Bounty

by Kristen Ashley

  “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.

  “She was into you and went for it,” I guessed.

  I saw his shadowed head move in an affirmative. “Went for it. I was fifteen, all about pussy. So she offered, I took her up on it.”

  “And Daddy found out and didn’t like that,” I said.

  “No, Daddy didn’t find out dick. She wanted more. I saw the error of my ways and backed off. She wasn’t used to not getting what she wanted so she told her father I took her virginity. Said I did it without her consent, at first, but when he threatened to call the cops, Ma lost her mind. It wasn’t like she didn’t see what was happening. She didn’t know where it went but she saw how that bitch was panting after me. And she had access to everything, including the girls’ rooms. She got hold of her diary where that cunt laid it all out. So instead of calling the cops, he canned Ma’s ass, kicked us out, did it without notice or severance and made sure she didn’t get a job anywhere else, including agencies, and that was when the garbage that was our lives turned to shit.”

  This I wasn’t understanding.

  “And you think that’s all on you?” I asked.

  “Babe, fucked her,” he answered.

  “You were fifteen,” I noted.

  “Yeah, a fifteen-year-old kid who probably was a lot more worldly than you were. I knew better and fucked her anyway.”

  I shifted both hands to cup his jaw. “Baby, you were only fifteen.”

  “And I knew better.”

  Cautiously, I asked, “Did your mom blame you?”

  “Fuck no,” he answered immediately.

  Of course she didn’t.

  She’d made Deke.

  “She didn’t because there was only one person to blame,” I informed him. “That person being that girl for doing what she did. It should never have gotten that far.”

  “Right, and it was me who took it that far.”

  “You said she panted after you.”

  “She did.”

  “You return that?”

  “Not until I fucked her.”

  “So it wasn’t only you who took it too far. She instigated it.”

  “Jussy, I knew better.”

  “You know we had live-ins,” I declared suddenly.

  Deke said nothing.

  I kept going.

  “None of them had kids who lived with us but it didn’t matter. We were different people, obviously, than these douchebags. I can’t say we treated them like they were members of the family but this was because we weren’t around often enough to make them that way. But that doesn’t matter. You just know. You know there’s a divide, at least with that,” I said the last quickly so he didn’t get any ideas. “You’re just careful, not for your sake, for theirs. This is a job for them and it puts food on the table. You don’t shit where you live and that goes both ways. But for her, this bitch who did what she did to you, an ending that disastrous, she had the greater responsibility.”

  I was speaking and while doing it, I was getting angry.

  Re
ally angry.

  And I knew Deke was about to say something but I kept on talking.

  Except it wasn’t talking.

  It had become ranting.

  “And I can’t believe she instigated that ending and sat back, watched it play out and didn’t do anything.”

  “Jussy, she was sixteen and, like I said, a cunt.”

  I slid out from under him, sat up and semi-shouted, “You ended up homeless!”

  Deke pushed up to a hand in the bed, reaching out with his other one to take the back of my neck in a firm hold before he replied soothingly, “Gypsy, it was a long time ago.”

  “It was whacked!” I snapped. “A, no way she should have gone there. I can imagine you were hot. You were even remotely as hot as you are now, I totally can see her wanting to go there.” I leaned his way. “That doesn’t mean she should.”

  “Jus—” he began, his voice trembling with what on that one syllable I knew was humor, but I didn’t find anything funny.

  “B, she couldn’t control her base impulses, and obviously, I’m into you so I get that, still, she should have taken her shot and then let it lie. I mean, who accuses someone of fucking rape just because the guy doesn’t want seconds?”

  “Ba—”

  “And C, she accused you of rape. Let’s discuss that for a moment,” I hissed. “I mean, what she did put you and your mother on the streets. But before she initiated that outrage, she accused an innocent fifteen-year-old boy of rape. What the fuck?”

  Now I was definitely shouting.

  Then I was moving.

  Deke using his hand on my neck to yank me to him so my chest collided with his, he turned, flipping me over him so I was again on my back, but on his side of the bed, and he was again on me, but fully on me so I was taking a lot of his weight.

  This silenced me, but it didn’t calm me. I just had too much of his weight to breathe easily.

  He took it off by putting it into a forearm but I remained silent because his face was so close to mine, I thought he was going to kiss me and I didn’t want to miss that in order to keep ranting.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t kiss me.

  He whispered, “You need to calm down.”

  “I’m not gonna calm down.” I did not whisper. “This is despicable.”

  “Like I said, it was a long time ago.”

  “It could be fifty years, it could be two days, it doesn’t change the fact it’s despicable.”

  “Jussy—”

  “You’ve been blaming yourself for twenty-three years,” I declared.

  Deke fell silent.

  “Haven’t you?” I pushed.

  “It’s on me,” he said quietly.

  “You’re very, very wrong,” I returned resolutely. “And my guess, your mother knew that. My guess, your mother knew just what a vile bitch that bitch was and she wished she’d been able to save you from that. So that makes what that vile bitch did even worse. Because you’ve held guilt for twenty-three years and your mother held guilt for not protecting you when both of you should have never been touched with that emotion because that vile bitch is a vile…fucking…bitch.”

  Deke said nothing.

  I panted for a while, still pissed.

  Then I realized he wasn’t saying anything.

  “Deke?”

  “You done fuming?”

  “I’m not fuming, Deke, I’m ranting.”

  “Right,” more humor in his tone, “you done ranting?”

  “No, I wanna know her name.”

  I felt Deke’s body tense. “Jussy—”

  “Tell me her name, Deke.”

  “Justice, it’s long over. Twenty-three years. The damage is done and everyone’s moved on.”

