbie left and moved and things just worsened.”
“I’m sorry for what you’ve been through,” he told her.
“Thanks, but the funny thing is, Brody, with you I feel this elation. Driving that truck has been the highlight of the last seven years of my life. You sleeping on my couch and not trying to screw me the first chance you got is why I want you as my husband,” she said. “You are a better man than any I have met and that says a lot.”
“It doesn’t say that we should get married.”
“Jebbie agreed to let you adopt Chad,” she told him, making his eyes get large.
Brody’s neck snapped around, looking at her in confusion. “Why the fuck he did he do that?”
“Because no man has ever gotten under his brother’s skin like you have and that’s the kind of man he wants to raise his boy, a strong man,” she said. “It the kind of man I want to go to bed beside each night.”
She tiptoed and kissed him on the cheek, pointing at the first flakes of snow starting to fall. Time was up and the ball was in his court. Cold, kind of hungry, and two shades of pissed off, he grumbled and stood staring into the night with his hands tucked in his pockets. The son of preacher faced with a moral dilemma he didn’t have the right answer to, but the answer which came to him felt right. He was going to yield to the right of the way things needed to go.
“Dammit,” he grumbled, turning to go back into the house.
“CHAD, GET YOUR COAT,” Yield said. “Millicent, get in here so Gabriel can get this done and over with. If we press hard, I can get to Titusville in under three hours, but it’s going to be a rush.”
Millicent’s eyes were wide as she asked, “What? We are getting married?”
“Come on before I change my mind,” he said scratching at his chin and feeling like an ass for making it seem like he was doing her a bigger favor than he was doing for himself. She painted a pretty picture that played out in his head of warm cupcakes, softball games and those loving arms. He wanted all of it. He wanted her and the kid. Mr. Yield had given in to the dream Mr. Stop was enjoying. “Wait, that’s wrong, let me try this again.”
He stepped around her and took a cookie off the pretty plate in the center of the kitchen table. Grabbing Millicent by the hand, he pulled her body down in the seat, wanting to get down on one knee, but opted instead to pull up a chair, angling his body so the good knee could touch the floor.
“Millicent Channing, the sun rays in my darker days, I offer you this cookie, because I have no ring, to share with me,” Yield said. “It would be an honor to have you call me your...”
He stopped.
Gabriel, Cabrina, and Chad all stared at him, thinking he’d lost his nerve. Instead he angled his head for the boy to come over and stand next to his mother. Chad, unclear what was happening, he walked over, eyeballing the cookie.
“Okay, starting over,” Yield said. “Millicent and Chad Channing, I offer you this cookie to share as a symbol of our unity in becoming a family. Chad and Millicent, will you marry me and make us a family?”
“Yes,” she said, leaning forward to take a piece of the cookie. Chad broke off a piece as well, ready to eat his portion, but Yield stopped him. Raising his hand to the center of their familial unit, he offered his larger piece of the cookie, simply because his hands were bigger than theirs in a toast.
“To the Johnsons,” he said, tapping his cookie to theirs. Millicent followed up the ceremonial cookie bite with a wet, crumbled kiss on Brody’s lips.
Chad, nibbling on his cookie, his eyes said the boy still had questions. “Mr. Brody, if you are marrying us, that don’t mean I have to kiss you on the mouth too, does it?”
“No Chad, I promise you will never have to kiss me on the mouth,” Brody said.
“Good, because I don’t want to wear dresses like your cousin Tim,” Chad said. “I tried to go with it, but he freaks me out.”
Gabriel broke out into brash laughter, so loud that Cabrina nudged him to stop. He couldn’t help himself. He chuckled all through the wedding ceremony and even more when they kissed each other on the lips to solidify the marriage vows. The Archangel chuckled even more when Brody gave him the evil eye, only making Gabriel laugh louder. Millicent had to know what was so funny.
“The first boy Tim ever kissed on the lips was me,” Gabriel said laughing. “After that, he began to wear dresses. Whew! Brody, your uncle was so mad with me and my family that Reverend Johnson didn’t want you to be my friend. The good pastor and your Uncle Roy insisted that I turned his son gay.”
“You know Uncle Roy still blames you for Tim’s ‘condition’ even though you gave him a black eye for kissing you on the mouth,” Yield said. “You were even more handsome as a young man. All the girls were chasing you, along with my cousin Tim.”
“And Tim is still wearing dresses, which tickles me,” Gabriel said. “How is he doing?”
“He’s the hair and makeup artist for the local network down in Columbus,” Yield said. “I won’t tell him you asked about him because he still swears you were his first love.”
“Jesus wept,” Gabriel said, asking them to stand still while he snapped a photo of the new Millicent. “Be right back.”
The laughter followed him down the passageway as he left them in the hall waiting as he went to his office to create fresh documents for Millicent’s new identity as Millicent Johnson of Titusville, Pennsylvania. The adoption papers he would need more time to handle, but the driver’s license and new credit cards he could make in a pinch.
