I stopped and looked up at Grace whose glass was paused mid-air.
King cleared his throat. “She came to my coming home party.” It was the truth, but he was leaving out all the cringe-worthy details I’d just laid out for her. Grace set her glass down and threw her head back in laughter.
“I don’t think you two could be any cuter together,” she said, ignoring everything I’d just told her. “I’m so glad you found someone, dear boy. I’d missed you so much while you were gone, and I prayed every single day that you would find someone who made you as happy as my Edmund made me.” Grace turned a small silver band on her ring finger.
“We’re not—” I started, but King put his arm over my chair and tugged me into him.
“I wanted you to meet her,” he said, running his thumb against the side of my neck in an unexpected sign of affection.
Show or not, my skin came alive under his seemingly innocent touch, and I’m pretty sure I gasped out loud because King’s shoulders shook with silent laughter. Grace stood and rounded the table. Pausing above King, she kissed him on the top of the head.
“You’ve made this old woman very happy,” Grace said, wiping a tear from under her eye. She sniffled and clasped her hands together. “I’m going to start dinner. Doe, darling, would you like to help me?”
“Sure,” I said, standing up from the table.
I still wasn’t entirely sure why we were there, but I liked Grace, and having someone else besides the three tattooed amigos around was a nice change. She had a grandmotherly thing going on that set you at ease the moment she opened her mouth. I was going to enjoy it while I could until I had to go back to the house with Mr. Mood Swings.
“I’ve got stuff in the truck,” King said, hopping down off the deck and disappearing around the side of the house. Grace led me into the kitchen and took out ingredients for pasta with meatballs. She moved one of the stuffed rabbits so I could sit at the table and chop vegetables while she used her hands to mix together all the ingredients for the meatballs.
“How you do know King?” I asked, chopping green peppers onto a cutting board. I used the knife to wipe them into a bowl and started on the onions.
“He didn’t tell you?”
“He doesn’t say much,” I admitted.
“Man of few words, that one,” Grace said warmly. “I’ve known Brantley since he was a snot-nosed middle schooler. He tried to steal from my garden one day. He wasn’t a day over twelve.”
“Brantley?”
“He really doesn’t tell you anything, does he?” Grace cast me a sideways glance.
“What did you do when you caught him?” I was curious about how King forged a relationship with a lady three times his own age.
“I got a switch off the tree, just like my mama would have done, ripped his jeans down past his little, white butt, and whipped some sense into him,” Grace said, casually as she rinsed a tomato under the tap and dried it with a paper towel.
“No, you didn’t!” I said, half in disbelief and half because I couldn’t imagine this little sprig of woman giving King a spanking.
“Yes, I sure did. Then, Edmund called Brantley’s mom while I made dinner, but she didn’t answer. Edmund left a message, but his mom never came. So, he stayed for dinner. Then, he stayed the night. He’s come over every Sunday since. Well, every Sunday he hasn’t been mixed up in something or sitting in prison. In that case, we went to him.”
“You knew he was in prison?”
“Of course. Visited him every week. And when my Edmund died, that little boy came to his funeral wearing a green tuxedo he bought from the thrift shop that was three sizes too big. I’ve offered to let him live here a thousand times, but that boy was never one who could be contained. He chose to stay out there, do what he does, and he comes to take care of me and the house in between.”
“So, you know…everything?”
Grace nodded. “Not the nitty gritty details but I’m no dimwitted woman. I know my boy isn’t exactly walking on the right side of the law. But I know that I love him like a son, and he loves me like his mama so that’s all that matters to me.” Grace didn’t pause when she continued. “Love is what you would do for the other person, not what you do in general. There is no doubt in my mind that he would throw his life down for me. I would do the same without hesitation.” She opened the refrigerator and pulled out a bowl of green peppers. “I also know that everything you said out there, about how you two met, is true.”
“Why didn’t you say something?” I asked.
Grace sighed and looked away, deep in thought. “There was this movie I watched as a little girl. This black and white picture about a cowboy who robbed trains. I’ll never forget the ending. You see, the cowboy turns to the woman he loves, after she just found out that he was the train robber, and he tells her that although he did horrible things, he stole from people, killed people, it didn’t mean he loved her any less or that he wasn’t capable of love.”
Grace motioned for me to pick up the salad bowl and follow her out onto the deck. I set the bowl on the table, and Grace arranged the plates and forks. When she was done, she guided me to the railing and nodded over to where King stood on a ladder, replacing a light bulb on a small shed in the corner of the yard.
“What I’m trying to say, dear, and what I think the cowboy was trying to say to his love in that movie, is that there is a difference between being bad and being evil. Just because he was a very bad boy, that doesn’t mean he couldn’t be a truly great man.” I was rolling her words around in my brain when she added, “And God help me, little one, you break his heart, and I will cut you where you stand. If I’m long gone when that happens, be assured that death will not stop me from bringing you down.” Grace smiled like she hadn’t just threatened my life and brought me in for another hug. “Now, let’s go get the meatballs.”
Grace may have been a little thing, and she definitely had the wrong idea about what was going on between myself and King, but I had no doubt that if I crossed her, she would carry through on her threat without blinking an eye.
