Page 42 of Walking Red Flag

“…married and not tell your brother?” Rome asked. “I haven’t heard a fuckin’ word about it, and I know that y’all write back and forth a lot. Since I’m one of the unlucky motherfuckers that gets to read the outgoing and incoming mail.”

“I don’t tell my brother everything,” Cutter admitted, not lying, but not exactly telling the truth, either.

When we were done, Rome gestured toward a room off to the side where a ton of other people had already taken seats at round, bolted to the floor tables with fixed bench seating surrounding them.

Cutter caught my hand and murmured down to me, “Married?”

I couldn’t stop the heat from hitting my cheeks. Again.

“I was flustered, okay?” I threw my hands up. “I was trying to decide whether to call you my dad, or my boyfriend. Then I started thinking that you look too scary to be my boyfriend. You’d have to be my man. And then, all of a sudden, my brain just shut down for like a half a second, and my husband came out.”

Cutter’s eyes shined with mirth for a few long seconds before he said, “Well, how, exactly, do you think this is going to work? You think we’re just going to be able to stop being ‘husband and wife’ after we leave here?”

I hadn’t thought that far.

“I…”

An obnoxious bell that sounded like it’d given up a few years ago sounded and I watched as everyone turned toward the door that was in the very far left corner.

Inmates started to come in wearing ugly brown jumpsuits, and our marriage was forgotten.

I knew the tenth person that came into the room was Cutter’s brother with one hundred percent certainty.

He was taller, bulkier—which shouldn’t have been possible—and looked a whole lot meaner.

However, you couldn’t deny the Clayborne family gene pool.

They had the same black hair, brown eyes, and height.

Oh, and the smile.

The moment that they saw each other, Copper’s smile was swift and lit up his entire face.

Wow.

Okay, so he’d gone from unapproachable to ‘I want to give you a hug’ in a half a second.

His eyes swept the tables as he went, and he glared at a few as he passed.

It was only when he got closer that he realized that Cutter wasn’t alone.

I sank down a little, curling my shoulders in on themselves, when the smile was wiped off his face.

“Who are you?” Copper barked.

I flinched.

“This is my wife,” Cutter drawled.

Copper’s brow furrowed.

He sat down opposite me and glared daggers.

“What?” Copper barked.

Cutter leaned in and explained everything.

Why I was there, who I was to him, and everything in between.

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