“I don’t run your shop,” I ground out.
The muscle at his jaw ticked and his black eyes turned as mean as I’d ever seen them. “Three days, son. Three days.”
“I know how to read a calendar,” I replied through gritted teeth. I needed to grab Jess and get the hell out of here. Because if we didn’t leave soon I was going to sucker punch one of the Order’s most senior members and get my ass kicked by his younger brethren. I was good in a fight, but six against one were suicide odds.
“And you’re a fool if you think you can run our shop and be getting close with that girl, too. She’s too good for you. Quit being a selfish fuck and leave her alone.”
“Mind your own goddamn business.”
“I seen it before. Some of our boys thinking they can be with her kind. It don’t work out. Look at your daddy. Look what he did to your momma. He ruined her. You want that for Jessica James?”
“I’m not one of the Order.”
Repo’s stony expression abruptly cracked with a little smile that looked more bitter than amused, and he said, “Not yet.”
CHAPTER 17
“The world is a book, and those who don't travel only read one page.”
― Augustine of Hippo
Jessica
Two days. Monday and Tuesday.
Two days of impersonal text messages.
And all I kept thinking was that these were two days I’d never get back. We had limited time together, Duane and I, so two days without his company made me feel like I was being cheated, like he was reneging on his side of the deal.
Since Sunday, the most intimate of our exchanges had been via text message, as follows:
Me: Hey Red, want to get together tonight?
Him: Can’t.
Me: I miss you.
Him: You too.
That had been Tuesday around 4 p.m. Now it was Wednesday just after noon and…nothing.
Therefore, I decided to force the issue. It was early release day, so I skipped out right after the bell and I made pie.
As well I bought the ingredients for meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and collards. Enough to feed eight.
I asked Claire to drive me over to the family’s house that evening, intent on making those boys dinner, but also getting Duane alone so we could set a few things straight. If I was being clingy and overreacting, I needed to know. Because I wanted to see him every day of the thirteen months, five weeks, and three days we had left.
I wanted to see him every day, talk to him, listen to him laugh and make me laugh. I wanted to kiss him and snuggle against his delectable body. And I wanted to return the favors he’d given me. I wanted to make him feel good and treasured. All the time.
As we pulled up to the big house, I counted the cars.
Duane’s sexy machine (the Road Runner) was present, as was Cletus’s Geo Prizm. I was pretty sure the Ford truck was Billy’s, which meant the candy red Pontiac vintage muscle car was Beau’s. Four of the boys were at home.
Claire—who’d been very supportive of my show up and surprise your boyfriend’s family with dinner plan—helped me unload the groceries from her car and set them on the porch. I told her to drive away before I knocked on the door. They wouldn’t be able to turn me away if I were stranded.
Plus, I was holding a pie. This was a strategic decision. My momma once told me no one turns away a lady bearing pie. If you want to get your foot in the door, bring pie and hold it in front of you. She called this the pie effect.
Therefore, with a pile of groceries on the big porch behind me and a still warm apple pie in my hands, I knocked on the door to the family’s house.
The main structure sat on over fifteen acres backing up to the Great Smoky Mountains National Forrest. The house itself had a wide curving staircase, at least seven bedrooms, and beautiful large windows lining the back. It was a big house and had once been very grand. Over the last twenty or so years, the house, and the land surrounding it, had fallen into a state of messy disrepair.
Winston was their daddy’s name, but their momma came from an old, established Tennessee family with the last name of Oliver, very high-cotton. The house had been called Oliver House until around ten years ago. Her father, Mr. Oliver, had been a politician, a man of business and of considerable money. Bethany Oliver had married beneath her station—or so all my momma’s friends had whispered after Sunday service—by getting hitched to Darrel Winston at the very young age of sixteen.
They’d had seven kids, he was terrible, and the rest was history.
The old house had no doorbell, so I waited. Only the butterflies in my stomach keeping me company. When no one answered after a stretch, I knocked again.