AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Betsy put potatoes into the microwave to bake, and before I knew it, the three of us were sitting at her small kitchen table, plates filled, and eating.
“How has work been going? Riven has always been good with his hands.” Betsy took a bite of her potato while I tried to keep my mind out of the gutter, thinking about all the good things Riven could do with his hands and my body. How close we’d gotten earlier didn’t help my lifelong crush on him. I’d gone from wanting him to hating him, and had quickly slipped back into wanting to do dirty things with Riven McKenna.
“It’s going well. He’s good out there. Gets more done most days than Wayne and Smitty combined. They’re good guys, but Riven has a one-track mind. Half the time he doesn’t even stop to eat lunch.”
“Well, that’s not good. He needs to eat. Make sure he eats, Parrish.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Will the two of you quit talking about me like I’m not here? I can take care of myself. I don’t need Parrish doing it for me.”
“There’s nothing wrong with leaning on people. You have a big heart. You want to take care of yourself and everyone else, but you won’t let anyone take care of you.” She pointed her fork at him.
“That’s not true. I don’t give a shit about anyone but you. There’s no one else I want to take care of.”
Betsy reached over and cupped his cheek. “You’ve always carried around so much anger. I hate that for you. I just want you to be happy. I want to see you smile.”
Damned if I didn’t want to see Riven smile too. She was right. He’d always been pissed at the world, but not in the same way as Rex or my dad. They thought the world owed them something. I thought Riven was upset because he felt so damn alone in it, like there wasn’t anything he could do to change it.
“I smile plenty.”
A laugh jumped out of my mouth, and Riven turned his perma-scowl on me. “No one asked you.”
His response only made me laugh harder. Seconds later, Betsy joined in, both of us cackling, while Riven shook his head, mumbled beneath his breath, and maybe, just maybe tried to bite back a grin.
We finished eating without giving Riven too much more of a hard time. Afterward, he and I insisted on doing the dishes. He tried to do them without me, but I wasn’t having that.
“I think I’m going to do some of my knitting. I’m old and go to bed early, so I’ll let you boys get back to whatever it was you were doing before.”
Riven hugged her, and damned if Betsy didn’t wink at me over his shoulder. That was…strange. Did she know Riv was bi?
“Lock the doors, okay?” Riven told her.
“I’ve never had to lock the doors my whole life.”
“I know. Do it for me. I get nervous after seeing some of the stuff I saw inside.”
It was a lie, of course. I was sure he’d seen and heard stuff I couldn’t imagine, but he was worried about my family and what they might do to her.
The second we were back outside, he said, “You can leave now.”
“What if I don’t want to?”
“Damn it, Parrish. I’m not looking for a friend, and if I were, it sure as shit wouldn’t be you. What just happened in there isn’t going to happen again.” He stormed into his room, and I followed, not sure why I was pushing this so much.
When I got inside, Riven had his back to me, shoulders set in stone. I closed the door softly. “Stubborn, fucking hothead,” I tried to tease, but he didn’t respond. At least not right away, and not in the way I had expected him too.
“You checked on her,” he finally said. “You came here and helped her, made sure she was okay. Why would you do that?”
I shrugged, words slow to form in my head. “Because Betsy had always been nice to me. Because she was a kind woman who’d just seen her only grandson, the man she thought the sun rose and set on, get sent to prison. Because it was the right thing to do.”
Riven turned around. “How are you related to them?”
“No one gets to decide who I am other than me, just like no one gets to decide who you are other than you.”
“That’s not true. People out there don’t let it be true.”
“People out there can suck my fucking cock because they don’t matter.” Which was true, but also not. How people saw you and who they decided you were, affected a whole lot of things in your life—how you were treated, jobs you could get, the kind of attention you drew, how easy or hard it was to get ahead or just make ends meet. But that didn’t mean we had to go quietly and couldn’t fight like hell for ourselves.
