Beckett (Robinson Destruction #4) - Kathi S. Barton Page 0,65

going to go get them? They’re your family, Benny. You can’t just leave them in the hands of others. Of course, you want to go get them.”

“What if they’re, you know, colored?” She asked him what he’d said. “You know my sister. She’s nothing but a sleaze bag. She’s more than likely slept with everything with a dick. I’m betting animals too. I don’t want a colored kid in my house. And you shouldn’t either if you know what’s good for you.”

“I cannot believe you just said that. You are seriously messed up if you think skin color or anything else matters when it comes to family.” He said that people would stare at them. “So? Since when do you give a shit what people think when they see you? If you did, then you’d clean up better and lose some weight.”

“You’re talking shit, Sissy, and you know how much I hate that.” She lifted her chin to him, and he was tempted as hell to knock her block off. “I made you a promise that I’d never hit you again, but you’re pushing me. Really pushing me.”

“You touch me, Benson Whitman, and I’ll put you in a world of hurt so bad that you’ll never be able to come up for air again.” He was tempted. The first time he’d hit her, the only time as it turned out, she’d done so much to him that he was still feeling the repercussions from it.

He didn’t have a job and couldn’t get one. Well, he supposed he could get a job, but he wasn’t going to work a job that was beneath him. There wasn’t a car for him to use anymore, as she’d sold his. Benny had looked for three days for her car and given up. He was, he knew, too lazy to put too much effort into much of anything. Then there was the fact that she’d had him beaten up. She said that she’d not done that, but he knew it could only have been her.

“We’re going to go and get those kids.” He forgot, just for a moment, that he no longer ruled the house. That he wasn’t in charge. When his fist connected with her face and she fell over, he knew he’d just fucked himself over double time, and then some.

Leaving the house before she woke up, he didn’t even have to look in Sissy’s purse to know that there’d be no money for him to take. She hid that from him as well. Not that either of them had all that much. But she made it a point to keep whatever she had away from him.

Benny made his way to the only place he knew he’d feel welcome. The Community Bar. Dumbest name for a bar he’d ever heard, but it was always full, and there was always someone that would buy him a beer or two just to keep him from singing. Benny couldn’t hold a tune in a bucket with the lid glued down, as his granny used to tell him. Going inside, he wondered what he’d do if his wife just never got up. Never spoke to him like he was nothing again. It would be too good to be true; that’s what it would be.

~*~

Sissy opened her eyes and didn’t move. She wasn’t sure if Benny was still there or not. If he was, she was going to murder his ass. Fucking bastard. Sitting up, letting her head figure out that it was still attached to her neck, she thought of what she had to do now.

She’d been so in love with Benson when she’d first met him. He’d been kind. Polite. He’d been such a dashing figure too. It only took her a few months to figure out he’d married her for money. Well, she nipped that in the bud right away.

The Morgans had money—a great deal of it. She did, as well. But as soon as she figured out Benny’s scheme in trying to drain her dry, she told him she wasn’t one of those Morgans, the ones with money. She was just plain old Sissy Morgan, who just happened to have the same last name as the rich ones. Her dad had helped her out with that as well.

“To think that I liked him.” Sissy laughed with her dad when they plotted to have her husband think she was just as poor as he was. “Well, we’ll get him on the right track soon enough.