Under Locke

by Mariana Zapata

  “Thanks for bringing me, guys.” I told them shyly after a few minutes of traveling. Settling back into the front passenger seat, I glanced at Dex, who had his eyes on the road.

  Dark eyes slicked over to mine for a split second before he resumed his focus on the highway in front. Slim rattled on about random things for a while before falling asleep, leaving only old Pantera playing faintly in the background.

  “I swear I won’t fall asleep,” Dex muttered some time later.

  “I believe you,” I told him, taking in his silhouette. “But I’m too paranoid to sleep. Sorry.”

  His fingers drummed on the steering wheel. “You’re not flippin’ out as much,” he noted.

  That was true. I wasn’t. “You don’t drive like an idiot so it doesn’t make me as nervous, I guess.” Was that rude? “No offense,” I added.

  Dex chuckled, smiling just barely. Those eyes darted in my direction again. “You're a vegetarian?” he asked out of the blue.

  I did that whole creepy side-glance thing at his comment. How the heck did he know? "Yeah." I paused. "How'd you know?"

  He made a little noise with his tongue. "Never seen you eat meat, and then I saw the way you looked when we brought you that hot dog. I thought you were gonna puke."

  He did notice. How about that. "I threw up in my mouth a little bit."

  "That's pretty fuckin' disgustin', babe." What was funny was that he laughed instead of making a face.

  I snorted. "Sorry." But I wasn't sorry. It was true. That hot dog had looked like an old turd.

  "Don't be sorry," he grunted, cutting me another glance. "You don't eat meat, you don't eat meat. Next time just tell us so I don't have to see you lookin' like shit."

  Looking like shit? I turned to look at him and made an ugly scoffing noise in my throat. "Jesus, that's rude."

  "You know what I mean."

  Yeah, I did know what he meant. He thought I looked even worse than usual. Dick face. "Yeah, yeah. Whatever you say."

  He didn't say anything else but he did shake his head in response. "I got two good eyes, Ritz. You’re fine. You should already know I don't mean half the shit that comes outta my mouth."

  He had. At least half a dozen times, so I should know better than to take too much of his verbal crap to heart. Plus, why should I care? It wasn't like I was planning on being best friends with him. Right?

  "I know," I sighed, turning my attention to look out the window.

  Neither one of us said anything else for the longest. I sat there and thought about telling Dex that I was quitting and the guilt swamped me. God, I felt like a jackass when I had no reason to. It wasn't like I was a special employee. The work was pretty easy, he could find a hundred other people to fill the position.

  Still, it sucked.

  I felt like my father. A coward.

  A coward that had come into town and asked his long-lost son for money.

  And a coward that had disappeared as quickly as he'd popped up. Which speaking of, I hadn't brought up to Sonny again after he'd been so pissed off over the situation. Dex might know more and he'd be a more reasonable person to talk to since he wasn't emotionally attached to the situation.

  "Hey, Dex?"

  The smartass that had somehow popped up over the course of the last three days replied, "Hey, Ritz."

  Oh lord.

  "By any chance, did you see Sonny's dad when he was here?" I asked him as casually as possible.

  Keeping his eyes straight ahead, his mouth twitched. "Nope."

  Nope? That was all I was going to get out of him?

  "But I did hear about it," he thankfully kept going. His eyes flickered over in my direction. "Why?"

  "I'm just curious." Extremely curious but he didn't need to know that.

  "I know he asked for a loan," he offered in a gentle voice that made me wary. "And I know Luther didn't give it to him."

  "Oh." I paused, redirecting my eyes to the window. "Huh."

  I wanted to know what the money was for. And even though I didn't want to, I wanted to know what he'd been doing the last eight years. Why he hadn't bothered coming to see Will—to see me.

  The questions sank to the pit of my stomach like lead, dragging my mood down with it. Until I thought about what it was like to go through a million and a half things without my father.

  I didn't need him.

  I didn't. Not today. Not tomorrow. Never.

  "Trip told me the shit he pulled on you and your ma," Dex spoke suddenly.

  My muscles tensed up.

  "I remember hearin' about him movin' away when I was a kid," he explained. "I didn't know he left y'all though."

  The urge to blabber out that he'd left a year before I got sick was right on my tongue but I fought it back.

  "He never came back after your ma died?" Dex asked in a low, gentle voice.

  I had to swallow back the bitter sting in my throat. "Nope. I mean, he came right at the end. Right before she died. Then he left again the day afterward." My voice cracked just a little but it was enough to shame me for being so emotional about something that had happened forever ago.

  And it was enough for Dex to notice.

  He reached over and tapped the side of my leg with the back of his tattooed index finger. "That shit's not worth your tears, babe."

  It wasn't exactly comfort in yia-yia's arms but his light nudge was enough to center me. To make me remember that man wasn't worth my tears or even my thoughts. My mind was all for it but my body felt otherwise.

