She let Wes wrap his arms around her, let him feel her warmth, breathe in her scent. She hugged him tightly, pressing her body against his, the baby, his baby, pressed against his stomach. She wanted him to feel powerful and strong, like the big man he thought he was.
She leaned in so that only he could hear her. “I will never forgive you. If you come near Lily or me again, you will never see your baby. You hear me, Wes? Stay the fuck away.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
RICK
Yo, Hanson, you piece of shit, you’ve got a visitor.”
Rick sat up from his cot, eyeing the middle-aged, dopey-faced guard with disdain. Rick knew this guard. Fred something. He’d taught Fred’s two unremarkable sons, a couple of refrigerator-sized boys who thought they were hot shit because they could tackle other meatheads on a football field. He’d met Fred at Parents’ Night and he’d thought he was a prick then, acting like he knew literature when he’d probably never even cracked open a book.
Today though, Rick saw hatred in the man’s eyes. It didn’t bother him. There were lots of people like Fred, people afraid of taking risks. They ignored their baser desires, content to live ordinary, unfulfilled lives. Some people were destined to follow the rules; others were outliers, people who eschewed society’s moral conventions and went for what they wanted. Rick knew that Lily’s accusations would leave him a pariah in the eyes of many, but he was certain he’d have his supporters too. All misunderstood men did. Rick wasn’t interested in Fred though.
His attention was focused on the female guard, a trainee, he’d realized, who was in charge of fastening his handcuffs and ankle cuffs. She was a piggish-looking woman with a massive forehead, a weak chin, and a squat body that her polyester uniform only seemed to accentuate. Her bleach-blond hair was long and frizzy, and she was in serious need of professional styling. She was the kind of woman that a man would have to be blackout drunk to take to bed. Rick didn’t know her name yet. But she had basically saved his life. If she hadn’t stopped his beating, if she hadn’t intervened, warned the two men that their jobs were in jeopardy, Rick would have ended up in the ICU or maybe even a body bag. He hoped at some point to get a moment alone with her to thank her, but for now he was focused on his first visitor, his wife Missy. As Fred and the fat-assed guard led him toward the visiting room, Rick was curious to see how this would play out.
Finding a wife had always been a priority. His appetite, his sexual desires were not the norm. He’d been with plenty of girls in high school and none of them even scratched the surface of what he wanted. He was smart enough to know that he needed to be careful. If he was going to indulge—and he most certainly intended to do so—he needed to organize his life in a way that made that possible. Marriage was important. People trusted a married man. They viewed them as stable. The wedding band itself symbolized responsibility and commitment. It was the perfect disguise. After a brief stint in the army, he’d enrolled in college, using the GI bill to pay his way through school. He enjoyed plenty of the vapid coeds on campus, but as graduation neared, he’d realized it was time to start planning for the future. There were specific requirements for his bride-to-be. She needed to be attractive, but not so much that she would draw the attention of other men. She needed to be sexy enough for them to have an ordinary, active sex life. She needed to be book smart but not intuitive or perceptive or jealous by nature. She needed to have traditional views on marriage and family, and solid religious values.