“Right. You done bein’ a bullshit badass?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Sure.”
“Good. But don’t lose the bullshit smartass. She makes me hard.”
“I’ll keep her at the ready.”
“You know the beauty of this?” he asked cuttingly.
“No, handsome, tell me,” I invited mockingly sweet.
“This was exactly how your father and stepmother talked when they weren’t fighting. Remember? You told me all about it.”
His aim was true.
Right through the heart.
“I see,” I whispered. “We’re not fighting fair.”
“Nope,” he confirmed and made his point by lifting a hand and touching the tips of his fingers to my mark on his neck. He dropped his hand and went on, “All’s fair. No rules. No holds barred. Winner takes all.”
My shoulders straightened, I wrapped my arms around my belly and I kept my eyes locked to his when I said softly, “Six years, Creed, six years, every day, every minute, every second, I lost whole pieces of me. After I got loose, I made certain I don’t ever lose. Not fucking ever. You just entered a game you cannot win.”
“You got loose, you get any of that back?” he asked.
“Not that first fuckin’ piece.”
“So you’re tellin’ me my Sylvie is gone.”
His Sylvie.
Motherfucking asshole.
“Long gone,” I verified.
“Right,” he muttered like he didn’t believe me.
“Right,” I repeated firmly.
“So who was that who smiled big at that Down’s kid this morning like he started her day and touched her forehead to his making him look like she started his?”
No way I was going to let him get to me.
“That was Adam’s Sylvie.”
“You ran across the yard like you’d just received a bomb threat, baby, not like you were five minutes late to help your girl. You don’t miss a day even if you have to haul your ass over there hungover. You dropped a job when Josh got sick and your dead partner’s wife had to work so you could look after him. She doesn’t know it but it’s you that puts red and white roses with a blue ribbon on his grave every fuckin’ Sunday. And you took me on just so you could take Knight’s back. That wasn’t Adam’s Sylvie. It’s not Charlene’s Sylvie. It’s not even Knight’s Sylvie. It’s just plain Sylvie. The one I knew. She’s not gone. She’s standing right in front of me.”
“You hold onto that, Creed, you’re gonna get fucked.”
“Jesus, I hope so.”
I clamped my mouth shut.
Then I unclamped it to declare, “I feel the need to get drunk. We’ll pick this up tomorrow.”
“You need a ride home from the bar, you just call me,” he invited.
“Handsome, you’ll never hear from me. To get down to your name in my phone, I’ve got two whole letters.”
It was his turn to clamp his mouth shut.
I took that as my cue to go.
So I did.
I stopped in order to glare at Gun who was curled up in the seat of a dining room chair fast asleep. My glare was for her being in the mood to nap and thus deserting me in my hour of need. However, since she was snoozing, she missed my glare. Still, it made me feel better.
I also stopped to yank on another pair of socks and boots and grab my keys.
But me, my jeans, tank, boots and socks, commando and braless, walked right out the door and, like we had many, many times before, we took on the night.
Chapter Six
The Best Birthday Ever
A sunny, summer by a lake in Kentucky, twenty-seven years earlier, Creed is twelve, Sylvie is seven. It’s her birthday…
I peddled my bike quick over the trail in the trees to get to the lake.
I didn’t want to miss him.
We didn’t get to do this a lot. It was hard to get away from Daddy but when he was at work, my stepmom was usually drinking that clear stuff straight from the bottle, so it wasn’t hard to get away from her. I just had to be careful and Tuck told me we couldn’t be greedy. Greedy was stupid. The more chances we took, the more chances we took on getting caught.
So we only did it special.
Like today.
My birthday.
This didn’t count the nights. Tuck said I could come anytime at night, I just had to be careful.
So I did.
Whenever the words came, me and Bootsie would sneak out of the house and go to Tuck’s. I’d knock on the window and, always, my knuckles would barely hit the glass before it flew up. Sometimes, he’d stick his head out and tell me he’d meet me in the woods. If his Mom was gone, he’d stick the whole top of his body out the window, grab me under my arms and pull me in. Then he’d go back out, hanging almost all the way out so every time he did it I was scared he’d fall but he never did, and he did this so he could grab Bootsie and bring her in with us.