Judy nodded and took a long sip of her coffee. “So you’re sleeping with him.”
“What?” Grace looked around the coffee shop to see if anyone had heard her.
“Oh, come on, Grace.” Judy rolled her eyes. “Don’t act like such a prude now. You’ve got that big hunk of willing-to-murder-for-you man living in your house and you want me to think you’re not sleeping with him. I’m your friend. Why are you holding out on me?”
“I’m not holding out on you. I just don’t think half of Destiny needs to know how I’m spending my evenings.”
Judy grinned at her. “Is it good?” She clutched her chest. “Tell me it’s good. I haven’t seen any action since Roosevelt was in office.”
“You were born forty years after Roosevelt was last in office.”
“I know! Now you know how drastic this dry spell has been. I need to live through you.”
“It’s just sex,” she said in a whisper. “Just really good, really amazing, really intense sex multiple-times-every-night sex.” She had missed him. Last night her body had ached to be with him while she spent those long hours at work. She wouldn’t get the chance to be with him tonight because after she left here she was heading to the hospital out of town for another overnight shift.
“Grace, it can’t be just sex. You don’t do sex without feelings. You don’t do sex at all. It’s like you’ve been saving yourself for him all these years. You can’t tell me you don’t feel anything.”
“Of course I do. But it’s not simple. We can’t just pick up where we left off even if we wanted to. Too much has happened. There has been too much hurt. At night is the only time we can seem to get things right. During the day … During the day … I don’t think he’ll ever forgive me. I’m not sure that he should.”
“Aw, honey.” She reached across the table and squeezed Grace’s hand. “Duke is the type to hold a grudge, isn’t he? He and Colt are buying up half the town.”
“Excuse me?” Grace wasn’t sure she’d heard Judy correctly. “Did you say they’re buying up the town?”
“Yes. They are. He didn’t tell you about it? Duke paid cash for the factory.”
“Patrick Andersen runs that factory.”
“There are rumors going around that he might close it down just for spite.”
“You think he would really do that?” Grace found herself asking. Patrick Andersen had ruined their lives. If Duke couldn’t kill him, the next best thing he could do is take away his livelihood.
*
Duke watched Lolly as she moved her red checker piece across the board. She was playing against Ryder, who was watching the old woman with a mixture of wonder and mistrust.
He was right not to trust her. The old woman was a notorious cheater when it came to games.
“You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you, convict junior?” She tapped one of her perfectly painted red nails against her chin.
“I’m smart enough not to take my eyes off you,” he countered as he moved his piece to an empty space.
“You shouldn’t take your eyes off me. I’m damn beautiful.”
Ryder just looked up at her, a slow grin spreading across his face.
“What the hell are you smiling at?” She looked over to Levi, who was standing with Shelly, his fingers entwined with hers. Duke didn’t know what was going on between him and their former neighbor but he was pretty sure his brother wasn’t going back to Vegas a single man. He could tell by the way Levi looked at Shelly. “Baby boy,” Lolly called to him. “What are you supposed to say when I tell you I’m beautiful?”
“That God has never made a more beautiful creature and he never ever will,” Levi said, sounding so sincere he deserved an award.
Lolly nodded approvingly and turned to look back at Ryder. “That boy there is full of crap, but you should take a few lessons from him. He’s better with women than your daddy. Ain’t that right, convict?”
“No, ma’am.” Duke shook his head. “Levi is just pretty like a new coat of paint on a rusty car. I’m like a rebuilt engine. And everyone knows that’s what makes things run.”
“Checkmate!” Lolly yelled out as she moved her piece across the board.
“We’re playing checkers.”
“Yeah, what is it I’m supposed to say?”
“King me.”
“Well, then king me, boy!”
Duke’s cell phone rang and he pulled it out to see that it was Jesse, his shop manager, calling him again. “I’ve got to take this.” He stepped out of the room and completely away from the ICU. “If you tell me something is wrong, I’m coming back there just to kick your ass.”
“Nothing is wrong. We just never had you out of the shop for so long. We’ve got a couple of customers who do not want anyone but you working on their cars.”
“Do they think I do every goddamn step of the restoration myself? Everybody in the shop puts their hands on the cars.”
“Yeah, but you’re Duke King. They want to talk to you. They pay extra for your designs. One guy said he didn’t come all the way to Vegas to have one of your underlings do it.”
“Underlings? Did you knock his teeth down his throat?”
“No. He said our two favorite words.”
“Unlimited budget.” Damn. It wasn’t because he needed the money—Duke could do a hell of a lot to a car when there were absolutely no restrictions placed on him. “Fuck.” He had been itching for a project like this for a long time.
“What do you want me to do?”
He thought about it for a long moment. A big part of him wanted to say no. But King’s Customs had been his entire life for so long, and he still got a rush whenever they revealed a gorgeous fully restored car to an elated owner. “Give me his number. But if he’s a prick we’re not doing shit. And I’ll knock his teeth down his throat myself.”
