Kristen Ashley - Jagged

Just booze, food, good friends, good music, and good times.

Easy.

Reece watched and felt his lips curve up as he did so when Nina said something that made Zara laugh. His lips curved deeper when Wilona approached and, without hesitation, still laughing, his wife slid her arm around her aunt’s waist and pulled her close, Wilona returning the favor and smiling at her niece.

Tearing his eyes from her, they drifted across the room to see Zara’s maternal aunts chatting and smiling with Zander. Zara’s mother wasn’t there, wasn’t invited, but when Zara had called her mother’s sisters, told them Amy Cinders would not be invited but asked them to come, they said they wouldn’t miss it for the world.

He looked back at his wife.

His girl lost her sister, never had a mother or father to speak of, and it might have taken her a while, but she finally got herself a family.

“Took a gol’ darned long time but does a body good to see that.”

Reece’s head turned at these words and he looked down at Jimmy Cotton who had his eyes aimed Zara’s way.

“Agreed,” Reece murmured and Cotton looked at him.

“’Spose congratulations are in order,” Cotton grumbled in a way that said he’d give them but he didn’t like it. Then again, the man grumbled out of habit so Reece took no offense.

“Seein’ as I’m wearin’ this fuckin’ suit and my woman’s in a dress that cost a shitload more than our TV, yeah,” Reece agreed.

Cotton’s lips twitched and, his fingers wrapped around a bottle of beer, he settled in beside Reece.

Reece stayed silent and waited. Maybelline and Wanda had given their approval of his being in Zara’s life. His girl had told him so. Arlene did the same, showing it grumpily but still hilariously.

In the past few months, not around often but around, Cotton had not. And now the man, who never looked in a good mood and rarely acted like he was in one, seemed the same.

“Hear things are still a bit tied up,” Cotton noted, and if Reece knew where Cotton was going with this comment, he also knew Cotton wasn’t wrong.

Nina had been able to get a judge to schedule a hearing so they could unfreeze the accounts in order to access some of the money to continue to give Wilona the funds to keep Zander and to pay his tuition. But they hadn’t yet had a judge hear their full suit.

Seeing as Xavier’s case was weak, he had no money and was currently out on bond, awaiting trial for assault and trespass, and he was a jackass to boot, he’d been unable to find legal representation. That and the fact he had no leg to stand on meant he’d eventually lose. They just needed to wait it out. But the trial was now scheduled and although it was several months away, Xavier’s criminal trial coming fast on its heels, their wait had an end.

And even if he was stubbornly declaring his innocence for whatever twisted reason the man would do that, considering the number of witnesses he had to the acts he perpetrated in the home Reece gave Zara, Xavier was going down. This meant, in the coming months, he’d see jail time. Even if it wasn’t much, it was something.

And he’d lose everything.

Nina was not backing down and she was going after everything they owned as well as Dahlia Cinders, who’d put her house on the market but left town, whereabouts unknown until Nina’s investigator found her living in an apartment in Denver.

As a recipient of stolen funds she fully knew were stolen, Dahlia had been named in the lawsuit.

And she might try to escape but Nina didn’t let any shit slide. She wasn’t getting away.

And she’d be going down, too.

In other words, Nina Maxwell did as asked. It hadn’t happened yet but when all was said and done, Xavier Cinders would be broken, homeless, cleaned out, an ex-con, and lucky if he landed in an unsafe studio apartment. And she’d one-upped this by making moves to bury Dahlia Cinders, too.

Absolutely worth every cent of their monthly payments to Nina’s firm, the balance of which would be easily paid off when Zara got what she was entitled to. And Wilona and Zander wouldn’t have to worry as Nina was acting on their behalf as well and half of the money to be won would be put in trust for Zander but accessible by Zara in order to help Wilona keep him and educate him.

By all reports, even if he hadn’t seen the woman, Amy Cinders was a mess.

That wasn’t his problem nor was it his wife’s. Reece knew Zara struggled with it but he also knew she always found her way and she would with this.

Amy had not reached out. Amy had made her choice. And Amy had to live with that choice. If she someday reached out, that would yet again be something his woman would have to struggle with. But if that happened, she’d find her way with that, too.

“It’ll get sorted,” Reece responded to Cotton’s remark and Cotton grunted his agreement, then verbalized it.

“Nina pulls no punches.”

“Nope,” Reece agreed.

“Spitfire,” Cotton noted about Nina.

“Yep,” Reece agreed.

“Keeps Max on his toes,” Cotton noted.

Reece’s eyes went to Max, who had a toddler attached to his hip and was smiling at something Mick Shaughnessy said. But not unusually, even listening to Mick, Reece watched as Max’s eyes slid to his wife and his smile stayed firmly in place.

“And he loves every fuckin’ second,” Reece murmured.

“That’s the truth,” Cotton replied.

They both watched Zara break away from Nina, Wilona, and Mindy and move toward the DJ.

“’Spect she’s up to somethin’,” Cotton remarked as Zara smiled at the DJ and the DJ nodded his head.

“Probably,” Reece said.

“Then I best say this fast, seein’ as I don’t got a lot of time.”

Reece tipped his eyes down to the man and said nothing.

“Didn’t know about you,” Cotton stated. “Warned your girl to be careful. See I shouldn’t have bothered. Her Daddy may be a snake, but all the poison he injected in her didn’t make her blind and in pain like it did her sister. Always knew that, good kid who grew up to a good woman, loving, hard-workin’, kind. So I shouldn’t have worried.”

It didn’t make Reece happy the man had warned his girl about him but seeing as she’d slid a band on his finger that day and he’d done the same with her, he let that slide and simply replied, “No, you shouldn’t have.”

Cotton nodded, then declared, “So now, I’m just gonna say, I’m still gonna watch, keep my eye on you. See, this life, the way it goes, usually you get the better then you get the worse. But for you two, you got the worse and now you get the better. And, I gotta admit, I’m sure gonna enjoy watchin’ that.”

Before Reece could respond, over the microphone the DJ asked, “Could I ask Graham Reece to join his wife on the dance floor?”

“Fuck,” Reece muttered and Cotton grinned.

“A groom’s lot, havin’ his bride make a spectacle of him durin’ their big day. You’ve had it easy. You just got the spectacle at the church and this one to get through.”

“Thought I’d get away without this shit,” Reece replied.

“None of us do, boy. But she gets somethin’ outta it. No clue what, but she does so it’s worth it.”

Unfortunately, it was.

“Yo! Bruiser!” Zara, standing alone on the dance floor, hands on her hips and smiling, shouted his way.

“Go,” Cotton whispered. “Walk to your wife, leavin’ behind the worse, and meetin’ the better on that dance floor.”

Reece held his eyes.

Then he jerked up his chin and moved to his wife, leaving the worse behind and joining the better on the dance floor.

Zara

Thirty seconds later…