Page 308 of Romeo

“How did you...?”

Mama waved away the question. “Southern women don’t arrive unprepared to important occasions, honey.”

Devlyn laughed so hard she had to grab the railing.

Fiona looked overwhelmed, but the smile spreading across her face told me she wasn’t unhappy about any of it. Aunt Marabella tucked Fiona’s arm through hers and started upstairs while explaining that she’d brought several things because trusting men to provide accurate sizing information was how women ended up wearing tablecloths.

Devlyn followed them willingly.

I caught the look she gave me before disappearing upstairs.

She was enjoying this way too fucking much.

The moment the women were gone, Mama turned on me.

I braced myself.

Instead of another lecture, she reached into her purse and pulled out a small velvet box.

Everything inside me went still.

I knew the box.

Had seen it in Mama’s dresser when I was a kid, tucked beneath scarves and old photographs, one of those things C.C. and I had been threatened with death if we touched.

Mama held it out.

“Your father wore this.”

My throat tightened.

I took the box carefully.

Inside was the Dubois ring, heavy gold worn smooth in places by generations of men before me. My father had worn it every day I remembered him. I could still picture his hand wrapped around a coffee cup in our kitchen, the ring catching the morning light while he laughed at something Mama said. After he died, she’d put it away.

I hadn’t seen it since.

“It belonged to his father before him,” Mama said quietly. “And his grandfather before that. Your daddy always said it would be yours when you found the woman you were meant to give your name to.”

For once in my fucking life, I had nothing smart to say.

I lifted my eyes to hers.

Mama’s own were wet.

“Don’t make me cry in a biker bar, Jasper.”

That almost got me.

“You started it.”

“I gave birth to you. I get to start whatever I please.”

Fair.

I closed my fingers around the ring and pulled her into my arms.

Mama held me just as tightly. For a few seconds, the bar and the Bourbon Kings and every threat waiting outside New Orleans disappeared. I remembered my father, the stories I’d spent years laughing at, and a seventeen-year-old girl sitting in Rosewood who had looked at me once and changed every fucking plan I’d ever made.