King ducked inside the bathroom to wash his hands and then joined us out on the deck. The sun had just started to set when I noticed the strands of lights crisscrossing over our heads. As the sun sank lower, the lights got brighter until they looked like thousands of tiny stars shining over our meal.
We ate, and Grace did most of the talking. She frequently refilled my mojito, and at one point rushed inside to make another pitcher. She was curious about me and asked a lot of questions. In between shoveling meatballs into my mouth, I filled her in on my story.
“It’s a good thing you have each other.” She pointed out.
“She’s not my girlfriend, Grace,” King said, his lips compressed in a thin, straight line.
Grace shrugged and took another sip of her drink. “Edmund and I had an arranged marriage, you know. His mother and mine conspired together since we were still on the tit. The first few years we were together, I couldn’t stand the man, but after a while, I learned to love him. Then, I fell in love with him and felt that way up until the day he died. Things don’t always start out the way we want them to. It’s how they end that’s important. I may not have loved Ed in the beginning, but he grew to be the love of my life.”
Grace had the most optimistic, if not bordering on warped, perception of relationships. But what did I expect? The woman was a walking, talking contradiction. A tiny little thing that drank like a fish and swore like a sailor. Not to mention that her house looked like an episode of HOARDERS: RABBIT EDITION.
“It didn’t hurt that the sex was off the charts fantastic,” Grace said, staring up into the lights.
I spit out a mouthful of mojito. Half of it splattered against King’s shirt. I braced myself for his anger, slowly lifting my eyes to his, but there was none. His shoulders shook as he chuckled. Grace was downright howling.
I helped Grace clean up while King disappeared down the hall. I heard the bathtub running and thought
maybe he was ringing the mojito out of his shirt.
“Grace, what’s with the rabbits?” I asked her, needing to know. She smiled and closed the dishwasher. She turned the dial, and it sounded like Preppy’s car exploding all over again.
“Ed used to bring me home a ceramic rabbit after every business trip.” She looked around at the table. “I know it’s odd, and I know they’ve taken over the house. But each one was a moment my husband wasn’t with me, but was still thinking about me.” Grace looked as if she was getting tired. My heart seized. I wasn’t expecting the reason to be so sentimental, and I hated that I ever thought that she might have been just a crazy rabbit lady.
“I’ll finish this up, Grace. Why don’t you go lie down?”
She nodded and wiped her hands on the dishcloth hanging off her shoulder. Setting it around the faucet, she brought me in for another hug. “Thank you. Take care of my boy, will you? He’s been having a hard time since he got out. I worry about him.”
I didn’t know how to respond, so I took the coward’s way out and went with what I knew she wanted to hear. “Of course.”
Grace made her way down the hall where I heard a door open and then shut. I finished the dishes and sat at the kitchen table for a good hour. It was getting late. Grace obviously needed to go to bed.
Where was King?
I padded down the hall and paused outside a door when I heard voices speaking in hushed tones. The door wasn’t latched, so I pushed it open a little, hoping it wouldn’t creak. Peering through the crack, I caught a glimpse of King and Grace in the mirror of a large ornate walnut dresser that took up most of the small room. Grace sat on the side of the bed in bright orange button-up pajamas with matching slippers. Her feet didn’t touch the floor. King crouched in front of her and held up what looked like some sort of glass pipe.
“Like this,” he said, lighting the pipe he took a hit and held it in his lungs before blowing out the smoke. Then, he passed the pipe over to Grace who did the same, looking to King for reassurance. When she exhaled, she started having a coughing fit. King held her arm while she laughed and coughed at the same time.
“Will I do that every time?” she asked when she was finally able to manage a sentence.
“No, just the first few times.” King assured her with a small smile.
“Good. I hate coughing,” Grace said.
“Are you sure there isn’t anything else you need?” He asked.
“I’m an old lady, and a dying one at that, and you still come over to fix my house and take care of me like I’m still going to be around in six months. You do too much already.”
“Don’t talk like that,” King scolded, pinching the bridge of his nose. Grace reached out, took King’s hands in her own, and held them on her lap.
“You are the closest thing to a son I ever had,” she confessed.
King looked to the floor. “You’ve always been more of a mother to me than…her.”
Grace’s face grew serious. “I’m only sorry I didn’t kill that bitch myself.”
It was on those words that I lost my footing and came tumbling forward into the room, landing on my hands and knees in front of the bed.
“Is she always this graceful?” Grace asked.
King kissed Grace on the top of her head and turned off the lights. I gave her a sad little wave as he ushered me from the room, closing the door behind us. He turned off all the lights in the house and locked the back sliding door. Just as we reached the front of the house, King stopped and reached into his pocket, then placed something on the edge of the table on the hall. I fell a few steps behind so I could inspect what it was he’d left for Grace. When I saw it, my breath caught in my throat.
It was a tiny white ceramic rabbit.
Eighteen
Doe
“We have another stop to make,” King declared, punching out a text on his phone with his thumb as we got back into the truck.
