Rush nabbed her phone and purse from the floor and went back to the kitchen.
He had four huge hamburger patties formed and the skillet on the stove heating up when she returned with her eyes a little bloodshot and her makeup a little less heavy, but she was back together.
Something in him missed the raccoon look.
“Still beautiful,” he murmured.
“You’re just trying to save a night where you end it getting laid,” she teased, sliding her ass on one of his stools and reclaiming her beer.
There it was.
Now she was really back.
“And she sees right through me,” he muttered, grinning and seasoning the patties.
“Those look boss,” she declared.
“My mom cooked because she had to, and her food tasted like it. My dad cooks because he loves food, and his food tastes like it. I cook like my dad,” he shared.
“I’m hoping I’ll get to meet this dad of yours,” she said softly, hesitant and almost shy.
Yeah.
He had not read her wrong.
Rebel Stapleton had promise.
Which meant she was going to meet his dad.
He put the hamburgers in the skillet, saying, “Talk through the shit that’s weighing on you, sweetheart.”
He heard her take in a breath before she said, “I’ll preface this by saying I saw Amy and Paul today.”
He turned from the stove to fully face her. “That explains a lot.”
“They have no idea what I’m doing,” she informed him.
“How would they feel about it?” he asked.
“They’d be super, extra, double, mega pissed.”
“Right,” he muttered and moved to the drawer to get his spatula.
“I’m mad at myself,” she said softly.
Spatula in hand, Rush turned back to her.
“Why, baby?”
“Because I think I’m Superwoman. Because I think I could have saved Diane. Because I think I can make it all right for Amy and Paul by catching Diane’s killer, when nothing can make it all right ever again. And I think I could have done something to cushion the blow for my brother, and I’ll admit, maybe also my mom when she called Diesel to ask him and Molly, and expressly not Maddox, to Thanksgiving dinner, necessitating him coming out to her that he was bi. Because I called him to warn him she was going to call about Thanksgiving, and I should have told him she wasn’t there, wasn’t ready to hear that. But I heard he was struggling with knowing, after years of being with Mad and Molly, that the time had come to officially commit, and it was freaking him. And I thought I had the power to make it all better for him. For everyone.”
That explained Thanksgiving.
“Because after that went way south,” she carried on, “and Dad and Mom and Gunner couldn’t call and land their shit on Diesel because he’d cut them out, they landed it on me. And it was heavy. And I didn’t want Diesel to know they kept at me after it was all over, and how ugly it got, and how much it was, and how I started to hate them. I mean really hate them, Rush. They were shoving their hate at me and I just absorbed it, and it grew, and I started shoveling it back. Hate is a burden. And it’s so fucking heavy.”
He moved to the counter opposite her, keeping hold on her eyes, and when she stopped talking, he agreed quietly, “Yeah it is.”
“So I cut them out and it hurt. I’ve totally blocked all of them. And I didn’t have . . .” She shook her head. “I have friends. I have Essence. I could have unloaded. But back in the day, I’d unload on Diane. Or if I needed a mom unit, Amy. And I didn’t have them to unload on with this shit.”
You have a beautiful voice.
Christ, she’d been all alone.
“Sweetheart,” he whispered.
“I’m directing porn. I don’t want to direct porn. I didn’t come to the realization that I wanted to make films and my first thought was, ‘Great! I’ll do porn!’”
He chuckled, and she shot him an amused look, but she kept talking.
“And Valenzuela is creepy. And Harrietta is even more filled with hate than my brother Gunner is. To the point she kinda scares me. Even more than Benito does. And I’d gone down to Phoenix to be with Diesel because I was worried about his frame of mind and they were all tight. Tighter than ever. And I’d lie in bed in my hotel room down there, knowing they were all piled together in their big bed. And, Rush, there is absolutely nothing conventional about what Diesel has with his man and his woman. But it’s so beautiful. They just fit. From the start. D does the yardwork. And Mad fixes shit around the house. And Molly does the laundry. And they all tangle up together to watch TV.” She grinned. “And they fuck like bunnies.”
He grinned back.
Her grin died.
So his did too.
“It should have made me happy that my big brother, who’s so awesome and so loving and so protective, had that back and he was out and real and himself and happy, and at least the weight he’d been carrying for years had been lifted. But it just made me feel lonely.”
“You felt that way because you were going through some big shit,” he explained.
“I was feeling that way because I was going through some big shit and I thought I was Superwoman. I could do it all. I could do it all by myself. Take care of everybody. Get justice for Diane and Paul and Amy and bring down the bad guys. Take D’s back and give him support while he decided to keep the family that was good for him and scrape off the one that made him feel like dirt. I meet you, and you have your brothers with you. You talk about your dad and your sister. You’ve worked through not having your mom.”
“I still miss her,” he admitted.
“But you have people.”
“You have people too, honey.”
“I do.” She shrugged. “I just didn’t let them have me.”
He leaned into his elbows on the counter toward her. “You learn your lesson about that?”
“Not to let it all overwhelm me and then melt down in front of you again, and thus eventually make you get shot of me because you think I’m a psycho?” she asked back.
He just smiled at her.
“Yeah, I learned my lesson.”
His smile faded before he said, “Valenzuela.”
She waved her hand in front of her face like she was shooing a fly, and he started to get ticked at that casual response.
Then she spoke.
“I was having a moment of temporary insanity. After dinner, if you have a computer, we can type out my resignation letter together.”
This gave him great relief.
But after dinner, he was going to have his hand up the skirt of that dress and his tongue down her throat, so maybe after he tired her out and she was unconscious, he’d get up and type it out for her himself.
He didn’t share that.
“Don’t think I’m crazy, but I’m gonna miss the cast and crew. They’re good people. It’s not as skeevy as you might think,” she told him.
“I don’t think that’s crazy.” He reached his hand out and caught hers. “Sweetheart, you live with a screaming hippie who shares Woodstock orgy stories within two minutes of meeting someone. Your brother has committed his life to a man and a woman and you went balls to the wall so he could have it, at least emotionally, free and clear. And you’re dating a biker. I’m not sure you have it in you to judge, unless a person is an asshole.”
Something beautiful—gratitude, relief, and something else that was deeper and even more meaningful, shone from her eyes before she said, “True that.”
He squeezed her hand. “And you don’t have to lose them. Get numbers. Throw parties. They’ll be welcome at Chaos hog roasts.”
“Chaos hog roasts?”
“Chaos is not immune to get-togethers. And if someone has it in them to think ahead, we roast a hog.”
“Sweet,” she whispered.
He was glad she thought that.
“And they’d be welcome?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Sure.”
She squeezed his hand back. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
More relief, gratitude and that something more beautiful came at him before he pulled her hand to his lips, touched them to her fingers, and let her go.
He went back to the stove to flip the burgers.
“Can I do something to help?” she asked.
So she wasn’t one of those women who sat around thinking a man had to earn his hand up her skirt and wait on her to earn a place in her heart.
Which meant the man he was would go all out to earn his hand up her skirt and a place in her heart.
“I got you,” he muttered.
“I can slice tomatoes or something.”
Shit.
He turned his head to her. “I didn’t buy tomatoes.”
“Good, ’cause I hate tomatoes. But if you liked them, I’d slice them for you,” she declared before sucking back more beer.
And more promise.
“I have pickle slices,” he told her.
“Awesome,” she said, hopping off her stool. “I’ll get them out. Condiments?”
“Fridge, babe.”
She got the shit from the fridge, including the potato salad, and wandered around him, opening drawers until she found a spoon she could shove into the salad after she busted off the top.
She also tore open two bags of the chips, got down the plates and opened the bag of sesame buns.