Page 23 of Mimosa (Murphy's Pub #2)

A week after Sonny moved into the little cottage house behind the Rodriguez family, Mims was at the grocery store, picking out some fruits and vegetables to bring to Sonny, who couldn’t leave to shop for himself.

There was the most perfect apple, and he picked it up to check for bruises, finding none. He’d just set it in the bag with the other apples when someone came up behind him and whispered roughly, “I know you know where he is.”

Mims spun around so quickly, he lost the bag and apples fell to the floor. It was Franklyn.

“What…what are you talking about?”

“You all at that bar think you’re so slick, but you’re not half as smart as I am. I know you know where he is. I know you know all about us, too. The question is, who will break first? You, Sonny, or us.”

Mims was shaking, but not in fear. Mims was ravenously angry and the sound of Franklyn’s voice made him more so.

“Get away from me. I know all about you, yeah. You and the rest of them. You’re a bunch of scumbags.”

Franklyn smiled, but his eyes only showed his fury. “You’ll all see who will come out on top of this.”

“Run off and get another warrant from the judge in your pocket, Franklyn.”

For the briefest of seconds, his smile faded, and Mims saw genuine fear in his eyes.

“Mims, you okay?” he heard from across the apples. He turned to see Taran.

“Yeah. I’m fine, Agent. I’m just fine.”

He left the rest of the items in the cart and left with Taran, who got him into his car and started to the pub. “What was that all about?”

“Wanted to tell me he knows about us knowing about the BBC. He also figured out we know where Sonny is, but I think if he knew where Sonny was, he’d have already gone there.”

“No more going to see him, Mims. It’s too risky. We don’t know how many they have, who they are, and who might be watching you.”

Mims’s heart broke, but he stiffened he neck and said, “For Sonny’s life, I’ll stay away from him, but, Taran, I want to get them. I’m done with this. Done!”

“I am too. If they know about Cosmo and me, they’ll hurt one of us to get to the other. It’s how they work.”

“So Eazy needs to go, too, with Tally.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I think so.”

“Should we close the pub?”

Taran shook his head. “No. Then they win.

Mims would never let them win.

For the next few weeks, Mims and Sonny spoke on the phone daily and could see one another now and then, if someone intervened and helped get them both to a motel.

Mostly, however, Mims spent the time he couldn’t with Sonny at his parent’s house.

His father was failing fast, and though he never apologized, he and Mims seemed to have come to a simple, silent peace. Mims sat next to his father’s bed and read to him from the newspapers he still had delivered every day and he’d listen until the pain became too much and his mother came in to give him more of his morphine.

The day he passed, Mims was lost. He had finally gotten his family back, only to lose his father again.

All his friends from the pub attended the funeral, and Mims held his sister for a long time in the cemetery. His heart was broken. Not only had he lost his father, but it felt as if he’d lost his boyfriend too. It had been two weeks since they’d seen one another, and with the death and funeral arrangement, even their phone conversations had suffered.

That was why, when Cosmo dropped him at the Rodriguez house, after circling the same six blocks for more than half an hour, assuring they weren’t followed, he ran into the cottage and into Sonny’s arms, crying until he was hoarse and dizzy.

On the comfortable sofa in the small living room of the cottage, Sonny held him through that night, not speaking, not telling him to stop crying. He was simply there, a steady rock for Mims.

Mims fell asleep there, and woke with a blanket over him and the smell of coffee in the air.

“Sonny?”

Sonny appeared over the back of the sofa. “Hi, sweetheart. Hungry?”

“Actually, yeah, starving.”

“I made some pancakes, eggs and sausage. Come to the kitchen after you shower.”

“I don’t have clothes,” he whined.

“Borrow something of mine,” Sonny called, always fixing every problem.

After the long, hot shower and a change into sweats and a T-shirt, Mims made it to the kitchen, sitting gently at the table.

“How are you this morning?”

“Cried out. Sad. I don’t even know.”

“Expected. I’ve lost a dad. It’s…it hurts. A lot.”

“But if he’d never gotten sick, I’d probably never have went to see him. So…it’s…weird.”

“You’re glad of it, but furious you had to lose him just when you got him back,” he said as he set a plate full of food in front of Mims.

“Exactly. How am I ever going to wrap my head around that?”

Sonny set his own plate down as he joined Mims at the table. “You won’t. Sorry to tell you that, but the questions never get answered. The wrongs don’t right and the dark doesn’t get lit. At least there. Waiting for any of those things to happen, you’re wasting your time. What you need to do is tackle the things you can do something about.”

“That’s why you joined the force.”

“Exactly.”

Mims thought about it, and all he could think of was to become a doctor. “Med school, yeah, me? That’s hilarious.”

“Why?”

Mims stared at him, thinking he was being teased. “That’s not nice.”

Pouring glistening syrup on his pancakes, Sonny said, “Don’t then, but you could do it. Just because you don’t have faith in yourself, don’t act like it’s me who has no faith in you.”

“You’re being serious?”

The syrup got set down hard as Sonny glared at him angrily. “Yes, I’m being fucking serious. What are you going to do all your life, Mims? Steal? Hack? That’s no life goal.”

“I was going to propose to you and be a kept husband,” he said, laughing.

“Mims, you don’t have the confidence of a flea. Don’t do a fucking thing, it’s fine with me, but you could do anything you set your mind to.” Sonny lost his anger and held Mims’s hand. “Man, don’t you know how amazing you are? You calmed this blood lust in me for all things corrupt. Now instead of living and breathing anger, I’m hiding out, waiting for the day I can bust those guys, but not for revenge. It’s so I can walk down the street holding your hand. Loving you without having to worry.”

“I did that?”

“Yeah. You did. You’re the world to me now. And I want my world to be the best it can be.”

“And…and you being a cop and me being on the other side of that line, it’s not going to work, is it?”

“No. It’s not. We’ll end up resenting each other. Help people. Do good things. Marry me, when all this is over.”

Blinking, he couldn’t believe his ears. “Marry you?”

“There’s a ring in the fucking pancake,” he teased, then shook his head. “No, just kidding, but I do want us to talk about that. Soon.”

Tears fell onto his plate, but he was suddenly anything except hungry. “Sonny…I’d love that. A lot has to happen first though.”

“I know. This isn’t me whisking you off to Vegas, but…eventually, when all this crap is done, I want to be with you, all the time.”

“Having pancakes and arguing.”

Sonny laughed. “Yeah. Having pancakes and arguing. Exactly.”

“Then, yes. I’ll spend my life with you, having pancakes, arguing, but fucking sometimes too.”

“Definitely fucking.”

The End-book two