The Lonely Hearts 06 The Grunt 2 Read online

  Something had been bothering him for the last few days. It had festered like salt in an open wound, picking at his pride and silently putting his manhood into question. If he was going to start to fix things in his life, he had to start there. He knew that now. Of course, his wife’s little voice of reason had crept into his mind trying to stifle the Alpha in him with sensibility, but he knew that if he let this infraction slide, then it would only happen again. And it would be his fault.

  When a person allows someone to disrespect them once, they are both put at an awkward crossroad. The person who had presented the insult is put into a position of control and power, and the person who received the insult is put into a position of submission. But if there is ever a chance to reverse the roles and to reclaim the pride lost, then it must happen before the two people can move forward. Or at least, that was how he had always lived his life.

  Now he had to reverse the roles, and he had to let the person responsible for the insult know that he had changed them.

  Glancing behind him, he saw both children were asleep again, exhausted from a long day of sitting, standing, rain, sun and excitement. He wasn’t far behind them in the exhaustion department, but before he left Fayetteville, he had one final thing to check off his list.

  “Hey baby,” Brett said, putting his hand on Courtney’s leg.

  “Yeah,” she said, keeping her eyes on the road.

  “Do me a favor?”

  “Anything,” she said with a gentle smile, clueless to what he was about to ask.

  “Stop by Sharon Riley’s place. The kids are asleep. They won’t even know that we were there. It’ll only take a minute. I’ll make it quick.” He knew before he even asked that Cameron would be her main concern. Courtney didn’t want their son anywhere around those people and he didn’t blame her. But today, she’d have to make an exception.

  Courtney’s hands gripped the steering wheel tighter as her heart lurched. “Why do you want to go there?”

  Brett sucked his teeth. “I need to talk to them face-to-face.”

  Smelling trouble in his seemingly innocent request, Courtney scratched her brow in contemplation of how this could play out. Jail. Hospital. The news. Definitely something that involved breaking the law. “The lawyer gave very specific instructions on what we need to do until the case is complete.”

  Brett expected her to be the voice of reason, but today he was determined to get closure with everyone who owed him. Sharon Riley owed him. “Sometimes it’s not about what should happen. Sometimes it’s about what needs to happen.”

  His response did nothing to quell her reservations. “I told her that if she ever came to my house, it would be the last house that she ever visited.”

  Brett was proud that she had stood up for herself, but that wasn’t the point for him. “Did she tell you the same?” he asked, already knowing he was being a smart ass.

  “I think it was sort of implied,” Courtney said, still refusing to look at him.

  “Well, I didn’t agree to that.”

  “It’s not that I’m afraid of her. I’m not. I just don’t want to do anything that could negatively affect this case.” Courtney clarified.

  Brett knew she wasn’t afraid of Sharon Riley, but that wasn’t the point either.

  Courtney waited for him to say something in response, but he didn’t. He simply looked out of the window and listened to the radio.

  They drove for a few more blocks without a word between them. The audiobook rotated to the next CD for the second half of the story, and the sun in the rearview mirror slowly began to set.

  Quietly, Brett waited for Courtney to accept what he needed to do and Courtney tried to figure out how to beg him not to do this.

  But it was apparent that they were at an impasse.

  Finally, she turned on her left blinker, made a U-Turn and headed in the direction of the Riley’s home. Her body language said that she didn’t approve, but she was done telling him what to do. Pushing her foot down on the accelerator, she huffed. It was better that if they just hurry up and get this done and over with.

  Brett looked over at her with her beautiful brown face turned down in displeasure and found her anger to be utterly adorable. He loved that she was such a team player, even when she didn’t want to be. The soft curves of her lips were poked out and her nostrils slightly flared in agitation. And he was certain that her brain was spinning at 100 miles a minute. He glanced down at the long miles of swan-like elegance of her neck and the small gold necklace dangling just at her throat and felt the need in him began to ignite.

