Renewing Their Vows

“It’s all right, Sean,” a voice says from the back room of the bar. A second later, Curtis Tennison steps out into the open, taking a long pull from a cigarette and blowing it in a slow stream in my direction. “I was expecting Mr. Whitlock.”

I show no outward reaction, but my stomach drops to the floor. And it stays there.

With that single statement, Tennison has confirmed my worse fear.

He knows who I am.

And if he was expecting me…if he was so positive I would show up to meet with him…he must know about my wife’s role in his incarceration. He knows that’s what I’m here to discuss.

In that moment, with nausea rising in my throat, I regret not telling Grace where I went this morning. Because if this man, this notorious felon, decides to pull out a gun and end me, she’ll never know what happened. Tennison couldn’t beat me like a man, with his fists, but he’s dangerous and he almost certainly carries a weapon, whether it violates his parole or not.

Going into that back room with him isn’t the safest option, but it’s my only one.

I console myself with the fact that even if Tennison plugs me full of bullet holes, I’ll crawl bleeding back to my wife to tell her I love her one final time. I’ll watch over her from the other side. Somehow, some way I’ll find my way to her. That certainty is knitted into my fabric.

Curtis turns on a heel and disappears into the back room, giving me no choice but to follow. Every eye in the bar watches my progress, but I don’t show a hint of the concern I’m feeling. Concern for Grace. The baby. I can’t let anything happen to them.

I’ll do whatever it takes to keep my family safe.

There’s nothing I wouldn’t do.

Curtis sits in a back booth and I drop into a chair facing him, crossing my arms and waiting. Looking him square in the eye without blinking. He inspects my purposefully disrespectful posture and laughs, ashing his cigarette in a dented tin tray. “Simmons Foster loved his daughter getting on her back for someone like you,” he drawls sarcastically. “Didn’t he?”

And that gets me where it hurts.

I’m never going to stop wishing Grace didn’t have to give up her family for me. I’m never going to quit wanting approval from her father, even if he’s an asshole, because that’s what a man does. He wins the support of the person who raised the girl he wants to marry. I failed her in that way, and failing my Gracie in any manner doesn’t sit right. “How would you know if he approved of me or not?” I ask, outwardly bored. “Did you happen to run into him in prison?”

Some of Curtis’s smirk vanishes and he grinds out his cigarette with more force than necessary. “You’re in my house now, Whitlock. You better act like it.”

Or what?

It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask the question. I don’t back down from anyone. Never have, never will. But I’m not stupid enough to push my luck too far with this man. Not when Grace’s safety could hang in the balance.

“Why don’t we cut to the chase?” Curtis crosses his arms and leans back in the booth, mimicking my posture. His smile is sickening. Sinister. “You’re here to make sure I don’t…pay a visit…to that tasty little wife of yours.”

Cold sweat breaks out all over my body.

My ears distort the bar sounds, the music. I almost throw up my breakfast.

By “pay a visit” we both know what he means.

Retaliation.

“I’m only out of the clink twenty-four hours and here you are. You must love the girl.” He winks at me. “Either that, or the pussy is as hot as it looks.”

Rage blinds me, every muscle in my body going into fight mode.

My fist smashes down on the table, involuntarily, bringing two sets of footsteps rushing into the room. Whoever enters, Curtis holds up a hand to stave then off.

“We’re fine, boys,” Curtis says, chuckling. “My fault for poking the bear.”

“Don’t you dare talk about her like that,” I rasp, an invisible fist choking off my airway. “That’s my wife.”

“Careful…” Curtis warns, waving his cronies back out of the room. “Check that temper.”

My eyes bore into his. “You don’t think it’s checked? Anyone else who talked about her like that would already be dead.” Some of the color leaves the other man’s face, but it does nothing to appease me. “What do you want to stay away from her? To forget—”

“That her little wire stunt implicated me in several crimes?” Curtis snaps. “Oh, I think I deserve something good, don’t you?”

It costs me an effort to calm down when my heart is pounding.

All I can see is my wife scared, running, her blood spilled on the pavement, and it makes me want to roar like a wounded animal.