Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 71625 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71625 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
“One, I’ve missed the hell out of you the last four months.” He grinned.
“Two?” I breathed.
“Two, I don’t think I can live without you anymore.”
I blinked back a tear.
“And three?”
“Three, I want you to marry me. I want you to hassle me about putting my socks away. I want you to yell at me because I forgot to put the tea up the night before. I want to lay next to you while you say sight words in your sleep.” My lips twitched. “I want to watch you grow old. I want to sit at your side while we watch your daughter get married. I want to teach your son everything that I forgot to teach mine. I want you to be there when I take my last breath. I want you to never, ever leave me again. And to do that, I need you to say yes.”
Before he’d even gotten the last syllable out, I threw myself into his arms while also screaming one word. Yes.
***
Hours later, we lay sated and breathless in the bed that I’d just bought.
It was a piece of crap from a surplus store, but it was a bed.
The kids had one identical to mine.
It’d been all I was willing to pay for at the time. Subconsciously, I think I knew that I was always going to go back to Mooresville. I knew that I wouldn’t be staying in Kilgore long.
“Were you responsible for the three tactical vests that came to the office last month?” he questioned hours later, his breath tickling the skin at the back of my neck.
“Yes,” I instantly replied. “But only for the one. The other two were matched by a local farmer’s market. They thought it was a nice thing they could do. It was part of the proceeds of this race. We sponsored a few police officers in the state of our choosing. You were my chosen.”
He started to snort.
“I’m glad I’m your chosen.”
I was glad he was, too.
“Steel?” I asked after a while. “Did he really break into your hospital room?”
Something about what Sean had said had bothered me.
When I’d left that day, the black bag had been in our car that Sean had used to drive us to a safe house in Benton, Louisiana. We’d stayed with a fellow member of the Dixie Wardens, Loki, and his wife, Channing.
That bag, I specifically remembered grabbing a t-shirt out of before he’d left.
That bag had been with Sean.
Sean wouldn’t have had a reason to be at the hospital after visiting hours if not to bring his father that bag. The bag that just so happened to have his backup revolver with it.
The bag that had magically appeared in Steel’s hospital room with Sean nowhere in the vicinity.
“What you don’t know won’t hurt you.”
“Steel…”
“No.”
“Steel…”
He shut me up with his kiss. “No.”
I didn’t need his confirmation, though.
I knew that Sean, and maybe even the entire club, had brought Anderson to Steel. Then Steel had taken care of a problem he didn’t see getting fixed any other way.
Steel Cross killed Anderson Munnick.
And I didn’t care.
I highly doubted that I ever would, either.
Epilogue
Your grandma has totally sucked a penis.
-You’re welcome
Winnie
“Do you want any eggs?” Steel asked me, the island bar separating where he was standing cooking eggs, and I was sitting miserably at the bar counter.
“No,” I declined miserably. “I don’t want any eggs.”
I ended that part on a snarl, and he looked down, but he couldn’t quite keep the smile off of his lips.
He’d royally fucked up, and he knew it.
Hell, I knew it, too.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
“Mom, why don’t you want these lovely butt nuggets?” Cody asked, holding up the egg that showed the stamp on it. “They came from the farmer’s market. I saw the chickens they came from. Did you know that when the chickens are too old to lay, they just eat them instead?”
I blinked. “Please, don’t ever refer to eggs as butt nuggets again. And, no. I did not. How do you know?”
“I asked,” he answered, causing my mouth to quirk.
“He asked, and then he asked how the farmer killed them. When the farmer told them he wrings their neck, Cody then asked if he could help him do it sometime. The farmer told him that it could be arranged, and now you have an appointment to take him to this man’s house next weekend so Cody can help kill, pluck, and process chicken.”
I looked over at Steel.
“You’re kidding, right?”
Steel shook his head. “Nope.”
He popped the ‘p’ in nope, making me want to maim him. “Why?”
Steel shrugged. “Well, you did say that you wanted to quench his thirst for knowledge. This is the quenching part of his thirst for knowledge.”
“I meant it in a way where you would have to deal with that crap, not me,” I said, crossing my arms. “I cannot believe you.”