I looked at him, really looked at him as if I were seeing him for the first time. What I saw was a man who when you stripped away the intimidation and constant mood swings was someone who was taking care of a woman he loved in her final days. The man who I’d started out believing was a monster was capable of love.
“Why were you showing Grace how to smoke pot?” I asked.
“She puts up a good front, but Grace is in a lot of pain.” King winced. “All the medications they give her are a bunch of bullshit. It’s all supposed to make her comfortable, but she gets really sick from most of it.”
“What does she have?”
“Some fucking bullshit aggressive cancer.” King’s hands tightened around the wheel until his knuckles turned white.
“Does she really only have six months?”
King looked uncomfortable, but, I felt like after meeting Grace and bonding with her I needed to know more about her condition.
He propped his elbow up on the ledge of the open drivers side window, thoughtfully resting his jaw on the back of his hand. “They say six months, but I’ve been told to take that and divide it in half because they usually exaggerate when they tell you how much time you have left.”
“Who told you that?”
“Her doctor.”
“Oh.”
We spent nearly twenty minutes in silence as we rode to our next stop, which was another residential neighborhood, This time when King parked and I grabbed the door handle, he stopped me with his forearm across my chest.
“What?” I asked.
“We aren’t getting out.”
Killing the engine, he leaned back in his seat. I opened my mouth to ask why, but the dark look in his eyes said that he wasn’t up for conversation. I folded my arms over my chest, waiting for the reason why we were there to produce itself.
After a few minutes, there it was. A light. Not from the house we were parked in front of but the one behind it. From where we sat, we had a perfect view of the back of the house and the illuminated sunroom. A tall woman with short black hair was sorting through some toys on the ground, when a small blonde girl came bounding into the sunroom.
King sat up straight.
We may have been a hundred feet or so away from the house, but I instantly recognized the girl prancing around in her PJ’s.
“That’s the girl from your picture, right? Is she your sister? Do you want to go say hi? I’ll wait here if you want me to.”
King remained silent, staring intently at the little girl until the woman found what she was looking for and ushered her back into the house, switching off the light. King looked into the darkness long after they were out of sight.
“I can’t go see her. I have no rights. I’m her only family. She needs me, but to the courts, I’m just another felon. I don’t even have visitation. I did everything I could in prison, hired every lawyer I could, but there’s nothing they could do to help. I had to bribe a clerk to give me the address of her foster home. It’s the only way I know where she is.
“I’m sorry.” I said, and I meant it. King knew who and where his family was and they still couldn’t be together. “She really is beautiful.”
“She is,” he agreed. He turned the key and started up the truck. “Max.”
“What?” I asked.
“Max. Her name is Max.”
“Short for Maxine?”
King smiled and shook his head, turning back onto the main road. “Like Maximillian.”
“For a girl?” I wrinkled my nose.
“Yeah, and shut the fuck up. It’s the best fucking name ever,” King said, still smiling. There was a hint of pride in his tone that I didn’t want to step on. “A strong name for a strong girl.”
“It’s a great name,” I said softly.
“Yeah, it is.”
“Why did you bring me here? And to see Grace?” I asked, using the small moment of vulnerability to my advantage.
“Because I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing with you, pup,” King confessed. “You make me fucking crazy and I fee
l shit that I can’t—” He paused. “Prison fucked me up, made me rethink things, but you’ve managed to fuck me up more than prison ever did. For some reason, I want you around. And since I’m shit with words, I figured the best way for you to get to know me, the real me, was for you to meet the two most important girls in my life.”
“Oh.” I bit my lip. I don’t know what kind of answer I expected from him, if any answer at all, but what he said took me by complete surprise.
He WANTS me around?
“I’ve been in a maximum security prison. I’ve been around the worst of the worst. I’ve had to sleep with one eye open, thinking my next breath could be my last.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
He turned toward me and our eyes locked. He reached out and ran the back of his pointer finger along my cheek. “Because I want you to know that none of those motherfuckers ever scared me as much as you do.”
King’s phone buzzed from the cup holder in the console, and he answered it, leaving me with my mouth open in shock.
“Yeah,” King said, holding the phone up to his ear. “Motherfucker! No, I got it. You stay where you are, and I’ll come get you in a bit. Yes, I know. I’m sure. I got this.”
King tossed the phone into my lap and turned the wheel of the truck so hard I swear we were up on two wheels.
“What’s going on?”
“One last stop,” King said through gritted teeth. Whoever it was on the other end had told him something he obviously didn’t want to hear.
After a few minutes, we pulled up in front of a small dive bar with a neon green sign that flashed the name HANSEN’S with a symbol of a ship below it. There were only a few scattered cars in the gravel parking lot. King threw the truck in park and jumped out.
“Stay here,” he ordered. He leaned into the bed of the truck and grabbed something out of it before making his way into the bar. King had to duck to pass through the low doorway.
I’d seen three sides of him in one day. The dark crazy scary shit. The sexy as hell shit that made my knees quake with the smallest look. And the side that I didn’t think he had, the side that genuinely cared for someone other than himself. It was nice to know he wasn’t a misogynist after all.
KING SERIES FIRSTS: King, Lawless & Preppy Part One Page 14
