And last, it was apparent Tate had been burying this for awhile and it was equally apparent he was very done doing that.

"You tried that shit before," Krystal fired back.

"And Ty pulled me back," Tate reminded her.

"He pulled you back because it was getting hot," she reminded him right back and Tate turned his body to her and the way he did made me shrink back a bit because I didn't know him all that well but I knew he was serious and his serious was a bit scary.

"Yeah, Krys, and it was gettin' hot because I was gettin' close."

I felt my eyes get big, so hopeful I was no longer scared of big, handsome, well-built, serious Tate Jackson, I leaned in and whispered, "To what?"

Tate turned to me and answered, "Don't know. Somethin'. Victim was shot but the murder weapon never found, more than one source told me the victim was known to Gene Fuller and Eugene Fuller makes Arnie Fuller look like a fuckin' Boy Scout."

"How was the victim known to Fuller?" I asked.

"Dealer and, word is, Fuller likes his blow," Tate answered.

I sucked in breath and sat back, muttering, "Cokehead?"

Tate nodded.

I looked to the side, feeling overwhelmed by this. It was safe to say I was already overwhelmed by the enormity of what Ty lost but the fact that he lost it to dirty cops and cokeheads, people who were the dregs and Ty was no dreg, made something that was already unimaginably unfair something that was crushingly unfair. He'd had the most precious thing anyone possessed stolen from him. A chunk of his life. And the people who stole it from him did shit to deserve worse than he got. Way worse.

"Lexie?" Krystal called, I pulled in breath through my nose and looked to her.

Then I shared, "I was at the garage telling him my news and Chace and Misty Keaton rolled up in an SUV. He had to stand there and watch them roll up to a garage, free and easy, not having parole officers and still hearing the clang of barred doors closing them into a cell. He had to stand there and watch those fucking two roll right on up. And he says I get her, she's fair game after he does whatever it is he's going to do but I don't know if I can wait. And I don't know what he's going to do or how long it's going to take. So something has to give because there's a bitch in this town who needs a lesson and I'm the teacher."

This got me stares all around.

Then Jim-Billy muttered, "Shit, darlin', remind me not to get on your bad side."

To which I turned my head to him immediately and said, "Don't fuck over my husband, you'll be fine."

He grinned at me then his eyes slid to Tate. Mine did too and they went through a lips twitching Deke and a grinning Krystal to find a smiling so big he looked in danger of roaring with laughter Tate.

"I don't know what there is to smile about," I declared.

"Then, woman, you don't got the same picture in your head as I do," Deke stated then looked at Krystal. "Lexie here takes down Misty, you make sure it happens in the bar. Sell tickets. I don't give a fuck. I'll pay whatever you charge. But I get a front row seat."

I rolled my eyes at Krystal. She shook her head still grinning.

"All right, Lexie, back to business," Tate said and I looked at him. "You say you don't got enough sway. You got it in you to cause a delay in whatever Ty's schemin' to do?"

I thought about it. And what I thought were good thoughts. So I smiled.

"I might be able to arrange that," I told Tate and he smiled back.

"Shit, boy born to bad luck, turns it around, gets smacked down then turns it right the fuck back around again. Shit," Deke muttered and my eyes went to him to see his on Tate. "I'm in with whatever you're gonna do. I'm in for Ty but my payback is knowin' where he found her." Then he jerked his head to me.

"Boy, wake up and look around. Good women everywhere you just gotta stake your claim," Jim-Billy informed him.

"You been outta the game awhile, old timer," Deke returned. "Tits and ass and great hair usually come attached to headaches not loyalty and the good kinda attitude that makes your dick get hard."

This was an unusual compliment but it was a compliment, a compliment coming from Deke no less so I felt the need to throw out a share, "Ty and I met through a drug dealer slash pimp so maybe you should expand your search area."

Deke blinked at me. Krystal audibly stifled a laugh. Jim-Billy guffawed. Tate chuckled.

"No shit?" Deke asked.

"I'm not a prostitute or junkie or anything, past or present. Just had baggage from another relationship and that baggage hooked me up with Ty. He was a pain in my ass but, obviously, now, if I saw him again, I'd kiss him. That is before I shot him. Though Ty really dislikes him so I don't think I'll see him again which is good because I dislike him more than Ty, except of course for the fact he hooked me up with Ty."

"You put honest juice in her diet?" Jim-Billy asked Tate.

"You known Ty since his Momma shot him out?" Tate asked back.

"Yup," Jim-Billy answered.

"You've known him that long, you figure he'd put a rock on the finger of anyone not the likes of Lexie?" Tate continued his mini-interrogation but I felt my heart squeeze.

