“So that’s it?” I asked.

He grinned and gave me a squeeze, his hand leaving my hair so he could wrap his arm around my waist. “Yep, that’s it.”

“So when you get angry about something else, I don’t stand in your way but somehow get in your way, do you get to put your hands on me?”

His grin died and his eyes narrowed.

“Babe,” he warned low.

“I’d like to know and think I’m entitled to that knowledge.”

“Shit isn’t jacked, like it was last night, you got nothin’ to fear from me.”

“You’re sure?”

His arms gave me a different kind of squeeze.

“That isn’t cool, Clara.”

That isn’t cool?

“I’m entitled to know, West.”

His face dipped close to mine and his eyes were suddenly angry.

“What you get when you get me is what Tatie got last night. And I’ll remind you, you’ve already had it. Someone hurt you, Clara, and I hunted his ass down and I beat the shit out of him. I beat him until he was down and I kept beating him until he was no longer moving. Anyone hurts you or tries to hurt you, that’s what they get. When you get me, you get my protection. I’m tellin’ you, and I said it so many goddamned times, it’s got to be in your fuckin’ brain by now, I wasn’t thinkin’ last night and you were standin’ in the way of me exacting retribution for my…fuckin’…daughter. I apologized, and I explained, and you need to let it sink in, babe, and you need to do that fast. You’ve seen me mad and you’ve made me mad, and you know, Toots, you fuckin’ know you got nothin’ to fear from me. Now don’t play this game. Not now. Not this mornin’. You aren’t good at games, babe, and doin’ it now, you’re only pissin’ me off.”

I pulled in my lower lip and bit it.

What I didn’t do was say anything more.

“You done bein’ a pain in the ass?” he asked.

I didn’t think I was being a pain in the ass.

I thought my reactions and my questions were perfectly justified.

Obviously, I needed to make a phone call to Minnie and ask her how I should have reacted.

I didn’t share this with Buck.

Instead I shared I was not done being a pain in the ass.

I did this by stating, “West, you beat up some kids.”

“Right, and how would you want that to go?” he bit out.

“We should have called the police,” I pointed out the obvious.

“One, Clara, they are not kids. They’re adults. Legally and otherwise. They’re old enough to know better, and just sayin’, even if they were goddamn twelve, anyone with a dick should be old enough to know better than to hurt a girl like that.”

Oh boy.

Now he was getting in there.

Because he was so, so right.

And he wasn’t done.

“Two, babe, I know how that would go down. You know how that would go down. You got her clothes and you got those pictures, but some asshole like Armitage gets her on the stand, he talks about her short skirt and how she was seen shitfaced drunk with her face made up too much just weeks ago, and suddenly, no matter what she says, a jury not of her peers thinks in their fucked-up heads she was askin’ for it. So jacked, somehow, they forget she should be able to wear what she wants and cake so much makeup on her face, it’s draggin’ on her skin, and it’s her choice and it don’t say dick. And it sure as fuck doesn’t say, ‘come and rape me.’”

Yes, he was getting in there.

Because he was so, so right.

“Three, woman, I don’t want my daughter to go through that. My estimation, she’d been through enough. She didn’t need to go to the hospital and have them swabbing for DNA and taking photos and cops askin’ her shit. And then the long haul after, bringin’ it up day in and day out, until, by a miracle, seein’ as she’s the daughter of a biker, and those boys got pedigree, she might find justice, but they tear her to shreds before she gets that. So she not only has to find a way to live with what they did to her, she’s gotta live with the memory of a justice system that doles that out to an innocent girl who was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time with the way wrong assholes.”

He shook his head and kept going.

“No, I did not want that for her. So I got justice for her. And I got no clue how a man like that might behave, considering how they’ve already done it. But I can hope the beatdown me and Gear delivered will make them think twice before they ever,” he put his face in mine, “ever do that to another girl.”

“Okay, Buck,” I whispered.

He pulled back a smidge, and was in such a state, one I had to admit he was absolutely entitled to, he carried on.

“Just so you got the full picture, Clara, it is my thought that if you let loose the fathers and brothers and husbands, and equal opportunity and all that shit, mothers and sisters and whoever of girls and women who face what my little girl did last night. Let them loose on the assholes who do it. I bet it’d happen a fuckuva lot less. So, if you asked me, what me and Gear did last night should happen to every fuckin’ one of them.”

If pressed, sometime before last night, and before what Esposito did to Tia, I might be able to come up with a suitable argument to that statement.

But only if pressed.

Buck kept going.

“So last night, what Tatie got was a good woman who looked after her and a father and brother who went out and took care of business. My baby girl faced what she faced last night and came home to safety. That’s what she got. All she got. And now we keep takin’ care of her and she gets to move on.”

“Okay, Buck,” I repeated in a whisper.

He studied me closely and did this awhile before his face relaxed and his arms gave me another squeeze, this one the good kind. At the same time, the tension ebbed out of his body.

Then he muttered, “Good.” He dipped his head, his mouth brushing mine and then he lifted it again and ordered, “Now get some socks on, we’re sittin’ on the deck, havin’ coffee and waitin’ ’til the kids get up for breakfast.”

And I said the only thing I could say at that juncture.

“Okay, Buck.”

20

Waffles

I lifted my legs off Buck’s, set my stocking feet on the deck and straightened out of my chair.

“Where you goin’?” Buck asked, and I looked down at him to see him looking up at me.

I lifted my mug.

“More coffee,” I muttered, then to be polite, my eyes shifted to his mug, and I offered, “Do you need a refill?”

He offered his mug to me, murmuring, “Yeah.”

I took it and started toward the door, but his arm wrapped around my belly, and I stopped.

I looked back down at him to see he was still looking up at me.

“Come here,” he said quietly.

“I am here, West,” I pointed out the obvious.

His eyes moved over my face while he muttered, “No one calls me West. Used to like it when you’d call me West. Today, the way you’re sayin’ my name, not so much.”