Then I jumped off my stool and announced, “Gotta go gussy up for the celebration. I’ll see you all later?”
“Yeah, Lexie, congratulations,” Tate said.
“Later,” Deke said.
“Have fun tonight, darlin’,” Jim-Billy said.
“I’ll walk you to your car,” Krystal scarily said while rounding the end of the bar.
I couldn’t see a way to avoid a somewhat-frightening and I still wasn’t certain what to think about her Krystal walking me to my car so I said my final farewells and headed out with Krystal at my side. She didn’t speak and I didn’t either. But I did stop at the driver’s side of the Charger and looked down at her.
She was inspecting my car.
“Sweet ride,” she approved.
Well, that was a good start.
“Thanks.”
Her eyes came up to me and her voice was soft when she spoke. “I see you intend to take care of our boy. Makes me feel better. Way things were at your party, couldn’t tell and didn’t like that.”
Maybe she had honest juice before I arrived. Or maybe she was just the kind of person who put it out there.
“We had a… thing,” I told her quietly.
“Yeah, you’ll have more what he went through. Don’t give up on him. There’s about two men I’d say this about, Tate is one, Ty is the other and I’m married to Bubba, love him to death, he’s pulled his shit together and I’m glad but I wouldn’t say this even about him but Ty’s worth not givin’ up. You get him to the other side, you won’t regret it.”
“I won’t give up on him,” I whispered, deciding I liked Krystal.
She nodded and held my eyes.
Then she said softly, “Be smart. You stick your neck out, the bunch you’re goin’ up against, they’ll whack your head clean off.” I sucked in breath but she didn’t quit talking. “You know that, what they did to your man. A man’s gotta do what he’s gotta do. Tate and Deke wadin’ into that shit, don’t got a good feelin’. Ty bein’ pissed and wantin’ to do somethin’ about it, I get. I definitely get that. Don’t got a good feelin’ about that either. But men gotta do what they gotta do and we women got two things we can do, stand by their side or be smart enough to do what you just did and find men who know what they’re doin’ to take their man’s back. Now, you set that ball rollin’,” she jerked her head back to the bar, “you see to your man and keep your head down. Ty feels about you like you feel about him, he didn’t survive that nightmare to come out the other side and watch his woman enduring her own. Keep yourself safe, if not for you, then for him. Get me?”
I nodded. I got her.
She nodded back, muttered, “Make him happy,” then turned and walked back to the bar. She stopped at the door and called, “By the way, you got grease stains on the back of your shirt.”
Then she shot me a knowing grin, turned, threw open the door and entered the bar.
I stared at the door long after she disappeared behind it.
Then I got in my Charger and drove home.
*
Ty
You’re far and away the most beautiful man I’ve met…
The words played in his head once again as he hit the garage door opener. They’d been playing in his head since Lexie said them. Over and over. So often, they were all that was on his mind. So often, Keaton and Misty were long gone before he thought of them again. He’d forgotten they were even there.
You’re far and away the most beautiful man I’ve met…
Fuck him but he liked that she thought that.
He rolled the Snake in, shut her down, grabbed his workout bag from the passenger seat and hauled his ass out. He dumped the bag in the utility room as he moved through it. She’d sort his shit and he wouldn’t have to ask. He knew it. He gave her diamonds and expensive shoes. She gave him everything else and she gave it in a way that he knew he didn’t have to give her diamonds and expensive shoes to get it.
He walked up the stairs, rounded the railing and stopped dead.
“In the middle of something, baby,” she muttered, “kiss you in a minute.”
She was sitting at a stool at the island, legs crossed, one heel to the bar on the stool, both legs shoved to the side, torso hunched over, head bent, even though he had her back he knew she was concentrating on what she was doing and he understood this not just because of her distracted words but also her posture.
She was wearing a pair of white slacks, wide leg, riding low, a wide slash of skin exposed below her top and above the waistband of her pants. A wide slash that was an invitation that, knowing Lexie, she had no idea she was giving. A wide slash that invited her man to shove his hand down her pants and cup her sweet ass, an invitation he decided he was going to find time that night to accept.