  I sniffed.

  "I'm serious, don’t go cryin'," Dex added in that same even tone he'd used a moment before.

  I nodded. Whether it was to his words or myself, I'm not sure, but I sucked in a deep breath and thought of my mom. My sweet mom who had loved a man, lost him, and never fully recovered. I never wanted to be like that. I never wanted to end up in the same shoes. I'd lost enough in my life to risk losing even more.

  "I remember when your dad came back once a long time ago. He came by to see Sonny but Son didn't a give a shit by then, ya know. Told him to fuck off because Son was pissed at something."

  Something.

  The memory of Sonny's call a few weeks after my mom had passed away was an easy memory. One of us always called the other at least every month back then, my half-brother had always been super easygoing. But that call, when I'd told him that our dad had left again, Sonny had lost it.

  Absolutely lost it.

  It might have been because the older Taylor had only stuck around a few years in his life, and even when he was in Austin while Sonny was a kid, he was a distant figure. Our dad had never committed himself in any way to Sonny's mom, though I'd learn years later that the word commitment meant nothing when he broke three hearts in Florida.

  Regardless, it didn't hit me until I was a teenager and Sonny had gone out of his way to have a relationship with Will and me. At least we'd gotten Curt Taylor longer than he had.

  So when Sonny found out that our birth father had left—again—right after Mom died... he'd been furious.

  And I think that Sonny swallowed up all the anger that Will and I had, for us.

  "Your old man is a fuckin' prick."

  That wasn't the first time I'd heard those words. I shrugged. "You should have heard the Greek names my grandma had for him. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had a voodoo doll in his image under her bed.”

  He pursed his lips together. "She's gone?"

  Almost immediately after I went into remission but I wasn't that specific with him. "She had a heart attack in her sleep a couple years ago." What I also didn't explain to him was that she'd sold her house a few months before she passed away to pay my medical bills.

  "Goddamn." Dex's long, masculine fingers tapped against the steering wheel. Lifting a hand, he pressed the back of it to his face. "That...that fuckin’ sucks, honey.”

  I blew out a breath and laughed just a little, more nervous and resigned than anything. “It could have been w
orse. He could have been abusive, or...I’m not sure. I just know that it could have been a lot worse, I guess.”

  Dex glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, jaw shifting in the brief silence that followed what I said before he spoke again. "My pa was a piece of shit, too. Always yellin' at my sisters, talkin' smack to my ma, tryin’ to beat my ass when he could. Constantly drunk, stealin' money from Ma or whoever was stupid enough to hang around him so he could hit up the bar and get so shit-faced he'd fall asleep on the floor most days. Worthless waste of life especially after they kicked him outta the Widows when they got tired of his shit.”

  By about halfway through him speaking, I'd been so stunned that I'd shifted in my seat to look at him. Where the heck his honesty had come from, I had no clue but I was sucked in completely.

  When there was an awkward break in the conversation, I blurted out a question. "What happened to him?"

  He sighed so painfully, I wouldn't have imagined a man like Dex could harbor so much resentment in him. He'd never seemed like the type to be disappointed in others. He usually went from normal to straight up pissed off.

  "He got arrested for distributin' when I was eighteen. Haven't seen his face or spoken to him since."

  "Not once?" I asked him in a low voice.

  Dex shook his head roughly. Anger and frustration seeped from his pores, stinging my chest with his unease over the past. "Not since he blamed me and Ma for his mess. Told us it was our fault for lettin' him get away with his shit for so long. Said we should’ve gotten him help. Can you believe that shit? I spent years tryin’ to get him to spend time with me and my sisters instead of with his vodka and he blames us for bein' a drunk motherfucker?

  The last time I talked to him he said I should get used to bein’ a disappointment ‘cuz that’s all I’d ever be.” He snickered bitterly. “Just like him.”

  Anger flooded my veins. “What a piece of shit.”

  Holy crap. Did I really just say that?

  I looked over at Dex to see him glancing over at me. Whether he was shocked or amused, I had no clue. All I got was a bob of his head. “You have no idea, babe.”

  I didn’t know Dex well, but I felt confident with what I told him next. I wasn’t trying to suck-up to him—why would I?—or make him feel better, but I thought he should know I didn’t believe his dad’s prophecy. “You’re nothing like that—like him—you know that, right?”

  “I hope to God I’m not.”

  “You’re not,” I confirmed. “You’re a good man, Dex.”

  He shrugged, but I could tell he was thinking, processing. “I don’t ever wanna be half like him. Back then, I was out on bail for some dumbass charges—," I wouldn't call assault a dumbass charge but I'd keep that thought to myself. "Hearin’ those words outta his voice. Doomin’ me to repeat his miserable, drunk life? I swore right then I was never gonna be like him. I have his temper. I say stupid shit I don’t mean sometimes but that’s it.”

