Page 47 of Moonshine Lullabies
She shook her head and looked positively ill. A grim reality started creepin’ its way in like one of them eldritch horrors.
“When I was thirteen, my daddy’s best friend… he… he came in my room, put a hand over my mouth and did the deed.” She swallowed hard. “I always used a condom with my boyfriend. We was always careful… but ol’ Uncle Hampton…” she looked like she was gonna be sick and I just nodded quickly so she knew she needed to say no more. I pulled her to me, kissed her forehead, and wrapped my arms tight around her.
“Trin’s name is on the birth certificate, but I think he’s always known. If something happens to me an’ he does a DNA test, I don’t want Tate anywhere near his real daddy. I don’t, so you have to promise me—”
“I promise you, ain’t nothing going to happen to you. Nothing. Not in the next four years until Tate is eighteen, and not ever.”
“Never say never,” she said, and it chilled me to the fuckin’ bone.
We drew apart, and I touched her face and said, “Thank you for trusting me with your biggest secret,” I said. “It’s safe with me…” What was more… I wasn’t gonna lie. A rage so deep and so cold permeated every fiber of my being. A rage so deep and so cold I was perfectly calm as I silently vowed to my woman that she would have some fuckin’ justice. That this wrong of the last almost fifteen years would not go unanswered.
She swallowed hard and nodded. I fucking watched as the burden lifted from her shoulders, as they dropped and her posture eased visibly and her breathing slowed.
“Let’s get some of your things packed up, honey. Get ‘em out to the truck and take you and Tate someplace safe, yeah?”
She nodded, and she was calm again. The thing that made Jessie-Lou Gaudet a formidable woman, who was tough as fucking nails, was back in her light brown eyes.
“Collier,” Hex called from out in the living room, and I checked with Jessie. She nodded, and I got to my feet.
I reached down a hand and helped her to her feet and she murmured, “Go. This club got me an’ mine into this mess, but I’m well aware y’all are the only ones to get us out of it. So go do what needs doin’.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I gave her a salute and left the room, going out into the living room where Hex stood with Saint and Cy.
Cy gave me a hard look and said, “We get my sister an’ my nephew safe, you an’ me? We’re havin’ what they call a come-to-Jesus meetin’,” he declared.
I gave him a hard look right back and told him the God’s honest truth, “You’re goddamn fuckin’ right we are, but, brother? That conversation ain’t gonna go how youthinkit’s gonna go.”
Saint looked from me to Cy and back to me. I caught his mane of long hair movin’ in my peripheral vision, but my eyes remained locked on Cy’s, though.
Hex put a hand to my shoulder, smart enough to know where the real threat lay before anyone else in the room, and he said, “That may be, but for right now? We need to stick a pin in it, fellas, an’ get Jessie an’ Tate someplace where the Bayou Brethren can’t and won’t get at ‘em while we sort things out.”
“Ain’t nothin’ to ‘sort out,’” Cypress declared. “Every last one of those honorless motherfuckers are goin’ down for this.” He spit right there on the carpet, his chest heaving beneath his cut and Saint put his hand on his shoulder and squeezed.
“You need to keep your fuckin’ head,” Saint growled low from between gritted teeth.
“Agreed,” Hex said, dropping his hand from my shoulder, sure that I was in control. “You can’t be sayin’ shit like that out here in the cornfield.” He met Cypress’s eyes and without moving his head, glanced at the wide-open, shot-to-shit open front door of the house.
“You get dressed,” Hex ordered me. “We’re gonna get to boarding up the house as best we can.”
Saint pulled on Cy’s shoulder and Cy violently shrugged his hand off.
“This ain’t over,” he declared at me and I nodded my head.
“Not by a fuckin’ longshot,” I agreed, and I fucked off back down the hall to find my clothes and my boots and make sure Jessie was makin’ good progress.
She was dressed, a duffel bag open on her bed as she haphazardly folded and threw clothes from her dresser and armoire into it.
“Everything good?” she asked, as calm, capable, and in control as I’d ever seen her. I was damn proud of her, and grateful that she realized I was a safe place for her to be fuckin’ vulnerable for once in her life.
I nodded and said, “Keep pulling shit together, baby. I wanna roll on up outta here inside ten minutes if we can.”
She nodded and sped up her packing.
I threw clothes on and glancing over my shoulder made sure to pick up our book from her side of the bed, tucking it into the back of my pants and letting my tee and my cut fall over it. I put my gun back there with it and sighed.
“Just need to grab clothes from Tate’s room,” she said.
I took the duffel from her and said, “I’ll do it. You had it hard enough with his school backpack.”
