Fast Lane - Kristen Ashley Page 0,36

he did it.

Lyla’s mom delivered them from all of that. Faced him head on with any shit he pulled. Put herself up as a shield in front of those girls. She couldn’t afford to take them anywhere else, so she moved ’em in with their grandparents, and boom! Two more shields.

Anchors.

A foundation.

You got fertile earth to grow in, you bloom.

Lyla’s mom busted her ass to give her girls that and I’ll remind you, this was in a time when MeToo would have been a joke.

The response would have been, so what?

Lyla’s mom birthed those girls then made them the women they became.

I’ll tell you what, every day I work to make sure my girls have that.

Natalie hesitates over eating a chocolate chip cookie or gives the girls a look where I know she’s fretting when I’m making malts.

I say, “Eat it, baby,” at the same time wanting to find her mother and knock her teeth down her throat, because if that woman was there, she’d give my baby shit about having a fuckin’ cookie, goin’ on about carbs and middle-age spread, something the woman had been doing in one way or another to my wife the whole of her life.

And I make my girls malts.

They are, all three of them, the most beautiful creatures who entered my life, and I never let them forget it.

Lyla’s mom and grandparents taught me that.

And hey, Preacher taught me it too.

[Off tape]

So, you’re saying, conclusively, that you, McCade and Lyla were not a threesome and that you and McCade did not indoctrinate her into her status with the band when she was underage.

[Stares straight, speaks firmly]

Yeah, fuckin’ conclusively I’m sayin’ just that.

And you’re saying that McCade did not regularly railroad the band into his way of thinking and rule it with an iron fist.

[Shakes head]

Nope.

He got his way a lot and he pushed to get his way a lot and there were times, and not a few of them, when that was frustrating as fuck.

But he didn’t railroad anybody or rule with an iron fist.

Tom ruled with an iron fist.

[Laughs]

But that was his job.

Cynthia Peters, who became famous in her own right, went on to marry Bobby Sheridan.

[Shakes head]

Match made in heaven for the full, what? Nine, ten months those two idiots were hitched.

And famous?

I guess so.

She was no Pamela Des Barres. That woman knew what she was about, what she wanted, she went after it and didn’t give a fuck what anyone thought.

Cynthia was…

[Lengthy pause]

Not that.

Peters also married Josh Hardy.

Yeah. That’s probably why he’s still doin’ as much session work as he’s doin’.

Because they only lasted a coupla months.

But the asshole didn’t get a prenup.

Jen, Amber and my sister Sonia were all with me, waiting at the gate when…

Lyla:

[Off tape]

At the gate?

[Lengthy pause]

How old are you?

Twenty-two.

[Quietly]

Yes, well, doll, 9/11 changed the world. You were young. But everyone used to be able to go to the gate in an airport. Meet their loved ones the minute they got off the plane.

I guess I knew that.

Lana’s boyfriend worked in the Twin Towers.

Oh no.

[Heavy voice]

Oh yes.

As if that family hadn’t lost enough.

[Takes deep breath]

He had an engagement ring at his apartment. They found it after.

It took her a while. Jesse worried. He thought she’d never recover.

But [smiles sadly] unlike Penny after her loss, eventually, she got there.

After the plane arrived, I was straining to see down the ramp and there he was, the first one off.

He caught sight of me and smiled.

I dashed around the people in front of me and hit him like a ton of bricks the minute he cleared the gate agent.

I actually jumped him, literally, and did not care.

I wrapped my legs around his hips, my arms around his shoulders, he caught my ass in his hands, and we went at it.

I was kissing Preacher again.

I hadn’t seen him in six weeks.

An eternity.

I felt his shoulder jerk when the strap of his bag fell off and that was the only reason I stopped kissing him.

I lifted my head, looked into his brown eyes and whispered, “Hi.”

He stared at me with this funny look on his face that was part happy, part amused, part something else, and he whispered back, “Hey, cher.”

Lyla:

He’d never had a welcome home.

He really had never had a home.

Those jackals who raised him…

[Pause]

You know, looking back, that moment at that gate in the Indianapolis airport was when I really won Preacher McCade.

When I well and truly bagged the most beautiful man on the planet.

And the rest of that Christmas