King rolled his eyes. “Babe, seriously, you need to start cursin’ like an adult.”
She stuck her tongue out at him and then faced me again. “Please tell me you aren’t taking a walk on the Norman Rockwell side and banging a housewife?”
I laughed and hard ’cause that shit was so funny, I couldn’t even wrap my mind around it. When I was done, I rubbed my smile outta my beard and tried to take her question seriously. “Nah, teach, I’m not bangin’ a housewife.”
She relaxed. “Good, because seriously, I know these Entrance mums and I’ve heard them talk about ‘taming the bull’ and having a round with you. Women like that don’t know the first thing about handling a man like you, Zeus Garro, and you should know better than to get involved with them.”
I looked at King. “Did the woman just give me a lecture even though I didn’t do what she fuckin’ thought I did?”
“It was a preemptive strike,” she explained like the prim and proper little teacher she’d been. “And I’m not a teacher anymore, so don’t call me ‘teach’.”
“She did,” King confirmed, ignorin’ her. “She does that.”
“Don’t know how you put up with it,” I told ’im, purposely ignorin’ the irritation makin’ Cress bristle. I liked buggin’ the fuck outta her, she was cute like a little yappy dog when she was mad. “Knew I raised a strong man, didn’t know I’d raised a saint.”
King laughed, throwin’ his head back just like his sister and I did when we laughed. He was blond like his mum, skinnier than me but fillin’ out now he was nearly twenty, and other than the colour of my eyes, he didn’t look a thing like me. But fuck he was so much my son it slapped me in the face sometimes. Like me but, thank fuck, better.
“Oh shut up, both of you,” Cress snapped but there was no real heat in it. “Zeus you’re trying to distract me from the topic at hand and I will not be deterred. Something’s different about you.”
Fuck if that wasn’t true. I was sittin’ there in my cut, my normal scowl on my face to intimidate the dads and brothers in the stands and turn on the repressed mothers and curious little girls, and I was doin’ it leanin’ forward with my forearms on my knees so that the rows of people behind me could clearly see the cut I wore, The Fallen symbol on the back. I wasn’t smilin’, doin’ a fuckin’ jig or singin’ some pop song about it bein’ a beautiful fuckin’ day.
Yet somehow even I knew I looked different. There was something wrong with the air around me, like a near invisible shroud of misery had been lifted and people could see me clearer. Hell, even I could see me clearer.
I was fuckin’ happy, and after years of gettin’ by on rations of happy moments stolen from seein’ my kids grow good and strong, memories my brothers gave me ridin’ behind me in formation down the hot roads of the province and the brief flares of pleasure to be had from fuckin’ random pussy, this kinda happiness rocked me.
Yeah, I was different and Cress was too smart not to see it.
There was no reason to lie to her. She’d meet Lou sooner rather than later ’cause I planned to bring my girl over for Sunday dinner to “meet the family”.
But I was a selfish man and I wanted just one more night with my teenage woman as my dirty secret.
“Mute, brother.” King stood up with a loud cry to greet his best friend with a backslappin’ hug. Mute didn’t like to be touched but he was used to King, loved ’im more than anyone else in the fuckin’ world, and he embraced him back like they’d been parted for years insteada weeks.
When they broke apart, they were both smilin’.
“You been here this whole time? Why aren’t you sittin’ with us?” King asked, wavin’ a hand at the man sittin’ beside him to make room for Mute.
The man blinked at my son, looked to me and the entire size of me, then forcefully shoved into the person on his other side to make room. I grinned at him manically and watched him swallow.
Laughin’ under my breath, I caught the end of Mute sayin’, “Got a job to do.”
Fuck.
I stiffened before I could tell myself to stay cool. Cress was a fuckin’ hawk when it came to sniffin’ out secrets and I had a feelin’ mine was about to be blown to fuckin’ bits.
King was frownin’. “A job? At a fuckin’ high school basketball game?” He laughed, lookin’ at me as he did it to confirm that Mute was bein’ ridiculous.
Mute was never ridiculous and, un-fuckin’-fortunately, he never lied.
“Gotta keep an eye on Foxy,” he said, lookin’ over at his charge as she did a fuckin’ backflip on the opposite side of the gym.
“Foxy?” King and Cress both said at the same time.
It woulda been funny if I was in the mood to find the situation funny.
I closed my eyes and pressed my palms to ’em ’cause I knew what was comin’.
“Louise Lafayette,” Mute explained, pointing at her. “The one with gold hair and gold skin and blue eyes like Barbie.”
God, the kid never talked and now he was fuckin’ Shakespeare.
I opened my eyes and peered between my fingers to see Cress lookin’ at me like a fuckin’ pedophile and King’s mouth wide open enough to swallow a Quarter Pounder without chewin’.
I sighed, dropped my hands and shot Mute a look. “You do that on purpose or is this one of those things you can’t help doin’?”
Mute blinked at me.
No fuckin’ help there, then.
“Zeus, please do not tell me you’re sleeping with Louise Lafayette,” Cressida breathed. “She’s a kid!”
“Cress babe,” King muttered, sittin’ down beside her in a—useless—effort to control his woman. “Think ’fore you speak.”
“She a kid like King was a kid when you two started fuckin’?” I asked blandly, adjustin’ one of the skull rings on my finger where it’d gone crooked from finger-fuckin’ Lou twenty minutes before.
I brought my fingers to my nose and caught the salted caramel scent of her. Tried to focus on that insteada bein’ annoyed with Cress.
“That was—” Cress opened and closed her mouth. “That was different and you know it!”
“You know shit about it bein’ different,” I told ’er. “Careful here, Cress.”
“Queenie,” King said, firm. “Let Dad explain.”
She rolled her lips under for a second, tryin’ to reign in her sass.
No surprise, she failed.
“No, seriously, what the hell, Zeus? Louise is the seventeen-year-old daughter of the mayor! A man, I don’t have to remind you, who just last year held a freaking town meeting in an attempt to run The Fallen MC and, more specifically you, out of this town.”
“Memory works fine,” I told her between my teeth.
Didn’t want to scare her, didn’t want to ’cause even more of a scene than we were already makin’. Lou needed to finish high school ’fore we went public in her mainstream society. We didn’t need my son’s woman outing us in the middle of a fuckin’ high school basketball game.