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Eddie’s voice was such a quick lash, Lavonne jumped when he ordered, “Put that down.”
She squinted harder at Eddie, deciding something, then she made the wrong decision.
“You get his lazy ass outta my house, I’ll put this down.”
He heard the door open behind him but didn’t turn to it, knowing it was Lee, since he called him on his way over. Instead, he stalked across the room and wrenched the weapon from the woman’s hand.
“Hey!” she shouted, the cigarette hovering on her lower lip, but either by a miracle or through practice, it held.
“What’s goin’ on?” he heard Lee ask behind him.
“This isn’t a toy,” Eddie snarled at Lavonne.
She plucked the smoke out of her mouth and retorted, “I know it’s not a toy. I also know I want his good-for-nothin’ ass out of my house, and he ain’t goin’.”
“It’s my house too!” Bear yelled.
Lavonne leaned to the side to see around Eddie and asked her husband, “Oh yeah? When’s the last time you put money in the bank to pay the mortgage? Hunh? When’s the last time you even sat your lazy ass down to write out the check to pay the mortgage?Hunh?”
Bear flung an arm toward Ray. “I gotta look after my boy here.”
Ray—who’d had a clean bill of health delivered to him at his last doctor’s visit, but who had been putting a fair amount of effort into getting on with his life for weeks, doing this like he was a man on a mission, something Eddie suspected happened when someone stabbed you repeatedly, shot you and threw you from a moving vehicle so your daughter could deal with the literal bloody mess you’d made of your life—took a step back, put his hands up again and said, “I’m not in this.”
“No, you’re not,” Lavonne agreed. “’Cause you’re bein’ good. Goin’ to meetin’s. Got yourself a job. Givin’ me money I didn’t even ask for to cover that food I put in your belly and that bed you sleep in. Gettin’ your shit together. You know who’s not gettin’ their shit together?” She poked her finger at Bear but turned accusing eyes to Eddie. “It packs a bigger punch when I do that with my .44.”
“God, I missed home,” Lottie remarked fondly, and when Eddie glanced at her, he saw she said it while stroking the brush on a nail and not looking up from her task. “So glad to be back.”
“And we sure are glad to have you back, hon,” Lavonne said fondly.
Fuck him.
Eddie turned his attention to Jet.
She bit her lip and shrugged her shoulders.
“Eddie already disarmed her, took the fun out of it, if you ask me,” Tex put in, aiming this at Lee. “So you’re overkill.”
Lee locked eyes with Eddie, and Eddie knew his friend felt his pain.
“Eddie,” Nancy said quietly.
He twisted at the waist to look at Jet’s mom.
With what he saw, he twisted back and said to Bear, “You need to find somewhere else to sleep tonight.”
“Huh,” Lavonne grunted victoriously.
“I ain’t goin’,” Bear declared stubbornly.
That was when Tex lost interest in his chicken wings. He tossed some picked-clean bones on a heart-shaped plate Lavonne had set out for them on the coffee table and stood to his very tall, massively bulky height.
He leveled his gaze on Bear and said, “Nancy wants you gone ’cause Lavonne wants you gone, which means you’re gone, turkey.”
“I barely evenknowyou. You’re not gonna tell me what to do in my own damned house,” Bear shot back.
That was when Tex lifted one long, beefy leg and stepped over the coffee table like it was a small fallen branch.
Bear was smart enough to back up, but not smart enough, because he didn’t back far enough, like, out the door.