“So, your father was a minister?” Millicent said, turning to look at her new husband.
“Yes, and I sang in the choir,” he said, staring and daring her to laugh.
“I look forward to learning all about you, Brody Johnson,” she said to him, wiping her lipstick off his mouth. He didn’t shy away from her touch as she wiped with care, ensuring his mouth didn’t look pretty enough to kiss.
Gabriel returned with the new bank card, handing them to Mrs. Millicent Johnson. He gave her a bit of precaution as he passed them to her.
“Wait three days before using them,” Gabriel said. “I have to transfer your funds in the accounts in Wentzville to these cards. Throw away your credit cards, bank cards, and anything else. Speaking of that, give me your phone.”
Millicent dug around in her bag and handed it to him. Her old life was gone as she forked over the old bank and credit cards as well. Gabriel provided a hug, shook Brody’s hand, and tussled the hair on Chad’s head.
“Hey! Tim just gave me this cool haircut,” Chad told Gabriel, which only made him start to laugh all over again.
“Gabriel, really,” Cabrina chastised, passing a lunch cooler to Millicent. “There are sandwiches, whole fruit, bottles of water, and nuts in the bag for your trip. Good luck w
ith everything.”
“Thank you both,” Millicent said as she waved goodbye. The newly formed Johnson family loaded up in the truck, and Yield slowly backed out of the driveway until he reached the road. Pointing the nose north, he sped down the backroads to Highway 80, hoping the traffic was light.
It was his lucky night since the weather report predicted heavy snow, and many of the people would be in for the evening, keeping the highway clear with easy sailing. If he took HWY 80, he would be slowed down by tolls. He’d rather deal with the tolls than the icy roads in Cleveland going up I-90.
“Mr. Brody,” Chad called his name, “do you have a big house like Tim’s and will I get my own room?”
“I have a big house and you will have two rooms,” he said. “One to sleep in and one just for your toys and play things. The bedroom should stay clean.”
“Two rooms?” Tim said wide-eyed. “With a game system and tv, too?”
“Yes, you will have a tv in the playroom, but not one in the bedroom,” he said looking at Millicent. “I don’t like the idea of a television in the bedroom, but I do have one in...our bedroom but very seldom watch it.”
“Fine by me,” she said, touching his thigh. It felt warm to her hand which meant it needed to be rested and checked again. “I feel heat in that thigh.”
“Yeah, I will rest it when I get home,” he said, clearing his throat. “I meant we get home.”
“New home, new home, new home,” Chad started to sing as Millicent clapped along like a demented patient about to get her daily dosage of happy pills.
Dammit, now I’m feeling all gushy inside. They are going to make me all soft and give me empathy and shit. He frowned for two hours and 46 minutes to his home just on the boundary of Ed Myer’s Complex right on the borderline of Oil Creek Park. A mistake in zoning allowed him to purchase the twenty acres of land where he built his home.
A house which made both Millicent and Chad say at the same time, “Damn!”
“Welcome home,” he said, stopping at the front gate, requesting they put their hands on the dash as a white light scanned over their bodies. He pressed a key pad, leaning out the window to allow a retinal scan to cover his bad eye. The gate opened slowly as he waited before driving the truck up the gravel driveway.
Millicent was overcome with joy seeing the security system which meant no night time sneak attacks and Sheriff Mike Colton couldn’t get to them. She began to cry tears of joy as he drove up to the house that she and Chad would now call home.
SHERIFF COLTON HIT Jebbie hard in the forehead with his bare knuckle, knocking his brother out of the chair. As much pain as Jebbie felt from the blow, he laughed like a madman. His vision doubled, he began to drool, and his bladder let loose. None of it mattered as he laughed uproariously in the floor in a puddle of his own urine.
“How could you be so fucking simple, Jebbie?”
“It was easy,” Jebbie said looking at a double of his big, bad brother. “You have no hold on her now. She and my boy are free of you. Ain’t nobody you can call, bully, or intimidate. I was recorded on the phone by some lady clearly stating my consent to allow my boy to be adopted by that Brody fella, and that I gave away my parental rights of my own free will giving Millicent permission to take him across state lines.”
“I should put a bullet in you for this, you dumb knuckle-dragging maggot,” Big Mike said, kicking his brother in the ass with his pointed toe cowboy boot. “First you go and fuck her behind my back and then knock her up with that weirdo of a kid who likes to paint. Now this...I swear sometimes you do shit just to piss me off.”
Jebbie knew better than to confess that many of the things he did were in fact to piss his brother off, but she deserved her freedom. Too long had she been locked in a glass cage for one man’s enjoyment. He knew he never could make a woman like that happy. Rolling over and sitting up, he faced his brother. It was a dumb thing to do, but he said it anyway.
