Yet, Blaise had taken that edge off so now all I wanted to do was some damage.
Just as I was thinking that, a car came barreling into the gas station practically on two wheels.
A woman got out, and then she was running toward us.
“Where’s my baby?!” the woman all but bellowed.
The officer stopped what he was doing to point to an ambulance where another cop was waiting with the little girl.
The woman turned and saw her kid being held safely by the cops, and nearly fainted with relief.
She went down into recovery position with her hands on her knees, her head hung low, and started to sob.
Just as I was about to move in her direction—I couldn’t handle crying women at all. They broke my heart—Bruno moved instead, looking like he was heading toward a pit of snakes instead of a crying chick.
When he got to her, he helped her stand upright then said, “Get your shit under control. You need to be strong for your kid. She sees you crying, she’s going to cry, too. And we sure the fuck don’t want that, do we?”
“I think we could’ve found someone else to send over there and console a frantic woman,” Hunt mused from my side.
“Agreed,” Laric said, coming up and taking Bruno’s place at my side. “It’s like sending in the death squad when all you need is the order squad.”
There were snorts all around, even from Blaise who had yet to meet my eyes again since we’d gotten over to the group.
CHAPTER 11
Am I packing all of my shit, or are we going out to eat?
-Blaise to Sin
BLAISE
“Oh my God!” Beckham stood up and all but body slammed into me. “What are you doing here?”
“Babe,” Trouper, Beckham’s husband, said. “Did you not notice the man whose hand she’s holding? That would be the reason she’s here.”
I liked Trouper, Beckham’s husband. I’d met him a time or two on the visits to Kilgore.
Then she’d moved, I’d gone into the Army. Then I’d come home and followed a certain someone all over the country, and life had just gotten in the way.
“I can’t believe that you’re finally back.” She pulled away and cupped my face. “You look like utter shit. Like, there are bags under your eyes, your face looks like you lost weight, and I’m pretty sure that scar is new.”
She pointed to a scar that was on my upper face, and I tensed.
The man at my side looked at me, something crossing over his face.
“Where did you get that?” Trouper asked. “That looks like a split lip.”
Fucking fuck.
“Ummm,” I hesitated.
“Just tell us,” the man at my side ordered. “We’re not leaving this spot until we know.”
Son of a cock-sucking whore!
I knew—fucking knew!—that he was going to blow this out of proportion.
He’d always hated me being a prison guard. And when I say hated, I mean, he’d despised it with every single cell in his body.
He hadn’t really mentioned me continuing to be a prison guard now that he wasn’t in the prison system—which I knew to be the only reason he allowed me to do it when I’d done it, because I would be seeing him as much as I could—but now? Honestly, I’d kind of taken it as a boon these last few weeks that he hadn’t paid attention to me.
I’d gotten to establish myself with the new prison, Bear Bottom Penitentiary, and I’d gotten to do that without an overprotective man at my back bitching and complaining that I was working at a prison. With convicted felons. Some convicted felons who, might I add, were in there for doing not nice things to women.
This particular scar had come about in a way that I knew he wasn’t going to like.
Something that had happened after my first week on the job at Bear Bottom Penitentiary.
“Ummm,” I hesitated.
“That’s new enough that I haven’t seen it in the last month,” Sin drawled, sounding for all he was worth as if he was just talking to a bunch of friends—which I guess he was—but not sounding at all mad like I knew he was. “So… where in the prison did it happen? Which one of the prisoners that has raped, beaten, or abused females in some way did it? Do they know that you’re pregnant?”
I tried to disentangle my hand from Sin’s at the same time as Beckham said, “Pregnant?”