“You did it as we agreed,” he stated softly.
“Yep,” Deck confirmed.
“Painful,” Trane went on.
“They’ll lose everything.”
Trane nodded.
Then he declared, “Chace can’t know.”
Deck’s back went straight at his surprising words.
“What?” he asked.
“You will not tell Chace.”
“That wasn’t part of the deal,” Deck growled.
“You won’t tell him.”
Deck uncrossed his arms from his chest and planted his hands on his hips. “Man, you just paid me to arrange for every man who had anything to do with his woman gettin’ buried alive to lose everything they hold precious. It’s the only fuckin’ thing you’ve ever done that even hints at bein’ for Chace. They’re plannin’ a wedding. You did this, he knows, you can get in there and you don’t want him to know?”
“I lost my son years ago. I’ll not get in there, as you put it, no matter what I do.”
“You’re wrong. This’ll help,” Deck told him.
“Was what you did legal?” Trane asked.
“Not by a long fuckin’ shot but these men colluded in a scheme to bury his woman alive. I’m not thinkin’ my boy’s gonna quibble.”
Trane shook his head. “He won’t know. You won’t tell him.”
“Don’t keep shit from my boy,” Deck growled.
“I’ll add an additional one hundred thousand dollars to your final pay,” Trane told him.
“Again, I do not keep shit from my boy.”
Trane’s head shifted to the side. “Do you want him to know so you can receive his gratitude for doing what he cannot to make those men pay?”
“Fuck no.”
“Then why would you need to tell him?”
Deck leaned into him and said quietly, “So he can believe, even if it’s for a second, one second his whole goddamned life, that his Dad has his back. I got a Dad who loves me. I got a Dad who’s proud of me. I got a Dad who’d bleed and die for me. I know how it feels. Chace has never had that. So if I could give him that for even one second, I’d give it to him. You doin’ this shit for him, for Faye, will give him that. So that’s why I need to tell him.”
Trane held his gaze.
Then he flipped his hand out, moved to sit in his chair and muttered, “Do what you must.”
“Would do that anyway,” Deck muttered back, making his own move and this was to get the fuck out of there.
“Jacob,” Trane called, Deck sucked air in through his nose and turned back. “I’m proud of him,” he whispered.
“Tell him not me.” Deck did not whisper.
“I love him,” Trane went on.
“Man, you’re talkin’ to the wrong guy.”
“He thinks I’m filth. If he knows I paid you to engage in illegal activities –”
“Keaton, fuck, man, he dug her out with his bare hands. Trust me on this, he… will not… quibble.”
He’d caught Trane’s flinch at his “dug her out with his bare hands” even though the man quickly wiped it from his face.
Fuck, was there a heart under all that dick?
Trane looked to his desk and repeated, “Do what you must.”
Deck stared at him a second.
Then he got the fuck out of there.
Chace
Four hours later
He listened to the phone ringing in his ear.
Then he heard, “Chace.”
“Make a reservation at Reynaldo’s. This weekend. Sunday night. For four.”
“Chace,” his father whispered, and fuck him, he heard that whisper tremble.
Chace’s gut got tight.
“We’ll meet you there at seven.”
There was nothing then, “Right. Seven.”
“Tell Ma I said hi.”
“I’ll pass that along.”
“I’m almost home,” Chace told him, seeing the white picket fence up ahead. “I gotta go.”
“Of course.”
“Later.”
“Chace?”
Shit.
Chace gave him something, he was going for more.
“Dad, how ‘bout we take this slow,” he suggested.
“I like her.”
Shit, fuck, shit.
“Good.”
“She suits you.”
Chace sucked in breath.
His father went on. “A good woman for a good man.”
Shit, fuck, shit!
“Right.”
Unfortunately, he wasn’t fucking done.
“I heard what you did for that boy and his sister. I’m proud of you.”
Shit, fuck, shit!
“Dad –”
“I just wanted you to know.”
Chace turned into his drive then hit the garage door opener and into the phone he said, “All right, you wanted me to know. I know.”
“All right,” Trane replied quietly. “Your mother and I’ll look forward to Sunday.”
“Great. Later.”
“Have a good evening, Chace.”
“You too,” he returned then disconnected.
He drove into his garage and parked. He was in his new blue Yukon. His old one was parked next to him. When he’d bought the new one, he’d given the old one to Faye and her Cherokee was gracing someone else’s garage. She accepted this without much discussion much like he suspected Sondra did when her ride was phased out and Silas’s new one phased in. Faye didn’t really care what she drove and since he did and his old Yukon was better than her Cherokee, she went with it without giving him any lip.
When the garage door was going down, he leaned forward and rested his forehead on the steering wheel.
“Shit, fuck, shit,” he whispered.
Then he pulled in a breath, got out of his truck, walked through the garage, opened the door, moved into the back hall and was immediately accosted by Apollo.
He bent and scooped up the cat, walked down the hall while avoiding Starbuck who was chasing his feet and saw Faye at the stove, stirring something.
She turned to him and smiled. “Hey honey, how was swimming?”
He stared at her, her gleaming hair, her crystal blue eyes, her cute outfit, her smiling bubblegum lips and felt his gut release.
Then he smiled back and said, “It was good. What’s for dinner?”
Faye
Two weeks later
I swam up from the fog of sleep and I did this because I heard Chace whispering in my ear, “Wake up, baby.”
I blinked, looked at the alarm clock and saw it was early.
It was Sunday.
I didn’t need to get up early anyway, though these days I did to get up with Chace. But Sundays, we both could sleep in.
So I was wondering why he wasn’t doing that.
I shifted and the pile of cats draped over my feet and ankles shifted, Starbuck, with his usual attitude, doing it on an annoyed mew.
“What?” I asked Chace.
“It snowed last night.”
I stared at him.
Then I asked, “So?”
“Come on, baby, get up, wrap up, let’s go drink coffee outside.”
Coffee outside?
Was he fraking nuts?
I didn’t get the chance to ask and had no choice in the matter since he yanked the covers back, grabbed my hand and pulled me out of bed.
I saw he was already wrapped up and he also was sauntering out the door. I considered climbing back into bed but curiosity got the better of me. So I went about brushing my teeth and doing the same, pulling up some leggings under my nightie, one of Chace’s sweatshirts over it and some thick socks on my feet.
I met Chace at the end of the hall and he had two steaming mugs. He gave me one and we wandered out the front door. Chace pulled the rockers up to the railing and we settled into them, both immediately lifting our feet to the railing like we had countless times when we sat out there that summer.