“Of course,” Javier said with a one-shouldered shrug as he dabbed daintily at his mouth with his napkin after finishing his soup. “Less poetic of course, but if we’re talking about rats then I suppose that would work.”
“But we aren’t talking about rats,” I stated softly.
His eyes glittered again as he shot me a sly smile. “No, Louise, I don’t believe we are.”
A shiver rattled the backs of my teeth as it worked down my spine. I looked over at Lionel with wide eyes, letting my fear seep into them slightly. He had no reason to know that I was afraid because those “rats” Javier spoke so eloquently about included people I cared for, a person I loved more than anything else. He probably thought I was just some scared, naïve pampered little girl frightened by a man talking about rat killing at the dinner table. Still, his eyes were sympathetic as he inclined his head at me then shook it slightly.
He wouldn’t let it happen, I knew, seeing that. Lionel Danner wanted The Fallen MC put away just as much as the rest of the police force, maybe even more as long as he could claim the glory over it, but he was a good man, one of those throw-back policemen you saw in old Westerns. He had a moral code and everything, which meant he wouldn’t let The Fallen be smoked out and shot like rats, not if he could help it.
It didn’t bring me much comfort though, because I very much doubted he could.
I looked back to Javier and found him watching me with those crow’s eyes, black as bad omens. “You’ll see, zorra, within the year The Fallen will be wiped clean from Entrance.”
Zeus.
I waited a block away like a fuckin’ teenage chump sneakin’ out with his teenage girl after curfew. The fuck of it was, I sure as hell wasn’t a teenager anymore—the grey comin’ in slow at my temples and the crow’s feet ’side my eyes proved that—but my girl was a teenager. It was a reality I had to face ’cause I knew, if I was serious about ’er, which given my plans for the evenin’, I was, it’d be a fact I’d have to face with brutal regularity.
I tried not to sit there in the cold dark of the mid-November night and think about all the ways this thing with Lou could go wrong but there was somethin’ about being drenched in shadows that made a man contemplative and there sure as fuck was somethin’ about knowin’ you were about to take a woman’s cherry that made ya careful.
So, I was thinkin’ about H.R.’s reaction when she found out I was seein’ a woman her age, about King’s face when he realized I was fuckin’ a girl two years younger ’an him, and my brothers rowdy cheers each time there was evidence that I’d taken her to my bed. Grown up not givin’ a shit what people thought but I’d also spent most of my grown life bein’ a father to two kids I’d give my life for a hundred times over so the idea of them not likin’ the woman I chose sat so wrong in my chest it felt like a cancerous lump.
I thought about it, hated it and moved on from it ’cause I didn’t have the willpower to start my Harley and drive away like I shoulda and I sure as fuck wouldn’t have it tomorrow when I woke up beside Lou, her gold hair spread over my pillow like a fuckin’ halo, her virgin’s blood gone dry on my cock.
This was happenin’. Me and Lou. If I was bein’ honest, it had been happenin’ since I saw that pretty girl with her velvet bows and Mary Janes running at me from across a parking lot rainin’ bullets like I was Jesus come to save ’er. I knew in some freakish place deep inside the gut a me that Lou was made for me.
She was it.
My ex-wife had been a mistake, every other woman a blip and Louise Lafayette, the forbidden girl, the worst option, was the only one for me.
So, I leaned against the side of my bike smokin’ my one cigarette a day as I waited for her, tryin’ not to get too worried or too fuckin’ turned on about my plans for the evenin’ when finally I spotted the glow of her moonlight coloured hair in the moonlit night.
She ran at me.
Hair flying, arms pumping, smile spread clean across her prettier-than-all-else face, Loulou ran at me like she’d done when she was seven and she would, I knew, until she could run no more.
And, like I’d done when she was seven and like I would, I knew, until I could stand straight no more, I caught her in my arms and hefted her tight against me.