  I said the next few words without even thinking. “You’re not.” I looked at him. “At all.”

  The silence after that was so crushing, it made me feel awkward. Heavy. Pressurized. I knew this chance was rare, so for some reason, I kept going. “What happened after that?”

  “After I got out of county, I left Austin, went up to Dallas for a couple of years and sorted my shit out. When I was ready, I came back home.”

  His version of the story was so short and perfectly cut out, I couldn't wrap my mind around it. He'd paid his penance, and then gotten out and tried to steer his life in a different direction. That was admirable.

  Dex turned to look at me over his shoulder. He looked at me so long I should have worried about him keeping his eyes on the road but there was no one there. “You think I’m an asshole, babe? Like really an asshole? Not just a grump or whatever the hell you call it?”

  He was being serious. So serious, so innately vulnerable right then that I felt something warm and heavy paint over my insides, warning me that this moment was something for Dex. Something that I had a feeling, an instinctual confirmation, he didn’t share with anyone.

  “I think you do some asshole things,” I answered him honestly. “But I don’t think you’re really an asshole, Dex.”

  Truth. Truth. Truth. This was the man who sat me on the counter after I’d been yelled at, bought me a coke and fed me bread. This was the same man who bitched at me for walking to my car alone. The same man who carried me to my bed. Dexter Locke was the man who didn’t give me a hard time about not drinking and kindly praised my attempt at a tattoo.

  He had more points going in the opposite direction of the asshole-meter than he did going toward it.

  “You’re actually probably one of the kindest people I’ve ever met when you aren’t—“

  “Bein’ a dick?” he suggested in a low voice.

  It was impossible not to smile. “I was going to say grumpy but that works too. The point is, you two are polar opposites. I’m pretty confident you wouldn’t treat your loved ones the way he did.”

  He cocked his neck from one side to the other as if trying to stretch the muscles. A long huff escaped from his mouth. "I've always told myself that when I have kids, I'm gonna to spoil the shit out of 'em."

  I couldn't help but smile, though I kept my gaze forward. Dex as a dad? A bad-mouthed dad?

  Dex smiled right then, morphing something inside of me that I couldn't completely recognize. The moment and intent was too heavy for me to bear. I didn't want to think of what all this honesty was doing to my insides. "You know what?"

  He grunted.

  "Your kids will probably come out of the womb saying the f-bomb."

  "Fuck," he laughed loudly, confirming my guess. "You're probably right, babe."

  I tilted my face to look at him, meeting those blue eyes that I knew even without the light, were the brightest blue I'd ever seen. "Little f-bomb dropping hell raisers. I can totally see it."

  Chapter Fifteen

  Don't vomit.

  Don't vomit.

  Don't vomit.

  Oh God, I was totally going to vomit.

  You will not throw up, balk, or gag, I told myself.

  Over and over again.

  The letter I'd typed up the night before shook in my hand. The paper that stated to my employer I was giving my two weeks notice to find a replacement. Ef me.

  I'd felt so guilty the days before as I hooked up my laptop to Sonny's printer. I kept thinking about Slim and his friendliness, Blake and his patience, and Blue and her quiet nature.

  But I'd be lying if I said the person I thought of the most wasn't Dex.

  All I could think of was the version of Dex I'd encountered in the truck on the trip back and forth to Houston. The one who talked to me about installing cameras and putting in extra bills into the cash registers at Mayhem to find their thief. The man who had opened up to me about his own crap-ass dad.

  That was the person I'd thought of as I waited for the printer to give me my notice.

  And it was that man that had me shaking in my boots at just the idea that I had to tell him I was leaving.

  To my surprise, only Blake and Blue were at the shop when I'd driven by on my first attempt to drop off my notice on Monday. When I'd shown up for work on Tuesday, it was Slim who opened with me.

  Each moment longer I had to wait, the more nervous and guilty I felt.

  So when Dex showed up about halfway through the evening at Pins on Tuesday, I had to double check to make sure my big girl panties were on and finally go break the news.

  And still, I wanted to vomit out my nerves.

  Only the problem was that he'd shown up in a mood. He'd tilted his head up at me and Slim as he walked passed us and disappeared into his office. And that was my sign that something was adrift in the world of Dex.

  Shit.

  By the time I made my way into his office, he was sitting behind his desk looking too intently at the computer screen on front of him. The rim of his cap wa
s tugged low on his head. A cigarette peeped out from between his ear and hat.

  "Dex?" I asked him in a small voice from the doorframe.

  He didn't even bother looking up. "Sup, Ritz?"

  "You have a minute?"

  "Now's not the best time," he warned. "I'm tryin' to sort this shit out."

  What shit he was trying to sort out...I had no clue. But time was a ticking.