Tight Fittin' Jeans Ch. 07

"What about an anonymous email or letter? I know that Gerald and Stephen are dead now, but still, there must be others. Maybe even higher up. And if these people did kill Stephen and Gerald then..."

"Then, he was right. They will come for you and our daughter. They may assume you know where the money is or even have it with you. Or at the very least want to clean up those loose ends."

He saw the shock of realization dawning in her blue eyes. He understood it was the same feeling he had been struggling with for hours — the recognition of the depths and breadths of their troubles.

"Maybe Callie is right. Perhaps we should run. I don't want to bring our troubles to you. I don't want anything happening to you," she was trembling, and those tears were falling again.

"Maybe I am a horrible person, one of those disgusting cheating wives. My husband of almost twenty years is dead. And all I am worried about is the man I spent one night with. What's wrong with me?"

He drew her back into the cocoon of his arms and pressed a tender kiss to the top of her head. "I don't know, darlin.' I've been struggling with these fucked up feelings of anger and jealousy all night. Like the man stole not just all that money, but all those years from us. Time we could have had as a family."

"And I know that ain't right. My grandparents drug me to their little Foursquare church often enough that I know adultery makes the same list as killing and stealing. So..."

"Why doesn't it feel wrong?" They said practically in unison.

She shook her head as she stared up at the blanket of stars. "I have been asking myself that same question for fifteen years. When my parents cheated on one another, not even bothering to try and hide it, one trying to outdo the other, Aunt Rose always told me, 'Two wrongs don't make a right.'"

"But every time I look at her, at our daughter, I think that this time it did. Lots of people, even people we loved and admired, might call that night a sin. Condemn us and look down their noses on us."

"But that night was the only thing that has gotten me through the last fifteen years. Even before yesterday, before I knew that she was your child, and not Geralds, I carried the memories of that night in my heart. As the one time that I tasted true happiness."

"I know how you feel. All I can think is that if loving you was wrong, then I don't want to be right, Rose. But that does not help us right now. It does not make our little girl feel less guilty for things that she rightly said to the bastard she believes is her father. It doesn't erase the confusion and guilt that either of us is feeling. And it sure doesn't keep you both safe," he responded.

"Are we safe here, Chad? Is this the best plan, like Gerald said? Or should I just take the money and run? I know that I said I wanted to make my own choices about what was best for us from now on. But right now, I'm confused and tired and a million other things. I'm not asking you to tell me what to do. I am asking you for the truth."

He sighed, "I don't have that to give you. I don't know whether ya'll are safe here or not. Because I don't know how much we can trust that man. Yes, he seemed sincere. Like he truly did want to do what was right by us all."

"But what if he had second thoughts after he left here? Or what if he did not have time to erase and dismantle the GPS in that rental before he died? What if he met with someone first? You know, some times a car accident can mask other injuries."

"So, what do we do?"

"I've called in a favor. I called an old buddy of mine from the Marines. Reb's some kind of security expert now. Runs his own company and all. Before you get worried, I didn't tell Reb anything specific."

"But he's the best with security, all that technology stuff I never understood. He's just started working at a casino a couple of hours from here. I called and asked him about installing a security system here. He said he couldn't come himself, but he told me what to get and where. Even recommended someone to install it, if I run into any trouble myself."

She shook her head, "I don't want anyone seeing us. Especially not now. Hell, they even showed Callie's school photo on cable news. Everyone in this country, hell, probably most of the world, is looking for us."

He heard the panic building in her voice. "I order the stuff online already. It should be here tomorrow or the next day. I'll do my best to set it up myself. Reb said to call him if I ran into trouble, and he'd try to talk me through it."

"But if we do need someone to come out and install the damned thing, it is worth the risk. Ya'll will stay out of sight. I told Reb that I have some fancy stud coming to breed the mares. But that his owner won't let me until I tighten the security around here. That should make sense."

"Yes, but what if they come in the house? What if someone sees us?"

He nodded, "We'll need to set things up in the house, too, darlin.' But I have a place that the two of you can hide for a few hours. A place that no one even knows about."

"But isn't moving us dangerous too?"

"Don't worry. You won't be going far. You won't even be leaving the ranch. My grandfather fought in World War II. He was in the Marines, the Pacific theatre mostly. Iwo Jima, the Philippines, I don't even know where all. He never talked about it much. But I know that one of the places he served was Japan after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Whatever he saw, it affected him for the rest of his life."

"When he came back here after the war, one of the things he did was build a bunker. Me and my cousins used to play there as kids when he visited. But Grandpa Jake never told anyone except family about the thing."

He pointed to the tree line just a couple of hundred yards from the house, "It's hidden over there. The steel door is always covered in leaves and limbs and shit. I'll show ya'll tomorrow. If anything ever happens, I want ya'll to go there. Stay inside and don't come out. Short of bringing in backhoes and digging up something the size of a small trailer, that door is the only way in and it locks from the inside."

She nodded and stepped into his embrace, "But that is tomorrow. I want to talk about tonight."

In the bit of his stomach, Chad knew what her next words would be. But he had no fucking idea what his answer should be. He knew that she was vulnerable right now. And he never had taken advantage of any woman. He sure as hell did not want to begin now - with her of all people.

But the tightness in his jeans and the tingling at the base of his spine, hell his whole body screamed for him to take what was his. To stake his claim on her body, and this time, her heart.

He started to shake his head. He opened his mouth to respond. But those soft fingers covered his lips, and he found himself drawing them into his mouth, sucking them sweetly.

"Last night, you told me that it would be my choice, Chad. I won't deny that I am confused about a lot of things right now. But one thing I do know, maybe the only thing I know besides that I'll do whatever it takes to keep Grace safe, is that I want you. I have needed you for fifteen years. You are the only fantasy I ever..."

The night was incredibly dark, the light from the house did not reach this far, but he knew she was blushing. And he knew exactly what she was admitting. His heart soared at her words, ...and the ones that she left hanging.

"Chad, answer me this. If you do the 'right' thing, if you push me away tonight, out of some misplaced sense of honor, aren't you just as bad as Daddy or Gerald? Isn't what you're really telling me is that I can't be trusted to make my own decisions?"

Her words floored him. Because of the truth they held. That was precisely what he would be doing. The one thing he had sworn he would not do. Was he using that as an excuse to justify what he had wanted to do since the moment she stepped out of the SUV? Maybe. But did it matter? Tonight, tomorrow, next week, next month, or a year from now, they were meant to be together. And he would be a damned fool to look this gift horse in the mouth.

He nodded and took her hand, leading her inside, up the stairs, past his grandmother's old sewing room, to the door at the end of the hallway. That room had been his grandparents. Maybe his grandmother would, as she said, condemn what was about to happen there as a sin.

But twenty years spent in places that his grandmother had never heard of, seeing things that perhaps even his grandfather could never understand, had taught Chad that this world was not that simple. There were no heroes and villains. No black and white. This whole world, all the countries, and people in it were both good and evil. A bit of both inside us all.

And at that moment he found his answer. He understood what the man had meant when he said, "I cared, as much as I could." It might not make everything the man had done to them right, but holding onto that anger and bitterness for all the years Gerald McBride had stolen from them would only taint the future.

Their future that began on the other side of that door. And McBride, his grandparents, Aunt Rose, or anyone fucking else had no place in their bedroom. Just the two of them. Perfectly imperfect human beings loving one another through the good and the bad. That was the only truth to be found in this fucked up world, and Buford 'Chad' Wilson was not about to let anything stop him from grabbing onto it. And this time, he was fucking holding on tight. No matter what happened.