  Feeling his grinning stare, she cut her eyes at him. “What?” she asked in a voice filled with faux disgust.

  Brett smiled slyly. “Nothing.”

  Well that just wasn’t good enough for Courtney. “Had to be something,” she prodded.

  “I was just thinking that you really are a good woman.” His eye twitched. “Maybe too good for me, but I’m not giving you up.”

  Courtney found that funny. “Defiant until the very end.”

  “Well, sometimes a man has to recognize when he’s lucked out,” Brett said, pushing back in his seat and adjusting himself before she even noticed what she was doing to him.

  Courtney appreciated the compliment, but there was something else that wouldn’t allow her to just leave the subject alone. “Why are you doing this?” she asked, as she drove into the cul-de-sac of the Riley house.

  Brett let her pull all the way into the Riley’s driveway before he answered. As he opened the door to step out, he paused and glanced over at her. Her hazel eyes were big as melons now, gleaming in confusion and fighting for understanding. “I swore as your husband to never allow anyone to every hurt you. I promised your father too. Do you remember that?”

  Her voice softened. “Yes,” she said, lips parted. “Of course I remember that.”

  Brett reached across the seat and touched her bottom lip with his thumb. Looking at her mouth, he tilted his head. “What kind of man would I be if I didn’t keep my promises?”

  ***

  Sharon Riley was up to her elbows in folding linen, pulled fresh out of the dryer, when the doorbell rang. Followed by two very hostile knocks on the door, she realized that her husband was waiting on her to get it. Typical. Throwing down the Egyptian cotton sheets in a pile on the guest bed, she made her way down the long corridor of shiny hardwood floors and gold framed mirrors to the front door.

  As she got closer to the entrance, she could see a large male’s silhouette. Half expecting it to be Leo when she pulled the curtain back to look out, she was surprised to find Brett Black in full dress uniform glaring at her like he wanted to chew off her face. But he always looked like that when he talked to her. Evidently, he didn’t like her much.

  Opening the large wooden door, she cracked open the wrought-iron door just enough to let in a breeze and stared at him. “Can I help you?” she asked, glasses down on her nose.

  Brett nodded. Despite his disdain for the woman, he was still a Southern gentleman at heart and could not begin without greeting her. “Hello Sharon.”

  “Brett,” she snarled, pissed that somewhere between being his ex-mother-in-law and a Southern Baptist Pastor’s wife; she still could not get enough respect from him to rate being called Mrs. Riley. “What are you doing here?”

  I came here to burn your fucking house down, he thought to himself. Instead, he smiled. “I came here to say something to you that I couldn’t say over the phone.”

  She brushed a strand of hair from her face with her aged finger and pulled her green cardigan into her chest. “I wasn’t aware that you were even in the country,” she said, noticing the crutches and his bruised face. He looked like he had been run over by a train, she thought, too bad he couldn’t have been hit twice.

  “Good thing that I was…back home, huh? I couldn’t imagine that summons coming to my front door without me being there to receive it. You could call that a blessing,” Brett quipped. He coul
dn’t help but be an asshole even though he had promised himself he would avoid all theatrics.

  Sharon rolled her eyes. Something about him referring to the Bible irked her. “If you say so.”

  Brett continued with poise. “Is your husband here? I’d like to say what I have to say to both of you.”

  “Bill!” she screamed out, knowing no matter where her husband was in the house, he could hear her shrill voice. Glancing past Brett, she saw Courtney in the car with the children in the back.

  “What is it?” William asked, emerging from his study.

  “Brett Black wants to see you. He says that he has something to say to both of us,” Sharon said sarcastically. She could hear her husband’s large padded footsteps as they approached. Folding her arms across her chest, she waited.

  William was just as shocked as Sharon to see Brett in the flesh. It was his understanding that he wouldn’t be home for another two weeks to a month, but based upon the way that he looked; he must have been injured in combat and sent home early. That would definitely be a blow to the case.

