Page 169 of Rebellious

She snorted and sipped her coffee. “I love my daughter, Mortician. Dearly. I don’t appreciate any motherfucker fucking over her.”

“Especially me, her husband.”

“You know what’s so fucked up? You know why I’m so fucking angry with me and you?”

“Because you trusted me and accepted me as part of your family.”

“That isn’t it at all,” she said in a hard voice. “It’s Bailey. What the fuck she did and said to you. I was so fucking furious with her.”

“She told you?”

“Yeah, that bitch told me she lost her fucking mind. My words, not hers. If that cow called the police on you in that town with you in your cut, it could’ve ended badly for you.”

In more ways than one. “Neither that or anything she told me excuse what I did.”

“It doesn’t, but Bailey had absolutely no fucking reason to spout all that shit. You held her down for years. Spoiled the fuck out of her. Loved the fuck out of her and she turned against you. I couldn’t believe my fucking ears. That’s why I’m angry with your motherfucking ass. Because of the position you’ve put me in. I’m angry with myself for understanding why you did it. I don’t want to fucking understand. That makes me a fucking hypocrite. Cheating is the worst thing you can do, Mortician.” She pounded her fist on the table. “The fucking worst. Do you understand me?”

Unable to say anything else, he nodded.

“If Knox did it to me, there would be nothing he could say to make me forgive him. Nothing Joan or Hal could tell me. We’d be done.”

He swallowed.

“But I hate what Bailey did to you. Said to you. How she hurt you.” Tears lurked in her eyes, but Roxanne was tough. Even if she broke down, it wouldn’t be in front of him. “Do you want to be with Kendall?”

“Prez asked me the same thing.”

“That’s not a fucking answer. I guess he smelled your goddamn cologne, too.”

“Yeah.”

“Answer me, goddamn it,” she growled.

“No, but I can’t…I’m divorcing Bailey…”

“No, you aren’t. I think you still love that heifer. And she loves you.”

“Did she say that?” Despite everything, hope unfurled inside him. “When she talked to you?”

Lowering her lashes, Roxanne shook her head. “No.”

His gut twisted. “She still hate me then?”

“That’s the way she started off. Along with not to tell you anything about her or she’d take away my authorization, too.”

“Then how the fuck you think she still love me?”

“Because she does. She went from saying she loved you on the rare occasions we talked to hating you after Johnnie got to her. I hate that motherfucker.”

“You and the whole goddamn world. He got all this fucking armor because of Prez. No matter what he say, he just can’t bring himself to kill Johnnie.”

“He doesn’t have Outlaw armor. It’s Kendall.”

“If that’s true, she leaving that motherfucker. I can fuck him up.”

“You know she doesn’t want him dead.”

“Why? All the fuck he ever do is hurt her. I can’t see how she still love him. She deserve better.”