Page 44 of Not So Goode

She was enthralled. “Sounds magical.”

I nodded. “It was. Best years of my life.”

Her brow pinched. “And then?”

I shrugged. “Ehh, you don’t wanna hear the ‘and then,” babe, ain’t a lot of fun in the tellin’ of that old misery.”

“Try me.”

I flicked off the heat, plated the sandwiches, and sat next to her on the couch, our thighs touching. I handed her a can of sparkling water I’d grabbed while cooking, and a pair of ibuprofen. We ate in silence—except for Charlie’s groans of delight.

Each one of which shot straight to my cock like lightning. To get my mind on another track I forced myself to think about Sister Maria, the old-as-dirt nun I’d lived with between Mom and Dad dying and then going to live with my grandparents; she was wrinkled and had a sour horse-face, like a mule that had swallowed a lemon. Ugly as anything but still, to this day, the quietest, most patient, most compassionate human being I’d ever met.

Sister Maria faded my arousal enough that I could think properly.

“So. I was ten, near eleven when Mom and Dad died.”

“Motorcycle accident?”

I paused, staring my sandwich. “Uh, no. They got tangled up in a big ol’ mess with a rival MC.” I bit, chewed, swallowed. Sighed. “They were shot.”

She flinched. “Oh. Wow. Um…wow. I’m so sorry.”

“Going on twenty years ago, now.” I smiled at her. “At the time my grandparents were off somewhere, and I had nowhere to go. None of the others from the club, those who survived that fuckin’ mess of a shootout, wanted me. Not full time, at least. So I lived at a little convent down in Monterrey, with an old nun named Sister Maria.”

She was staring at me. Not quite believing. “By Monterrey, you mean the one in Mexico.”

I nodded. “See, the thing is, I was born in a bathtub just this side of the Mexican-American border, outside El Paso. In a motel, during a shootout. Legally, I’m a naturalized American citizen. I have a driver’s license and everything. But back then; I was more than half wild. When shit got hot for Mom and Dad up here in the States, they’d head south. Spend time with River Dog and Mammy while things cooled off. I never went to school. Didn’t get immunized for anything till I was a teenager. I was just this crazy-ass outlaw kid, spoke a pidgin mix of Western Apache, Spanish, and English.”

“Do you still know those other languages?”

I nodded. “Sure. Mom and Dad both spoke Western Apache to each other almost exclusively, and Mammy and River Dog—Dad’s parents—spoke a mix of that and Spanish. I didn’t start using English all the time till I was sixteen. Had to sort of learn it from scratch.”

She shook her head. “You had a crazy childhood, didn’t you?”

I chuckled. “You got no clue, darlin’.”

“Say something in Apache.”

“I wish you were sober, so I could get you naked and make you scream my name.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I think you’re beautiful.”

She frowned. “Bullshit.”

I snorted. “How do you know?”

She leaned close. “I have a bullshit detector like nobody’s business. You said something dirty, didn’t you?”

I shrugged. “It amounts to what I told you.”

“It does not. Tell me what you said.”

I stared at her. I didn’t dare tell her. So I repeated what I’d said, but in Spanish.

“I don’t speak Spanish either.” She leaned her shoulder against mine. “Tell me what you said, Crow. I won’t be mad, no matter what it was.”