Bounty (Page 121)

I lifted my head but only to put my chin on my hand on his chest. When I did I saw he was resting his head and shoulders up the wall behind his bed so I felt his eyes on me in the shadows.

“Yes,” I answered. “Maybe,” I went on. “Or I should say probably.”

“Ask, Jussy.”

“Let’s just have a good night. I’ll ask later.”

“You wanna know somethin’ about me, ask,” he pushed.

“But we’re mellow,” I pointed out.

“Then we’ll talk about whatever you wanna know and get back to the mellow.”

I searched through the dark to find his face. I saw it, not clearly, but I felt the vibe was not upset, tense or irritated.

He wanted me to ask. He wanted me to know about him.

He liked my open.

He was offering the same thing.

And I liked that.

So I asked.

“You said you got your mom fired. You were fifteen. How did you do that?”

It took a moment before he rolled us, me on my back, his chest pressed to mine, his face much closer.

But that was all he made me wait.

Then he gave it to me.

“She was a live-in maid. We didn’t have a lot, even before we lost Dad. But we had what we had and they went with it so she could stay at home with me. When he passed, they were also trying for another baby.”

“Oh God, Deke,” I whispered, unable to wrap my head around the idea of losing a husband at all, definitely not that young, not with a toddler in the house, not while we were looking to the future, trying to build our family.

“She didn’t wanna work,” he said softly. “Wanted to be at home with her kids until we got into school. They got together young. She didn’t have a lot of skills. When he was gone, all she knew was that she had to do something that kept a roof over our heads and the only work she could find to do that was work that put a roof over our heads.”

“Right,” I replied when he stopped talking.

“She got that job and kept it for years. Wasn’t a good one. Wasn’t workin’ for good people. We weren’t like those TV shows where the help was a part of the family. We had our place, they had theirs and we did not mix.”

I nodded, and I knew he saw it when he continued.

“We didn’t mix but that didn’t mean the daughters of the man who employed my ma didn’t see me. They saw me.”

Daughters seeing all that was Deke, perhaps with the understanding of all he was going to be?

This didn’t give me a good feeling.

“Oh shit,” I murmured.

“Yeah,” he said, knowing I got it.

“Big, strapping, growing-up Deke, right?” I asked.

There was a smile in his voice as he tangled his fingers deeper into my hair and muttered, “Somethin’ like that.”

“Were they pretty?”

“They were cunts.”

I felt my body stiffen beneath him at his blunt, coarse, offensive word.

“Treated me like shit,” he went on. “Treated Ma worse. Until one of them got a thing for me. Then things changed.”

Yep.

I got where he was going.

I also started to understand what kept him from moving on his feelings for me.

“She was into you and went for it,” I guessed.

I saw his shadowed head move in an affirmative. “Went for it. I was fifteen, all about pussy. So she offered, I took her up on it.”

“And Daddy found out and didn’t like that,” I said.

“No, Daddy didn’t find out dick. She wanted more. I saw the error of my ways and backed off. She wasn’t used to not getting what she wanted so she told her father I took her virginity. Said I did it without her consent, at first, but when he threatened to call the cops, Ma lost her mind. It wasn’t like she didn’t see what was happening. She didn’t know where it went but she saw how that bitch was panting after me. And she had access to everything, including the girls’ rooms. She got hold of her diary where that cunt laid it all out. So instead of calling the cops, he canned Ma’s ass, kicked us out, did it without notice or severance and made sure she didn’t get a job anywhere else, including agencies, and that was when the garbage that was our lives turned to shit.”

This I wasn’t understanding.

“And you think that’s all on you?” I asked.

“Babe, fucked her,” he answered.

“You were fifteen,” I noted.

“Yeah, a fifteen-year-old kid who probably was a lot more worldly than you were. I knew better and fucked her anyway.”

I shifted both hands to cup his jaw. “Baby, you were only fifteen.”

“And I knew better.”

Cautiously, I asked, “Did your mom blame you?”

“Fuck no,” he answered immediately.

Of course she didn’t.

She’d made Deke.

“She didn’t because there was only one person to blame,” I informed him. “That person being that girl for doing what she did. It should never have gotten that far.”

“Right, and it was me who took it that far.”

“You said she panted after you.”

“She did.”

“You return that?”

“Not until I fucked her.”

“So it wasn’t only you who took it too far. She instigated it.”

“Jussy, I knew better.”

“You know we had live-ins,” I declared suddenly.

Deke said nothing.

I kept going.

“None of them had kids who lived with us but it didn’t matter. We were different people, obviously, than these douchebags. I can’t say we treated them like they were members of the family but this was because we weren’t around often enough to make them that way. But that doesn’t matter. You just know. You know there’s a divide, at least with that,” I said the last quickly so he didn’t get any ideas. “You’re just careful, not for your sake, for theirs. This is a job for them and it puts food on the table. You don’t shit where you live and that goes both ways. But for her, this bitch who did what she did to you, an ending that disastrous, she had the greater responsibility.”