  “How can we help you?” William asked all but politely. Without intention, he scanned the man’s immaculate dress and the colorful, shiny medals on his uniform gleaming in the fading sunlight. The damn boy looked like new money. No way he wanted him showing up to Court like that.

  Brett was neither tense nor nervous about the confrontation. Gripping the handles of the crutches, he stared them both down. It was amazing that at one point in his life, he actually tried to please these hypocrites. “I’m not a man who believes in bullying women no matter how angry they make me. So I wanted to say this in your presence, Bill. Plus, I don’t trust her as far as I can throw her. I don’t need her trying to say that I did something to her.”

  Sharon was instantly offended by his snide remark, but William knew Brett was smart for thinking ahead. Though he’d never tell him that.

  Brett got on with it. “I’m here for two reasons. First off, you are to never call my wife again…for any reason. I know how you people are. I’ve dealt with you long enough to know that when you call, it’s to stir up trouble.”

  Sharon immediately jumped in. “The only time I call is when I want to see my grandson. I don’t bother you people for any other reason,” she said, shaking her finger at him.

  Brett continued as if Sharon hadn’t said a word. “Like I said, I won’t have you harassing her. And we all know damn well what your problem is. You don’t like her because she’s a black woman.”

  Sharon was insistent. “We don’t like her because she’s trying to keep us from our grandson. He needs our influence. He needs to be in the church learning scripture, learning how to live with a decent moral upbringing…”

  Brett drove the point home. “Dear God. Thumping that Bible on Sunday morning; burning that cross on Sunday night. Keep your attacks on me, if that makes you feel good about yourself, but leave her out of it.”

  “I resent being associated with the Klan,” Sharon said, turning up her nose.

  “Well if the sheets fit. Oh, I’m sorry, am I striking a nerve with you. Let me tell you what I resent. I resent the trunk upstairs in your attic with his and her hoodies that says otherwise. So don’t you dare talk to me about good moral upbringing,” Brett said, condescendingly. He winked at William as he adjusted on his crutches. “Yeah, Amy was a talker when she wanted to be.”

  “Did you come here just to call us racists, son?” William asked, completely unmoved. “We are God-fearing…”

  Brett cut him off. “Secondly! This court case is going to end badly. Not for me. For you.”

  “No one keeps us away from our family,” Sharon said, happy with herself about the heartache she had caused him. “It’s your fault that it had to go this far.”

  “No one in their right mind gets in the way of a father and his son,” Brett snapped. He swallowed hard causing his Adam’s apple to bob. “Once, I loved your daughter, but at some point, I stopped being good enough for her. Between her countless affairs and her decision to run off to Japan and leave me and her toddler son, I think it goes without saying that your kin didn’t matter very much to Amy Riley.”

  He saw their faces change as he confirmed their quiet assumptions. “Her choices killed her, not me. You can accept it, or you can’t. I don’t’ care. Doesn’t change it from being the truth. You’re supposed to be religious, right? The wages of sin is death. Well, it’s apparent with the paternity case and all of her other indiscretions with anything that had officer insignia on it, that she was sinning more than you or I knew.” He wanted to say fucking so bad until he literally had to bit his tongue, but he was going to get through this without losing his honor.

  “You expect me to believe that my daughter just up and ran off?” Sharon said, defending her dead child. “Amy loved you, even though no one wanted her to. I told her not to marry you. I told her what would happen. I told her that you would make her miserable.”

  “Well, how does it feel to be right about something that you can do nothing about. Bravo. You were right. But it’s not my fault that you chose to spoil her to the point where she could never appreciate anyone or anything, no matter how hard they tried. For her, it was always getting to the next level, but figuring out a way to do it without having to actually work for anything. Well, I pray to God that she found peace in death because she brought me hell in her life.”

