Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 82060 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82060 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
It was ours.
In that time, Ally called to confirm that Jeffrey was indeed hiding assets, not extorting them from the firm, and advised that was the last she’d report to me about the situation. She was going to “take care of it,” and she felt the less I knew, the better.
She said that, considering it was a high probability that the only people who knew about it were me, Jeffrey and our network administrator, who was the one who probably mislaid the file on my desk, I should act like handing it over to Jeffrey was the last I’d thought about it. Especially since his shit was soon to hit the fan.
I thought this was good advice, so I took it and asked her to send me an invoice for her time.
“Chickie, Rock Chicks get my services for free,” was her response before she hung up on me.
I wondered how often the Rock Chicks needed investigative services, then decided I didn’t want to know.
Toni met with Tod and Stevie for martinis and wedding discussion, and I let them have at it…for the preliminaries. I’d butt in as soon as things heated up (that being, when Darius put a ring on my finger).
I was busy with work, catching up with my man, solidifying my family, and picking and choosing from the whirlwind of invitations that swirled around the Rock Chicks (we’d all had brunch this past Saturday, I’d been to Daisy’s castle for a facial with Ava and Roxie (and it was a castle, in the middle of Englewood, Colorado, for goodness sake, complete with moat), we’d pimped ourselves out and gone to watch Tod perform (he was one of Denver’s premier drag queens) the Saturday before (Lena getting initiated that night, Toni was already there when I got there), and select Rock Chicks and Hot Bunch were always at Liam’s games, even the away ones, with Indy and Lee, Jet and Eddie coming to every one of them).
And in quiet times, in fits and starts, Darius shared with me about his years away from us.
He did this like he was confessing, and I couldn’t say it was fun to hear, nor could I say he shared it all, or ever would.
What I knew from how he told it was that, even if Shirleen was always there, throughout that time, he felt very alone and very lost, and the shame he carried was extreme.
However, he explained that shame was tempered by an epiphany of redemption he felt when he’d saved Ally from certain dangers that, if she’d survived them, would haunt her for the rest of her life.
He didn’t seem to realize he was on the periphery, helping where he could, having the Rock Chicks’ backs through all their trials and tribulations. Not to mention, he did, indeed, work with Eddie on keeping the underbelly of Denver organized and controlled, weeding out “players” who didn’t know the game and made things messy so people who didn’t choose that life wouldn’t get caught in the crossfire. On top of that, he often worked on the sly with Lee on jobs he was doing.
But it was Ally’s situation that he felt washed him clean.
Which meant he felt he was finally free to come to me.
I could see that. Lee was his brother, so Ally was his sister. It didn’t happen, thank the Good Lord, but he was willing to sacrifice his life for hers.
He almost did.
And she came away from it unscathed, while he had puckered scars in the skin of both of his thighs, and jagged ones on the left side of his head under his twists and up his right side.
These, I could tell, he carried like badges of pride. And although I didn’t like them all that much (say, at all), for Darius, they were the marks that signified the life he felt he had to live, but had always hated, was a life that was no longer his.
He still carried some baggage from that, and as much as it hurt my heart, he was that man, so he always would.
But when he’d saved Ally, the weight had grown a whole lot less heavy.
As for me, I’d been to the grocery store only twice since I moved in with Darius, and I didn’t carry the bags in from the car.
I paid my mortgage, but Darius switched the utilities at my old house to his name (though he’d soon lose those expenditures when our tenants moved in). He paid all the other bills and said we’d discuss it “later” how I would contribute. And I knew the way he said this that “later” would never happen. I also knew how important it was for him to take care of us, so I determined to find my ways to spoil him (evening out our closet was part of that), and I’d let him.