“Likely she’s never gonna share outright with you she had someone whacked, and there’s still doubt, minimal but it’s there, she actually did. She does, then I got a problem with her because that puts you in an uncomfortable position of keepin’ your mouth shut about a felony which is another fuckin’ felony. That swings your ass right out there in a way you got problems throwin’ your girl under a bus she set in motion and doin’ that gettin’ you heat from whatever organization Rojas is running.”

“God,” I whispered.

“She caused this problem for you,” Deke stated. “And her sharp-dressed man’s got it together, no way in fuck he’s gonna let her share anything with you, for her and, he cares enough to find you to call to offer condolences about your dad, for you. It’s just done, baby, and you’ll never know how it got done. Just move on.”

“Move on from a friend having someone murdered for me?”

“Move on from some fuckwad breaking into your house and beatin’ the crap outta you, choking you, scaring the shit outta you and you don’t know dick about what happened after. But at least that shit’s just done.”

As totally fucked up as it was, Deke was right.

That shit was just done.

“A miracle has occurred. Something’s actually put me off food,” I declared.

He grinned at me, slid out his thumb and stroked my jaw. “You’ll get that back.”

I nodded, hoping that happened before Steph’s chicken.

He bent and brushed his lips against mine before he straightened, moved away and yanked at his mask so he could pull it over his head, shouting, “Bubba, enough time!”

Yep.

It had been pre-planned.

“Thank fuck,” Bubba said, walking into the room with paper plates, two cans of Coke and a Fresca. “I’m starving.”

We headed to the ratty-ass furniture Jim-Billy rounded up for me.

Once there, I set about handing out sandwiches.

And there was me.

My bestie was tight with a criminal, linked to a murder, off to Costa Rica…

And I was doing the only thing I could.

Moving on.

Chapter Sixteen

Without You

Justice

I watched Deke haul his big body off his couch and head to the kitchen.

He’d cleaned his plate and was getting seconds.

I grinned down at my plate as I shoved more cheesy, chile chicken in my gob.

“My gypsy princess can also cook.”

At his quiet words, I looked to him.

The Crock-Pot was steaming. The pot with rice at his stove was too. As was the plate Deke again had piled high.

“The recipe has four ingredients, not counting the rice,” I shared. “It’s hardly gourmet.”

He moved back to the couch, folded into it and stretched out his long legs, his head turned to me.

“Not a big fan of gourmet, babe.” He used his fork to indicate his plate. “But I’m a big fuckin’ fan of this.”

I smiled at him huge.

He watched my smile, his lips quirking before he turned back to his chicken.

But from the bent of our conversation, I decided it was time. Time to share what needed to be shared. The perfect segue into Deke knowing who the woman was he gave the key to his trailer so she could set up a Crock-Pot.

The woman he had to understand I was so he’d understand I was the woman for him because with each passing day it was becoming clear he was the man for me.

That woman being the woman he already knew.

The woman who was made for him.

“When I was eighteen, Dad did a huge festival in the UK. I went with him.”

Deke turned eyes from plate to me.

“We stayed in Bristol,” I went on. “Pretty harbor city on the Bristol Channel.”

“Yeah?” he asked when I quit talking.

I nodded my head. “Yeah,” I told him and carried on, “There was a promoter in the city. He really wanted to work with Dad. He took us out to this restaurant on the harbor, cool place, lots of windows, great views.” I tilted my head playfully. “Though it was all boring to me seeing as, by then, eighteen-year-old girl who traveled everywhere with her rock star dad, I’d seen it all and knew everything. Very worldly.”

“Bet you were,” he said, his eyes crinkling with his tease in a way I’d never seen but I liked very much.

I drew in a deep breath to settle what that look and his tease did to the flutterings of my heart and kept talking.

“Opened the menu, didn’t understand a thing on it.”

His head cocked to the side. “Was the restaurant foreign?”

I shook my head. “Nope. Just everything was gourmet. It was like I opened that menu and it was one of those talking cards saying ‘You are about to eat food that’s way too good for the likes of you, for the likes of anybody, it should only touch the lips of God.’”

Deke gave me another smile with his eyes while he kept eating and I kept blabbing.

“I was embarrassed, you know, being worldly and knowing everything, so I didn’t ask the waiter about anything because I didn’t want to expose the fact I actually didn’t know everything. Dad liked his food and didn’t give a shit what anyone thought of him, so he asked. That was the only way I knew what to order. I got something that was chicken. I figured no one could really fuck up chicken.”

“Let me guess, they fucked up chicken,” Deke remarked.

I nodded, having a feeling I was at least twinkling my eyes at him because I felt them smiling.