  “Except you who thinks that’s on you.”

  Deke again went silent.

  “Her name,” I bit out.

  “What do you think you’re gonna do?” he asked curiously.

  “Get Mr. T to find her and then I’ll have a think and after I’ve had my think I’ll activate Operation Fuck Up Vile Bitch’s Life.”

  The bed started shaking because Deke’s body was shaking because he was laughing.

  Hard.

  “I’m being deadly serious,” I whispered and I sounded it.

  He touched the tip of his nose to mine and whispered back, sounding just as serious (without the deadly part), “Fuck, you’re cute.”

  On no he did not.

  “Don’t call a revenge-minded girlfriend cute, Deke,” I rapped out.

  He pulled away but only half an inch.

  Then he stated, “Right, how’s this for revenge? She’s a cunt. She was a cunt when she was a little kid. She didn’t grow out of that. And years later, when I went back thinkin’ the same thing as you, watched her to find my way in to get mine back, I found she hadn’t changed. She’s got everything and she doesn’t see it as bounty. She sees it as rightfully hers, and the more she’s got, the more she wants. She’ll never be happy. Not ever. Not with a man. Not with her life. So I took off and left her to her misery. And right now, lyin’ under me is a pretty, sweet, cute woman with great fuckin’ hair who digs me, is fuckin’ phenomenal in the sack, and she’s got more talent in her than anyone I’ve known or ever will. And she sees all God’s seen fit to grant her as bounty. She doesn’t expect shit. She lives. She works. She gives good to the people around her. And she gets that back. That’s revenge, gypsy. I got a good life and I’ve had that for years. I made that life myself. She’s entitled and miserable because she feeds off that and she’ll have nothin’ but that until the day she dies.”

  Sometimes it just plain sucked that he was so wise.

  “I was thinking more along the lines of paying her stylist to make all her hair fall out and setting up her husband or boyfriend with a call girl and sending her the pictures, but your revenge works too,” I mumbled.

  “Glad you think that way,” he mumbled back.

  I kept up with the mumbling. “Though yours works, mine’s better.”

  Deke’s hand slid down my side, over my hip, in and he pushed my leg open so his hips fell through, doing this saying, “See? Jesus. She’s cute and I gotta fuck her and I just got done fuckin’ her.”

  “I support this option for our next activity because I have some residual Vile Bitch feelings to work out.”

  His mouth hit mine but when it did, he didn’t kiss me.

  He spoke.

  “Just sayin’, it wasn’t actually me givin’ you the option.” And with that, I felt as he slid the tip of his hard cock through my gathering wet.

  I suddenly decided I’d learned enough about Deke Hightower for one night.

  “Are we done talking?” I asked.

  More humor in his one syllable when he answered, “Yes.”

  “Then let’s stop talking,” I suggested.

  Deke didn’t reply.

  He kissed me.

  And we were done talking.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Loss and Gain

  Justice

  The next day, I was in my truck on the way back from town with sandwiches when the call came in from Chace.

  I took it, putting it on speaker, saying, “Hey, Chace.”

  “Hey, Justice, things good?”

  “Yep,” I replied, thinking that word was an understatement. “What’s shakin’?” I asked.

  “Callin’ to let you know, DNA tests came in and they were a match. It was Caswell that broke into your house.”

  Everything had been pointing to that. But even so, I felt a profound sense of relief to know that was true.

  That it was definitely over.

  “You good?” Chace asked as I turned on to Ponderosa Road.

  “Relieved,” I answered. “So yeah. I’m good.”

  “That’s good to hear, Justice. And was gonna call Deke but since I got you, Faye and me got a babysitter for Saturday. We’re gonna hit Bubba’s. She’d like to meet you. Maybe you guys could come into town and hang wit
h us for a drink.”

  That pushed out the weirdness, even if it came with relief, and just left me with a glow because Chace was Deke’s friend, he was going to call Deke, but since he had me, that me being Deke’s girlfriend, he just asked me.

  That had never happened to me before.

  And it felt way nice.

  “I’ll talk to Deke but I’d love to meet your wife,” I said to Chace.

  “Great. You or Deke throw me a text when it’s confirmed and hope to see you there.”

  “Right, Chace. And thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  “No,” I said, my tone changing. “I mean thanks. Thanks for how you were at the station when I was flipped out. Thanks for working on this. Thanks for everything. It’s your job but I hope you know how important it is. How much it helps knowing someone gives a shit, knows what they’re doing and is doing something about it.”

  His tone had changed too when he replied, “It is my job, Justice. But I do it for a reason, me giving a shit is the reason I do it and the rest was nice to hear you say.”

  “I’ll buy you a drink on Saturday,” I offered, deciding it was time to get on to those cases of hooch, all around.

  “I’ll look forward to arguing with you about the fact you don’t gotta do that.”

  I smiled as I turned on my indicator when the mouth of my lane came into view.

  “Later, Chace,” I said.

  “Later, Justice. Take care and say hey to Deke for me.”

  That made my glow glowier.

  “Will do. ’Bye.”

  He rang off. I drove down my lane and parked.

  I grabbed the sandwich bag, the bag from La-La Land (Shambles had been in a ginger mood so it was ginger snaps for luncheon dessert, dee-lish) and hauled myself out of my granddad’s truck.

  I went into the house and found Deke in the study. A study that already had a full hardwood floor, the wood dusty but that didn’t hide the beauty it’d have when it was polished. Deke was wearing protective coverings over his boots and squatting by an outlet he was working on.

  He lifted his eyes to me at the doorway.

  “Sandwiches,” I said.

  “Right. Few minutes, gypsy,” he murmured and looked back to his outlets.

  “Baby?” I called.