Page 209 of Smooth Sailing

I grimaced.

Hugger ran his thumb under my eye then continued sharing.

“When Chaos got out of all that business, she tried to go it alone. Tried to set up a client-only situation so it’d be safer. But she got strong-armed by a pimp who was a total asshole. He wanted Ma under his thumb, but after what my dad did, she didn’t want to be under anyone’s thumb. He wasn’t taking no for an answer, beat her to shit more than once.”

This just got worse and worse.

I pressed even closer and the only thing I could think to say was, “Honey.”

“Yeah,” he agreed to all the feeling I put in that one word. “About the third time that happened, she went to Chaos. Took me with her, because he threatened me too, all so he could take his cut of the money she earned off her back. Literally. She told Chaos, they found this guy and put him out of business forever.”

I felt my eyes get big. “You mean, they killed him?”

“No, I mean they did a number on him, and he was so shit scared of them after they did, when they told him to get in a different business, he did.”

“Oh. Right,” I muttered.

“Then they got her set up. It took a while, but after that while, she never walked the streets again. Had a client list. Took referrals and ran checks on them before she took them on. In the end, a lot of them were just regulars who got in the habit of visiting her, they did the deed, but mostly they just wanted company, someone to talk to, and Ma was familiar.”

It hurt my soul he knew this about his mother’s business.

I wondered why she didn’t try to do something else.

Then again, single moms now had it rough. Thirty-five years ago, it had to be worse.

And it was something she knew how to do.

“Chaos also paid for her cancer care,” he continued. “Chemo. Radiation. Then eventually hospice. She didn’t have insurance. I was bouncing then, I sure as fuck didn’t have much to help her out. They got her the best Denver offered.” His voice dropped so he whispered his last. “Luxury death care.”

My heart heavy with his loss, I smoothed his hair back off his forehead, and kept running my fingers through, because as much as I wanted to wave a magic wand and change this for him, there was nothing for me to say.

“Last, they paid to bury her,” he finished.

Official, with a stamp, a gold seal and everything.

I totally loved those guys, and I hadn’t even met half of them.

“God, honey. I don’t know what to say,” I admitted.

“Nothin’ to say. It was our life. It wasn’t good. It wasn’t bad. What I know is, I had a great mom. It wasn’t about her keeping me fed or clothed, she was just a great mom. In our house, you wouldn’t know what she did. We were normal. She gave me that against some pretty slanted odds.”

They weren’t normal, with what he knew about all of this.

Then again, I’d lived a protected life. So protected, I was even protected from my mother.

So maybe they just lived an honest life.

“What do you need to do with your brothers?” I asked.

“Figure out why my ma worked so hard to give me a good life, show me the way, but I let a man who done her wrong, a man who I only met once, drag me down into thinkin’ I didn’t deserve shit. Set me on a path in life where I was just breathing, and not really living.”

I would very much like Hugger to get a handle on that.

“Will they be able to help?” I asked.

“Kinda already did. Had a conversation with our ex-president the other day. He was the one who guided them out of the fucked-up crap they were doin’. He knew my dad.”

“Biological father,” I corrected.

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