Page 105 of At The End Of The Day

“You’re okay. Tiny still loves you. She don’t think no less of you. You’re still her fucking hero, man.”

“You are, Vinny. I swear, this changes nothing.”

His head turned to gradually lower his attention to the phone. His voice hitching, he asked, “It don’t?”

“Of course, not, silly.”

“Hey,” bitch chimed in. “Lemme ask you something. When was the last time you kicked someone’s ass?”

Both of us frowned, confused at the question.

“What?”

“Answer the question. When?”

“I don’t fucking know? Right before we left for Georgia, I reckon.”

“For what?”

“Bitch, what’s the—”

“Shut up a sec, Dash. Trust the process. Why and who?”

So caught off guard by the question, his shakes started to slow, the fear fading to irritation. “You ask too many goddamn questions.”

“So, I’ve been told. Answer.”

He huffed and shrugged. “I dunno. Some dude owed us money and didn’t wanna pay.”

“So, you beat the shit outta him, right?”

“Of course. No one fucks us over.”

“Do I need to guess if he went to the hospital?”

“I think he did when he regained consciousness.”

“Okay. You’ve fucked Dash.”

All three of us choked on an inhale, me and Vincent bristling.

“Dash, I’m pretty sure you’ve fucked Vin by now. After all them questions that day, there’s no doubt you’ve fucked him.”

I coughed and tugged at my ear, dancing foot to foot. Well, this was awkward.

“Because you traded pussy for ass, does that make you any less capable of knocking people out or cracking their kneecaps with pipes?”

By this point, I didn’t even get upset at the jab, knowing Tyler held no hard feelings for what I did to him when he was a kid. I simply stared at Vincent’s profile with a half-smile and shook my head. Yeah, I was definitely starting to really like the bitch.

“You’re both still pretty fucking scary and more than capable of putting people in their places. The body you lay down next to every night in bed don’t change shit. Vin, you are still the new leader of the Serpents, and you are still just as ruthless as you was on that mountain,” he finished with a sternness.

Completely composed, the sweat drying, he huffed, his nostrils flaring a bit. His fingers tapping the countertop, he tore his attention from the phone to look at me with a small smile of his own.

“So, now that that’s out of the way, what’s this about them being cousins now?”

I chuckled and curled my arm around his side to his back, petting up and down. “I was trying to tell acorn that Vin was going to be her daddy now, too, and she said it was weird because he was the Eddie’s uncle, and then one thing led to another and boom, they’re cousins.”

“Well, she ain’t wrong. I mean, technically. You guys gotta get married to make it official, though,” he stated.