Page 55 of Fierce-Gabe

“I just want you to talk,” he said. “I don’t want you to think it through or plan it out. That’s when you get in trouble.”

“Actually that is when I don’t get in trouble. Doing things on emotions and spontaneously is when I fuck up.”

“There is no fucking up tonight. We are talking. No grudges or anything. We can’t get through to the truth if you weigh your words. Let’s make a deal. Consider this Vegas.”

“Vegas?” she asked.

They’d made their way to the kitchen and he was setting plates on the island.

“What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”

She let out a not so funny laugh. “I can try. How much do you know about my parents?”

“Not much,” he said. “I know your father and that your parents are divorced. I don’t even know when.”

“When I was a teen,” she said. “My mother wanted this fancy life. She wanted to be taken care of and have a nice house, raise her kids, have someone to come in and do the heavy work of cleaning and such but she could host a party and wanted to dothosethings.”

“I’m pretty sure your parents had a nice house,” he said. It would stand to reason Richard would have built it and made upgrades all the time.

“They did. My father still lives there. My mother got all those things she wanted, except the man,” she said.

He waited a second and then said, “Because he wasn’t home much? You kind of have to work to make money and if she wanted things...”

“You get that. She didn’t. But it wasn’t just she wanted more time than my father could give, but she wanted a different man. She wanted someone in a suit and tie. That wore cologne and not sawdust. To go to dinner parties with her and have worldly conversations.”

He started to laugh. That was the furthest thing from Richard Kennedy. From Royce. Hell, even his father and him.

“She had to know what your father did for a living before she married him.”

“No shit,” she said. “She’d been reminded of that enough times. My father, he wanted to make her happy. He’d do anything for anyone he loved, but he couldn’t change who he was. He couldn’t be someone that he wasn’t. But he thought if he could give her everything else, that would make up for it.”

“You can’t make someone love you,” Gabe said. He sure the hell knew that enough. Shit, he couldn’t even get someone to like him. Though he was making progress with Elise.

Until yesterday.

“No,” she said. “So moving forward… My mother just treated my father like crap. She criticized him all the time. He was dirty when he came home. He stunk. His clothes were stained and she was sick of trying to clean them.”

Gabe wasn’t sure how he’d feel if the person he married knocked him down like that so much. Though you wouldn’t know it affected Richard any looking at him now. Not that he knew the guy back when this was going on.

“That had to be a hard household to be in.”

“It was. Royce is just like my father,” she said.

“So your mother said the same things to him when he was a kid?” he asked. Talk about rough.

“Yes,” she said. She paused and took a bite of her pizza. He assumed she was weighing her words.

“You’re a Daddy’s girl,” he said. He’d heard it before. More things were making sense.

“Yes. I like it that way. I told you he taught me a lot. I wanted to be with him and Royce.”

“So your mother then turned those words on you?” he asked.

“She’d always been trying to put me in dresses from day one. She wanted a mini-me of her and I just couldn’t be that.”

“You can’t put a square peg in a round hole no matter how much you hammer it down. Something breaks eventually.”

“It did,” she said. “My parents' marriage was what broke. You could say that was the last straw. At least from what I heard.”

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