“What should I do about the others who want just you? I’m pretty sure one of them is a Saudi prince. And we’d be a bunch of dumb-asses if we pass up that kind of money.”
Duke felt conflicted. He felt that every time he was on the phone with his shop. Jesse had been there with him since the beginning. They had gone from teenagers wanting to pimp out their rides to celebrities and the über-rich being waitlisted for their services. He never thought he would be away from his shop this long. He missed it.
“They can wait till I get back. I have to be here with my family.” His family was more important.
“I know. But when are you going to be back? It ain’t really King’s Customs without the king.”
He thought about Ryder and Lolly playing checkers in that hospital room and how much he was enjoying being with his family. He’d never experienced this before. He had to make it thirty days here. He had to prove to Grace that he was a good father and he would be damned if he failed at that, but what would come after these thirty days?
Where would they live? Where would Ryder go to school? How would he adapt to his life changing again in such a short amount of time?
He disconnected from Jesse and walked back into Lolly’s room to find Levi and Shelly walking out with Ryder. “Where are you going?”
His boy looked up at him with a face that looked so much like his own, he felt gut-punched. He felt gut-punched every time he thought about being responsible for another human’s happiness and well-being. “Uncle Levi said the cafeteria has good chicken fingers. Can I go with him?”
Duke nodded. “Don’t tell your mother. She’ll have my ass if she knows you’re eating fried chicken before dinner.”
“She’s going to work in Dudley tonight,” he said, and there was a little bit of tightness in his voice. “She won’t even know.”
“I guess she won’t,” he said, feeling his gut burning like it did whenever he thought of her going off to work a twelve-hour shift. Apparently Ryder felt the same way. “Don’t eat too much. We’ll get pizza tonight.”
“Okay.” Ryder touched his arm on the way out and Duke felt a tiny bit of his t
enseness ease. Grace was working so hard to provide for Ryder. He understood why she did it, but he didn’t know what it was going to take for her to realize that she didn’t have to anymore.
“What’s wrong with you, convict?” Lolly asked, holding out her hand to him.
He took it and eased himself into the chair at her bedside. “What do you think about my boy?”
“He’s you only a hell of a lot better.”
His lips curled slightly. “I know.”
“He’s got a good shot now with you back.”
Back? He wondered if she meant in Destiny? Or in Ryder’s life? Because she knew that he couldn’t see himself living in this town forever.
“Why didn’t you tell me about him?”
“I only saw him from afar.” She shook her head sadly. “Grace got good at ducking and dodging me.”
“Well, she won’t be able to do that anymore. I want you to come live with us when you get out of here.”
“With us? You mean you and Grace are going to live together for the rest of your lives?”
Rest of their lives? That question knocked him on his ass. She came to him every night but they weren’t back together. They weren’t a couple. Grace had just agreed to move to Vegas if he could prove to her that he was good for them. Co-parenting had been the original agreement. Not living together. He wasn’t even sure how that would work, or if she even wanted to in the first place.
He just knew that whenever any thought turned to the future, that future involved Ryder. But it also involved Grace right alongside him.
“I’m mean I’m going to buy a big house in Vegas and I want your crotchety old behind to live in it with me.”
“Aw, convict.” She lifted his knuckles to her lips and kissed them. “You’d have to be out of your ever-loving mind to think that I would move in with you and a teenage boy. I did my time. I’d rather be bit by red fire ants.”
*
Grace left for work just as Ryder and Duke were getting back in the house. Ryder had been in the middle of a story. Something about Levi and racing. Grace could barely pay attention to what he was saying because she was more focused on the fact that Ryder had been stringing several sentences together unprompted. She usually had to pull teeth just to get him to tell her how his day was and she had to admit she was a little jealous. Even more than that, she was sad that she had to leave for work, leave Ryder and Duke at home while she spent the next twelve hours with other people’s loved ones.
You don’t have to work summers anymore.
That thought came into her mind but only for a split second. Duke was back, he would take care of Ryder’s needs, but she still needed to take care of herself. She didn’t want his money. She didn’t want to depend on him for anything.
She wasn’t sure how things were going to work out for them. It would be smart of her to take things one day at a time. To keep working and saving money. And keep living her life as if Duke wasn’t going to be in it forever.
It was nice to let her mind wander to that place. That place it went when she was alone at night and lonely. That place where she had him and they were a family and she took care of him like he took care of her. It was a fantasy she’d held on to for years. But the practical part of her brain knew not to wish for it, for things that might be impossible.
There was still so much resentment between them just boiling beneath the surface, but she tried not to think about it as she drove on that long, dark stretch of road toward the hospital. Her mind kept going back to what Judy had told her just a little while ago.
The King brothers were buying up everything that had to do with Andersens.
Properties they rented, places they worked, even the bank that held their mortgages. She wasn’t sure what to think about it, or even if she had the right to ask Duke about it, but it bothered her. She wasn’t sure why.
The King boys had every right to be angry at the family who’d taunted them in school.
