I stopped suddenly in the aisle next to the shelves of beans (we were not at LeLane’s; they were great and gave an employee discount on some things, but they were way too expensive for everyday shopping needs).

Joker, trailing me, slouched over and pushing the cart with his forearms, halted just shy of slamming into me and muttered, “Jesus, baby.”

I looked his way. “Do you like chili?”

“Yeah.”

“Chili,” I declared and started to grab cans of beans.

“You know, a list helps,” he remarked.

“I have a mental list,” I told him, tossing kidney beans in the cart and going back for black.

“Was chili on it?” he asked.

I looked to him. “Don’t you want chili?”

“What I want is not to wander every aisle so we’re here for an hour rather than bein’ here for twenty minutes gettin’ shit from a list.”

“If I stick to a list, inspiration can’t strike, like the fact I suddenly have a craving for chili,” I told him.

He shook his head, grinning and muttering, “Whatever.”

He wasn’t annoyed.

He was easy.

So I turned back and grabbed black beans. Then I got some chili beans. I finished up with pinto.

Four-bean chili. The best.

I tossed the last in and said, “That should do it.”

I was about to start walking but glanced his way first.

I halted completely because Joker was frozen, leaning into our cart, his eyes aimed down the aisle, a look on his face that could be described no other way than haunted.

I turned my head the other way and that was when I froze.

I did this because there was a man at the other end of the aisle. Tall. Broad shoulders. Silvered black hair that was messy and ill-kempt. Exceptionally handsome profile. Terrible clothes that were wrinkled and well-worn and not in a good way. Serious beer belly. He was glowering at the shelves, his side turned to us.

But Carson Steele was written all over him.

Joker’s father.

Oh my God.

Joker’s father.

I forced my head Joker’s way and saw he was on the move.

This move being he had straightened. Hands on the bar of the cart, he was flipping it around.

“We done in this aisle?” he asked tersely.

We weren’t.

But now we very much were.

“Yeah, sweetie,” I said softly.

He didn’t even look at me.

He exited the aisle immediately.

I looked back the other way and watched Joker’s father’s profile as he scowled at an elderly woman who was turning her cart into the aisle as he was walking out of it. His scowl was so ferocious the lady stared at him in blank shock.

I waited and saw him move opposite to the way we were heading.

I let out a relieved breath and quickly followed Joker.

Had a father beat on me. Had to let that go. Had to get it out. So I did.

But he didn’t.

He didn’t get it out. He might have tried, illegally fighting (whatever that meant but it conjured images of Fight Club, images that were daunting, images that made me sick for him that he’d turn to that to let out his rage, rage given to him by his dad, so I hadn’t yet asked).

But if he’d gotten it out, he wouldn’t have left the aisle.

He would have walked down it, which was where we were heading, and ignored his father. Or, if his father saw him and didn’t ignore him, he would have faced him secure in the knowledge that he was past it.

He hadn’t done that.

I knew from what I’d just witnessed that he also hadn’t seen him since he’d been back.

Of course, he wouldn’t search him out. He was past that.

Or telling himself he was.

They undoubtedly didn’t run in the same circles.

Further, Joker lived in a room in a motorcycle club compound. He didn’t have a kitchen to keep stocked. Happening onto his father in a grocery store wasn’t going to happen.

But now he was with me so he had a kitchen and it did.

And Joker didn’t let it roll off his back.

He retreated.

My Joker didn’t retreat.

He moved forward. He built fabulous cars. He took on a single mom and her kid. He patrolled the streets with his brothers to keep them safe.

But from his father, a still-handsome but aging, beer-bellied man who’d scowl at an old lady for getting in his way in a grocery store, Joker retreated.

This troubled me for obvious reasons.

But mostly because what just happened proved my biker was not good, as he said he was.

He was not good at all.

And that was very, very troubling.

* * *

“Yeah?”

“Linus, it’s Carrie.”

“Carrie, darlin’, what’s up” Linus asked through the phone at my ear.

I was hiding in the bathroom.

This was immature and possibly hazardous, considering why I was doing it and the fact that Joker might get angry about it.

But I was doing it.

I’d also filched Joker’s phone to get Linus’s number. I had Kam’s and Mrs. Heely’s.

But this had to be Linus.

“Can you talk for a second, Linus?” I asked back.

“Sure,” he said, but that one word was cautious.

I drew in breath.

Then I did what I had to do.

This being whispering, “How bad was it?”

“Sorry, darlin’?” he asked.

“Carson’s father,” I kept whispering. “How bad was it?”

There was a pause before he asked, “Is Car okay?”

“Tonight, we saw his dad.”

“Fuck,” Linus muttered.

“He, well… Linus, he… ran away,” I shared, guilt plaguing me that I gave Joker’s friend that weakness, but something stronger was driving me onward. “My Carson… my Joker isn’t about that.”

“No,” Linus bit off.

“I saw the cigarette burns,” I confided.

“Yeah, Mrs. Heely told me about that,” he replied immediately. “She saw ’em too when Car was eight.”

Oh no.

Eight?

“Before my time,” Linus carried on. “But she told me about ’em. She also told Social Services about ’em. No clue how that motherfucker got off on that one. Just know he did and the burns stopped.”

Eight.

He got those burns when he was eight.

I didn’t want to ask what I had to ask.

But I asked because it had to be asked.

“What else?”

“He talk to you about this at all?” Linus queried in return.