Chace had fought Faye too. She was shy, sweet, but she loved him so it didn’t take her long to pull her man’s head out of his ass.
And it was Emme who fought Deck, and even if the demons she was battling were fierce, he never gave up.
His buddy Ham, and his wife Zara, on the other hand, had history together. It wasn’t all pretty but what was far uglier was the baggage life had given them. In the end, they both were smart enough to know, you got a shot at good and a possible life where you faced the bad with someone who meant everything to you, you didn’t squander it. So they hadn’t. And Ham just that week told him Zara was knocked up with baby number two.
Deke had garbage in his past he had to work through. He was aware of it. He knew he had to get past it to give Jussy what she wanted—giving them a go.
Deke also knew he was a simple man but he wasn’t a stupid man.
He’d watched and he’d learned.
He might not have been quick on the uptake.
But after he got Jussy through that day, and that night, he sure as fuck would be in remedying that because one thing he’d learned from all the watching he’d done was a man’s garbage got sorted a fuckuva lot faster when he was man enough to let a good woman help him rifle through it.
And set it aside.
*
“Is this normal?” Jussy asked.
He glanced her way then back to the road.
It was after their showers, the water tanks filled and in the bed in the back of his truck. They were heading to his trailer to dump them, pick up their contribution to brunch (a case of beer, a bottle of bourbon, and some casserole Jussy had thrown together last night, put in the fridge and would bake at Krys’s place).
“Is what normal?”
“Brunch at Krys and Bubba’s,” she explained. “Krys doesn’t strike me as a brunch-type person.”
She wasn’t.
What she was was a woman who knew a friend of hers had been attacked and left with the threat that the attacker would return in a week, that week had passed, and now Krys was doing what she could to keep her mind off the fact that day had come.
“Think she’s tryin’ her hand at domesticity,” Deke noted, and maybe it wasn’t a total lie.
“God, if brunch is domesticity, I want no part in it,” she muttered.
Deke grinned at the windshield.
Anytime she said shit like that…
Hell, every time and there were a lot of them.
Fuck, it was beginning to feel like Justice Lonesome had been made for him.
“Not a quiche kinda person?” he asked.
“Quiche is to food what pet sweaters are to little dogs. An evil invented for unfathomable reasons.”
“Hear some of them little dogs get cold,” Deke noted, still grinning.
He knew she turned her head his way when she replied, “They have fur, Deke.”
“Some of it’s sparse, Jussy.”
“Then don’t force them out into the cold while you go shopping or wander the park or whatever these people do with accessory dogs. Little bugger gets his or her walk and does his or her business then goes home to camp out in front of the fireplace or the furnace register. They need exercise, throw a damn toy for them in the living room. Don’t dress them in a ridiculous sweater and make them prance through snow that’s taller than them. It’s undignified and inhumane.”
Little dog sweaters, inhumane.
Deke kept grinning as he teased, “Do you need more caffeine?”
“No, talking about this, I think I need a little dog, without the sweater.”
He glanced at her again, no longer grinning. “Babe, you get a dog, that dog has a bark that’ll scare the shit outta Ty. Not a dog that’s yappy and wouldn’t scare the shit out of Vivie.”
“I’ll get one of both,” she decreed.
“That’s acceptable,” he muttered.
There was a beat of silence before she asked, “Is there a dog that’ll scare the shit outta Ty?”
“Maybe, that dog is a wolf, but even then, not sure that’d do it,” he answered through his phone ringing.
He leaned forward to go after it in his back pocket and as he did it was not lost on him he was having a ridiculous conversation about dog sweaters.
It further was not lost on him that he didn’t care because on the other end of that conversation was Jussy.
He checked the display on his phone. It said Tate Calling so he took it and put it to his ear.
“Yo, Tate.”
“Yo. Where are you?”
“On the way to the trailer to dump the tanks then we’re headin’ to Krys and Bubba’s. Why?”
“Brunch is cancelled, brother,” Tate said in a tone that had Deke’s shoulders straightening. Tate didn’t keep him waiting. “Krys went into labor about an hour ago, water broke, everything. She and Bubba are at County now.”
“Fuck,” Deke murmured. “What is she—?”
“This happens now, five weeks preemie,” Tate answered the question Deke didn’t get out.
“Fuck,” Deke repeated.
“Laurie and me are walking out the door, headed to County,” Tate told him.
“We drop the tanks, so are me and Jussy.”