“Not that first f**kin’ piece.”
“So you’re tellin’ me my Sylvie is gone.”
His Sylvie.
Motherfucking ass**le.
“Long gone,” I verified.
“Right,” he muttered like he didn’t believe me.
“Right,” I repeated firmly.
“So who was that who smiled big at that Down’s kid this morning like he started her day and touched her forehead to his making him look like she started his?”
No way I was going to let him get to me.
“That was Adam’s Sylvie.”
“You ran across the yard like you’d just received a bomb threat, baby, not like you were five minutes late to help your girl. You don’t miss a day even if you have to haul your ass over there hungover. You dropped a job when Josh got sick and your dead partner’s wife had to work so you could look after him. She doesn’t know it but it’s you that puts red and white roses with a blue ribbon on his grave every f**kin’ Sunday. And you took me on just so you could take Knight’s back. That wasn’t Adam’s Sylvie. It’s not Charlene’s Sylvie. It’s not even Knight’s Sylvie. It’s just plain Sylvie. The one I knew. She’s not gone. She’s standing right in front of me.”
“You hold onto that, Creed, you’re gonna get f**ked.”
“Jesus, I hope so.”
I clamped my mouth shut.
Then I unclamped it to declare, “I feel the need to get drunk. We’ll pick this up tomorrow.”
“You need a ride home from the bar, you just call me,” he invited.
“Handsome, you’ll never hear from me. To get down to your name in my phone, I’ve got two whole letters.”
It was his turn to clamp his mouth shut.
I took that as my cue to go.
So I did.
I stopped in order to glare at Gun who was curled up in the seat of a dining room chair fast asleep. My glare was for her being in the mood to nap and thus deserting me in my hour of need. However, since she was snoozing, she missed my glare. Still, it made me feel better.
I also stopped to yank on another pair of socks and boots and grab my keys.
But me, my jeans, tank, boots and socks, commando and braless, walked right out the door and, like we had many, many times before, we took on the night.
Chapter Six
The Best Birthday Ever
A sunny, summer by a lake in Kentucky, twenty-seven years earlier, Creed is twelve, Sylvie is seven. It’s her birthday…
I peddled my bike quick over the trail in the trees to get to the lake.
I didn’t want to miss him.
We didn’t get to do this a lot. It was hard to get away from Daddy but when he was at work, my stepmom was usually drinking that clear stuff straight from the bottle, so it wasn’t hard to get away from her. I just had to be careful and Tuck told me we couldn’t be greedy. Greedy was stupid. The more chances we took, the more chances we took on getting caught.
So we only did it special.