The Andersen boys were always a little too cocky. They thought rules didn’t apply to them and that they could push people around just because their father ran the police force in this town. They had always walked around with a swagger that made boys want to be them and girls want to be with them. But beyond their father’s title and protection they were nothing special. Not smarter or better looking or more athletic. They were just entitled and probably deserved to be taken down a few notches. Still, it didn’t sit right with her that the Kings were so eager to take them down after all this time.
But maybe Grace was just uneasy about herself, because truthfully she had just as much blame as the Andersens did. If she hadn’t said yes to Patrick, if she hadn’t gone out with him that night in the hope of making Duke jealous, none of this would have happened. Her son would have had a father. Duke would have been free.
Part of her was waiting for the day Duke was going to hurt her as much as she’d hurt him.
*
It was Duke’s second night in a row home alone with Ryder. Grace was doing her third overnight shift of the week, and the house was incredibly quiet. Duke sat alone in the living room watching a baseball game on the tiny nineteen-inch television. But his mind couldn’t focus on the game before him. It wandered to its favorite topic. Grace. He couldn’t help but wonder if it would have been like this if he hadn’t gone away. He would have married Grace the moment he learned she was pregnant, but would they still be together now? Would she be working overnight shifts while he worked days as a mechanic? Would they have struggled to make ends meets? Or would he still have King’s Customs?
He wasn’t so sure about that. What had driven him to open his first shop was wanting to get back at all those people who thought he’d never be anything but a grease monkey, who thought he’d never escape from his convict past, who thought he’d never be better than his old man.
He wasn’t sure he would have had the guts or the drive to risk his life’s savings with a wife and a son to take care of. If everything was the way it was supposed to have been, he was pretty sure they would just be getting by. And stuck here in the town he had always longed to get away from.
He found himself wandering upstairs to see what Ryder was doing. They had cooked and eaten dinner together, but the two of them hadn’t spoken more than a handful of words to each other that night and he wondered if that was right. If other fathers and sons would go some days without saying much to each other. He thought about how he was with his own father, but that couldn’t compare. Duke had taken care of him. Hosed him off after he got sick from drinking too much whiskey, hauled him out of bars when he had been there too long. Took the brunt of his rages to keep Colt and Levi safe. At fifteen Duke had felt fifty. Ryder may have been fatherless for his entire life but he was already much better off than Duke had ever been.
Ryder had talked to him the entire way home from the hospital the day before. An excited expression on his face and more words coming out of him than Duke thought was possible. He liked that, but he knew it was all Levi’s doing. Levi had showed Ryder videos of him racing and told the boy that he’d take him to see his team. And that reminded Duke that Levi had wanted to tell him something before this whole thing had started.
Levi wanted to go back to racing. That had to be it. Duke knew the semi-quiet life of a television host wasn’t enough for him. And there was nothing he could do to stop him. Because that was Levi’s dream, just like King’s Customs was his.
He found Ryder sitting at the old desk in the den Grace had set up for him. The ancient television was on. Some action movie played in the background as Ryder concentrated on putting together his model car.
“Hey, boy.” Duke placed his hands on his son’s shoulders and looked down at the piece he was working on. “When did you know you first liked cars?”
“I don’t know. Always I guess.”
“I was the same way. My dad used to fix them on the side for extra money when I was a kid, and I used to watch him. I got my first real job fixing c
ars when I was fourteen.”
Ryder looked up at him. “That’s just a year older than me.”
“I know. I think it might be time for you to learn how to fix cars, too.”
“Can I have a job in your shop?”
The question made his chest swell a bit. The love of cars ran in their blood. “I think your mother would shoot me in between my legs if I gave you a job in my shop.”
Ryder let out an annoyed sigh. “She doesn’t let me do anything.”
“I’m trying with her, boy. She’s been your mom for thirteen years. I’ve been your dad for a couple of weeks. It’s going to take time.”
“I’m still mad at her,” Ryder admitted softly. “But I don’t want to be.”
“That’s going to take time, too.” Duke ran his fingers through his son’s thick, dark hair—which was the exact shade of his own. He hesitated before doing it, but did it anyway, needing some way to express the connection he was feeling.
It was as if his body knew that this boy had come from him, that Ryder would be his legacy, the good thing he left to the world.
“We have the same hands,” Ryder said, taking his and looking at it. “See?” He showed him his own. “I used to wonder who I looked like.”
“You’ll be good looking like me,” Duke said, joking.
“Will you move us to Las Vegas with you?” Ryder asked, taking him off guard.
“I want to, but not if you want to live here.” He knew that no matter how bad his history was with this town, he couldn’t pull his son away from a place that made him happy.
“Sometimes I feel like I don’t fit in here. Like maybe I’m meant to be somewhere else.”
Duke knew exactly how he felt, but he knew he couldn’t promise his son to take him away from here without talking to Grace about it first. “I’ll do right by you, boy.” Impulsively Duke pushed his son’s hair away from his eyes and kissed his forehead before he walked out of the room, wanting to give him space. But as soon as he stepped foot onto the basement steps his cell phone rang. It was Grace.
“Duke? My car died on Route Seven. Can you come get me?”
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