"Nope," Jim-Billy replied on a toothy grin.

"Then honest juice my ass," Tate muttered and Jim-Billy guffawed again.

But I was feeling warm all over because they approved of me. I'd laid out some vague but possibly damning information and they still approved of me. And they were Ty's friends so this meant a lot.

My purse chimed, I shoved my hand in it, pulled out my phone, flipped it open and saw I had a text from Ty that read, "Rooster seven. Ready six thirty."

Apparently he was still Taciturn Ty by text.

I grinned at the phone. Then I looked at my watch. Then I grabbed my diet, sucked down a huge swallow, fished out the cherries, plucked them off their stems, ate them and sucked down another swallow.

Then I jumped off my stool and announced, "Gotta go gussy up for the celebration. I'll see you all later?"

"Yeah, Lexie, congratulations," Tate said.

"Later," Deke said.

"Have fun tonight, darlin'," Jim-Billy said.

"I'll walk you to your car," Krystal scarily said while rounding the end of the bar.

I couldn't see a way to avoid a somewhat-frightening and I still wasn't certain what to think about her Krystal walking me to my car so I said my final farewells and headed out with Krystal at my side. She didn't speak and I didn't either. But I did stop at the driver's side of the Charger and looked down at her.

She was inspecting my car.

"Sweet ride," she approved.

Well, that was a good start.

"Thanks."

Her eyes came up to me and her voice was soft when she spoke. "I see you intend to take care of our boy. Makes me feel better. Way things were at your party, couldn't tell and didn't like that."

Maybe she had honest juice before I arrived. Or maybe she was just the kind of person who put it out there.

"We had a... thing," I told her quietly.

"Yeah, you'll have more what he went through. Don't give up on him. There's about two men I'd say this about, Tate is one, Ty is the other and I'm married to Bubba, love him to death, he's pulled his shit together and I'm glad but I wouldn't say this even about him but Ty's worth not givin' up. You get him to the other side, you won't regret it."

"I won't give up on him," I whispered, deciding I liked Krystal.

She nodded and held my eyes.

Then she said softly, "Be smart. You stick your neck out, the bunch you're goin' up against, they'll whack your head clean off." I sucked in breath but she didn't quit talking. "You know that, what they did to your man. A man's gotta do what he's gotta do. Tate and Deke wadin' into that shit, don't got a good feelin'. Ty bein' pissed and wantin' to do somethin' about it, I get. I definitely get that. Don't got a good feelin' about that either. But men gotta do what they gotta do and we women got two things we can do, stand by their side or be smart enough to do what you just did and find men who know what they're doin' to take their man's back. Now, you set that ball rollin'," she jerked her head back to the bar, "you see to your man and keep your head down. Ty feels about you like you feel about him, he didn't survive that nightmare to come out the other side and watch his woman enduring her own. Keep yourself safe, if not for you, then for him. Get me?"

I nodded. I got her.

She nodded back, muttered, "Make him happy," then turned and walked back to the bar. She stopped at the door and called, "By the way, you got grease stains on the back of your shirt."

Then she shot me a knowing grin, turned, threw open the door and entered the bar.

I stared at the door long after she disappeared behind it.

Then I got in my Charger and drove home.

Ty You're far and away the most beautiful man I've met...

The words played in his head once again as he hit the garage door opener. They'd been playing in his head since Lexie said them. Over and over. So often, they were all that was on his mind. So often, Keaton and Misty were long gone before he thought of them again. He'd forgotten they were even there.

You're far and away the most beautiful man I've met...

Fuck him but he liked that she thought that.

He rolled the Snake in, shut her down, grabbed his workout bag from the passenger seat and hauled his ass out. He dumped the bag in the utility room as he moved through it. She'd sort his shit and he wouldn't have to ask. He knew it. He gave her diamonds and expensive shoes. She gave him everything else and she gave it in a way that he knew he didn't have to give her diamonds and expensive shoes to get it.

He walked up the stairs, rounded the railing and stopped dead.

"In the middle of something, baby," she muttered, "kiss you in a minute."

She was sitting at a stool at the island, legs crossed, one heel to the bar on the stool, both legs shoved to the side, torso hunched over, head bent, even though he had her back he knew she was concentrating on what she was doing and he understood this not just because of her distracted words but also her posture.

She was wearing a pair of white slacks, wide leg, riding low, a wide slash of skin exposed below her top and above the waistband of her pants. A wide slash that was an invitation that, knowing Lexie, she had no idea she was giving. A wide slash that invited her man to shove his hand down her pants and cup her sweet ass, an invitation he decided he was going to find time that night to accept.