  “I’ve heard enough from you,” William growled. While he was no stranger to his daughter’s antics, he was not about to be raked over the coals by a poor bastard kid from the fields of Texas.

  “Have you?” Brett asked, completely unmoved by the old man’s warning. Maybe 30 years ago this guy was good with his hands but now as a senior citizen, even with one leg, he’d fuck him up. “I don’t think you know the half of it. But you will. I’m glad that this case came up truthfully, because now all of those old skeletons are going to be pulled right out of the closet for the world to see. And everyone will know that your daughter was a whore.” There he said it. He finally said it, and it felt good.

  “Spoken like a true gentleman,” Sharon said, gripping the door handle. “You’ve always been trash, Brett Black. You always will be. Nigger loving trash.”

  William looked away.

  Brett stood tall on the one good leg while balancing on his crutches, knowing Sharon was trying to bait him. Only, he was not about to let them win. “You know, it didn’t dawn on me until right now, but you’re right again, Sharon. I did love a nigger once, but then she packed up all of her shit with her shiftless, lazy worthless ass and went officer hunting across the Pacific. Last I heard, it didn’t end well.”

  “I came to this house to tell you that as a man who has survived five tours to Iraq and Afghanistan, gun shots and near death isn’t the type of man who is going to give up on his son, because some sperm donor shows up and wants to know if his last deposit landed in between your daughter’s legs. If you thought that I was scared, then you thought wrong.” Brett clenched his square jaw. “I wanted you to look me in my eyes when I told you that you will lose and when you do, you’ll never see Cameron again. Never. Not as long as he lives.”

  “Pride goes before the fall,” Sharon snapped, raising her brow at his leg in a cast. “But I don’t have to tell you that, do I?”

  William felt that this had gone too far. Lightly squeezing her shoulder, he grabbed the door and looked out to see who was outside. He had to end this conversation immediately, just for face sake. The last thing he needed was the neighbors seeing Sharon berate a wounded Marine in uniform under the United Sates flag mounted on the porch or for the world to hear that his precious daughter was in fact the whore of Babylon.

  Brett looked at Sharon and smiled. “You know you all make that face.”

  “You all - who?” Sharon said, pulling away from her husband. She wasn’t going anywhere and she wasn’t ending this until she had said what was on her mind to this sniveling piece of shit.

  “
The enemy,” Brett said coolly. “You always make that face when you realize that you’re defeated. It’s the same face all around the world, not that you’ve ever been anywhere. You’ll just have to take my word for it. Evil is evil. You’ve just proven that.”

  “We’ll see who has the last laugh, Brett. That boy doesn’t belong with you and that woman. He’s not yours. You have no right!” She looked so much like her daughter when she got angry with her wicked words and high soprano voice until he felt like Amy had been reincarnated as a 60-year-old woman.

  Ending the conversation, he licked his lips. “Stay away from my family, Sharon Riley. And do yourself a favor and actually try practicing some of the things in that Bible. It’s a good book. You might want to do more than skim it sometime.” Turning away from them, he headed back down the stairs, one step at a time.

  “Don’t you dare come to our home again,” Sharon yelled as neighbors looked on curiously. “Next time, we will call the cops on you!” William held her back by her narrow shoulders. “I hope you burn in hell!”

  Brett didn’t answer any of her nasty remarks. He didn’t have to. He had gotten under her skin the way that she had gotten under Courtney’s. Plus, he had called them on it. And no one liked to be called on their shit.

  As the door slammed and William’s voice rose at Sharon insisting she stop making a fool of herself, Brett knew that they knew they had lost too. The power shift had begun.

  Courtney peered out of the window as he approached the car. “What just happened?” she asked, putting down her cell phone. She had recorded the entire thing, just in case, she needed evidence for the police or her attorney, but she couldn’t hear what they were saying until Sharon started cursing at him.

  Brett got in the car and closed the door. “That’s what you ladies call closure.”

  Chapter 20

  "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”