“Mike, from the way you describe this Brody dude, you said he was big, very tan, with a scar over his eye?” Jebbie said, preparing himself for the worst.
“Yeah, why? You better not say you know this man and said nothing to me about him being in town,” Sheriff Mike growled.
Jebbie drooled a bit, trying to clear his vision from the blow to his head. Thirty-seven years he’d lived under the thumb of his brother. Every woman he tried to date, his brother interfered. His jobs, his life, his livelihood, Big Mike controlled. He, like Millicent, didn’t want to be controlled anymore. She’d gotten away from Big Mike. He wanted to be free, too.
Sucking back the drool, he opened his mouth to utter the last words he knew he’d ever speak to his brother. He grinned a lopsided smile, laced with drips of spit creeping down his chin. “I don’t know him, but I bet he’s making her cum every night as she screams out his name. She makes this little noise in the back of her throat when she’s close, but I could never make her scream. I could make her cum, really hard when I used my tongue to taste that sweet honey pot, but I bet that big mutherfucker is dicking her so good, that he’s making her call on Jesus.”
Big Mike Colton pulled the trigger in anger.
“Fuck,” he said as he looked at his little brother on the floor sitting in his own piss with his brains splattered. She made him do this.
She made me kill Jebbie.
Jebbie was dead because of that bitch.
I’m going to make her pay.
Chapter Nine – For this...I am thankful.
Fatigue.
Yield was so tired, he didn’t think he’d be able to make it up the steps to even fall flat on his face on the bed. Some fucking wedding day. Mom’s gonna be pissed that I got married without her being there, but on the upside, she has another grandchild. Shit. How did I get myself into this? He drove around the rear of the house, coming to a stop in front of the old barn that he had turned into his personal garage and workshop. Pressing the button, the large garage door rolled up so he could pull the truck into its designated parking space.
The snow had fallen a good four inches and the connector between the house and garage was a lifesaver, but it would still be cold. Add solar panel heating to the area come summer. He made a mental checklist to go with all the other projects he had yet to finish in the house. So much to do, so little time.
“Welcome home,” he mumbled, cutting the engine.
He looked at his new family, who sat with their mouths opened wide. Their heads snapped left at right, looking out the large window at the building they would call home, and the vehicles in the garage, and all the tools.
“Whoa, is that your house?” Chad asked. “How many bedrooms does it have?”
“Five I think, but I keep adding to the house every year, so I have a good number of empty rooms,” he said. “Some are furnished, others are just hangout spaces.”
“Hang out spaces?” Millicent asked.
“Yeah, every other Thanksgiving is here,” he said. “By the time my Uncle Roy, Aunt Bella, Tim and his sister and her kids, my sister and her kids, plus my Mom get here, it can get pretty crowded, so I started adding on to make sure everyone was comfortable.”
Yield opened the truck door, wincing at the pain in his leg, and knew he required antibiotics and to rest the appendage. The last thing he needed was an infection. Plus, he wasn’t going to get any better by sitting in the truck.
“Come on, let’s get inside and get comfortable for the weekend,” he said, stepping out of the vehicle. He looked around the garage at what he had parked here at home, A Jeep, a Subaru with all-wheel drive, another Ford F150, and a scooter, a VW bug, and the Jolly Roger, as he liked the call the beat-up old Chevy.
“Millicent, the keys to the Jeep and the Subaru are in the house in the kitchen,” he said. “You can claim either of those as your own until you decide what kind of car you want.”
“I can?” she asked with her mouth open wide in shock as she dragged the suitcase behind her. Chad followed along, pulling his as well.<
br />
“Sure, you need a car to get around, shop, and get Chad enrolled in school when the New Year comes back in. There are three private schools close by plus the local one on Main Street,” Yield said. “I have internet so you can research and discuss with the boy which will be his preference.”
He led them through the walkway into the back porch of the house, pulling them close while a white light, the same as at Gabriel’s, washed over them as he leaned forward to again allow his bad eye to be scanned. The door popped open and he hit the light switch. Warm light flooded over a kitchen that made Millicent gasp.
“Fridge and pantry are stocked if you’re hungry,” he said. “Kitchen, great room, water closet there, and the bedrooms are down the hall.”
The leg had begun to stiffen up about an hour ago and he wanted to shower and climb in bed.
“I’m turning on the alarm, so please don’t open any doors or windows,” Yield told them as he walked down the long hallway. “I’ll set up your own security codes and accesses in the morning.”
“Where are you going?” Millicent asked.
“Shower, bed, sleep,” he replied, “in that order.”
“Uhmm, what about us?” she asked.
“This is your home now, tour it, learn where things are. Chad, you can take the room across the hall from us. Please keep it clean. I hate a messy house,” he said, entering the last bedroom on the right.
Blind Luck (The Technicians Series Book 3) Page 7