“I’m your girl, Judge.”
Christ.
Christ.
“We could move to a deserted island, and on the condition I’d be able to have new bikinis air dropped to me on a frequent basis, I’d be fine, as long as you were with me,” she declared.
“There might be snakes on deserted islands, Coco,” he teased.
“Well, you’ll have a machete…or something.”
He started chuckling.
Through it, he warned her, “You’re taking care of those damned planters.”
“Whatever. Zeke and Montana can frolic in the water from the hose as I do that. And Burberry makes wellies. I’ll need an entirely new mountain girl section of my wardrobe. It’ll be fabulous.”
“I love you so fucking much,” he whispered.
“And I you,” she whispered back.
They sat with that a second.
Then he quipped, “At least, one way or another, I’ll finally get my coat back.”
And her soft laugh struck him, straight through the heart.
She didn’t comment on that, instead, she said, “Now, I need to go spend time with Montana. She’s getting antsy. I can’t wait for you to meet her, but remember, she did not come from a bad place. So we’re going to need extra loving care to give her.”
Then it was good Chloe Pierce came into her life.
She was going to be just fine.
“I’m warned. I’ll talk to Zeke tonight. We’ll make her welcome.”
“All right, letting you go. Love you, Judge Oakley.”
“Love you too, Cocoroco.”
He heard her soft chuckle before she disconnected.
He took a minute with all that just went down before he looked to his door.
Alex was still gone.
He’d go find her in a second.
For now, he engaged his texts, typed one in, and sent it to his dad.
Chloe is moving to Prescott. Moving in with me.
That went off and he sent another one.
And our family is growing, she adopted a dog today.
Since Texas, he’d made a concerted effort. At first it felt strange, but he did it.
His father was so receptive to it, it felt strange for about a week.
Now it was just the way it was.
Judge started around his desk to go find out what had made Alex so excited, when an indication of why that concerted effort didn’t feel strange for long chimed on his phone.
Jameson Oakley was a busy guy.
But Judge wasn’t sure he’d ever had to wait but a few minutes for his father to respond.
He looked down and read from his dad, Excellent news. I’m happy for you both. Make plans in a few months to fly out and take you both to a celebratory dinner?
With zero hesitation, Judge replied, Absolutely.
He then resumed on his way to find Alex but ran into Rix at the door.
He was in his chair.
When he’d talked to her about it, Chloe had an explanation for this.
“Maybe there’s a difference between being on his legs for a bit and being on them for nine hours.”
That made sense.
She’d added, “But I think you should ask him, chéri. Maybe it’s personal. Though, maybe he needs someone to be interested. Someone to talk to about it. You can broach it in a way he has an out if he doesn’t want to discuss it. But I imagine he has times where he feels very alone, without anyone around who’s been through what he’s been through. You can’t understand what he’s experienced. But it’s never a bad thing to care.”
She’d been right, and he’d been procrastinating about bringing it up with his friend.
Judge was interested. He did care. He wanted Rix to know he was there to talk if he needed it.
But he didn’t want to inadvertently cause pain, say the wrong thing, or trip something in Rix when it seemed Rix had it going on.
He needed to find that time.
And as he greeted his friend, he resolved to do that.
“Yo,” he said.
“Yo,” Rix replied. “You’re not in on this thing?”
“What thing?” Judge asked.
“I don’t know what thing. I just got a call from Duncan to get my ass up here to talk about the program.”
Rix managed the store. He volunteered for the program, and he pitched in when things got overwhelming for Judge and Alex, and recently, he’d been doing a lot of volunteer overtime work because things were overwhelming.
But it was weird he’d be called by Duncan to talk about Kids and Trails.
He nodded to his friend and said, “Alex came in earlier and she seemed hyped up about something. Maybe she knows.”
Rix’s face shut down when Judge mentioned Alex, and since Chloe put that sitch in his face, he’d noticed that Rix didn’t say anything, or do anything, and often ignored it, but if you were watching, it was not hard to read that the man actively disliked her.
As they moved to Alex’s cubicle, the reason why was apparent.
This being that she was headed out of her cubbie, to come back to Judge’s office no doubt, but she skidded to a halt almost comically when she saw Rix, and her face filled with panic.