Her top was a light gray, satin camisole, loose-fitting and gathered at her waist, tied at the side in a big, droopy, satin bow. Her hair was in a sleek fall down her back. A pair of black, high, spike-heeled sandals had been tossed on the floor by the side of the island; a small, black purse was resting on the counter on top of it.

Also on the counter were a bunch of gray and black pitchers that, even as a man, he had to admit were the shit. They looked good on the black granite countertop. His eyes moved from them and around taking things in. Shit in the window sill over the sink that wasn't there when he left that morning, her snow globe, a photo. His eyes scanned. A wide bowl that matched the pitchers filled with fruit by the fridge. His eyes kept moving and he saw their wedding photo in a silver frame on the mantel.

Seeing that photo, he felt that sharp thing pierce through the left side of his chest again and, at the exquisite pain, that area tensed and stayed that way.

His mother didn't frame photos. She didn't set out souvenirs to remind them of good times had during family vacations or outings. Their family didn't take vacations. They didn't have outings. And they didn't have happy memories to display.

But it was more than that. His mother spent her energy bitching and pissed at the world. She did not spend it making a home, definitely not for a husband she hated but stayed with for the sole purpose, Ty figured, of torturing him. But also not even for her children who she frequently forgot she had.

Therefore, Ty Walker never had a home. Even the house he bought and started to fill with shit he liked he didn't try to make a home firstly because he was a man and secondly because, never having one, it didn't cross his mind.

Pitchers, a bowl, a snow globe and some frames and Lexie did it. She needed nothing else. No flowers for the deck. No other touches. He'd be good with what she'd already done. But he also knew, what they started kept going, she'd fill his house with shit that made it a home.

He moved toward her, got close to her back, pulled her soft hair off her shoulder and bent low to kiss the point of her shoulder then moved his mouth to her ear.

"My mama's been busy," he muttered there then his eyes moved to the counter where he was going to toss his keys and he froze solid.

"Yeah," she mumbled distractedly but he barely heard her.

That was because on the counter was a scattering of dissected roses and he knew by their color they were from her wedding bouquet. She had a square piece of glass in one hand, in the other she had a weird gun that she was using to edge the glass with some melted metal the color of silver. He noticed that it wasn't one piece of glass but two and between them she'd pressed petals from the roses in the shape of a heart. They were overlapping thickly, both colors used, the pattern random, pieces of petal arranged in other places in the glass that looked arbitrary but somehow pointed to and highlighted the heart. He wasn't a hearts and flowers guy but he'd seen shit like that sold in stores and the way she made what she'd made was far from amateur.

"There," she declared, setting the gun aside on a ragged dishtowel. She held the glass up cautiously between thumb and forefinger, her torso straightening and she asked, "What do you think?"

Walker had no response, he just stared at it.

"Is it too cutesy?" she asked and he noted out of the corner of his eyes her head had turned and he felt her gaze on him but he couldn't tear his eyes from the heart. "I mean a heart... that isn't me. It also isn't you. But I was thinking I could etch some squiggles and shit in the glass at the corners and on the inside of the heart I could write, 'Ty and Lexie, Las Vegas,' and maybe the date of our wedding. I'll solder a hanger on top. I got a blush colored ribbon and a sucker thing for the window and I'll hang it in the window over the kitchen sink." She stopped talking and when he still made no reply, she muttered, "Maybe that's too much. Not sure a heart made of rose petals goes with the black counters and cream cabinets of your kitchen..."

She was talking but he wasn't hearing her.

He was thinking, Ty and Lexie.

That sharp thing again pierced the left side of his chest.

"Your kitchen," he found his mouth saying.

"What?" she asked quietly and his eyes moved from her hand to hers.

"Your kitchen, babe. It's your kitchen; you made that so it works."

He watched surprise flare in her eyes then he watched her beautiful face grow soft and he liked both but he liked the second better.

"Those are from your bouquet," he noted quietly and she nodded.

Then she admitted, "I was pissed at you but not pissed enough not to keep a few of the roses." She paused then, "As in, eight."

He felt the tightness in the left side of chest ease.

Then he wrapped his fingers around the side of her neck and slid them up and back so they were in her hair, hair he'd felt gliding over his skin, hair he felt all around while she'd worked his cock. Hair that felt better during those times then he imagined it would and he imagined it would feel really fucking good.

Fuck, but he loved her hair.

He didn't tell her that. He also didn't tell her that the thing she made was beautiful and not just because of what it was, what it said and that she'd made it with flowers from her bouquet.