The moment that Hiro was done, he pulled off of my breast with a grunt and started to look around.
Trouper covered me up this time, pulling my top into place almost before I’d even had a chance to react.
“Don’t like you exposed like this,” he grumbled. “Need to find you something to cover up with.”
I snorted. “Your son doesn’t like stuff touching his face. The moment that I do it, he screams like I’m pinching him.”
Troup’s eyes went from me to his son and back.
He swallowed hard.
I slowly handed Hiro over to Trouper, and Trouper didn’t protest.
He took his son and twisted him around so that the baby was on his shoulder.
Then he started to carefully pat his back.
Hiro didn’t take long in burping. He never did.
And that one small act, something that I took for granted because I did it every day, multiple times a day, caused Trouper’s face to fill with emotion.
I’d never, not ever, seen Troup cry before.
Not even when he went into jail because of me.
But the moment I saw his face start to break as he held his baby boy? I broke, too.
I completely crumpled and threw myself at him, burying my face in his neck.
Hiro, not one to be outdone, threw his face into the other side of Trouper’s neck and started babbling.
Since Hiro knew Trouper so well, there was no hesitation there.
Trouper’s sobs shook his chest even harder.
I was uncomfortable.
The hood of Trouper’s car was digging into my rather hefty hips—I still hadn’t lost all the baby weight yet. Having your man in prison was the pits, and really hard to motivate yourself to lose it when the one person you’d care about seeing your overly large hips wasn’t there to see them.
I was fairly sure that I had a sharp something sticking into my leg and cutting open the skin—did I move? No.
Oh, and then there was the way that Trouper was clutching me to him.
He was holding on so hard that I could barely breathe.
Yet, none of that discomfort mattered, because for the first time in eight months, I had Trouper back where he belonged. In my arms.
It wasn’t long in coming that Trouper’s son demanded his desire to be let go. He was now at the point where he didn’t like to be penned in for long, and he liked to explore.
I leaned upward and took Hiro out of Troup’s arms.
Troup tightened his hold on him for a minute, unwilling to let him go, but then finally released him.
I pressed a chaste kiss to Troup’s cheek and then walked around to the back of the car where I put our son into his car seat and buckled him in.
When I was done, I turned back and hugged the man that was holding every single piece of my heart except for the one sitting in the baby seat behind us.
Trouper, not one to ever deny me a hug, no matter how fuckin’ mad he was, hugged me back.
Tight.
• • •
We were at Trouper’s favorite place in the world to eat—Taco Bell.
I had no clue why he liked it so much, but I figured I’d take the gut punch—literally because my stomach hated me when I ate Taco Bell—and take him to his favorite restaurant the moment that he was released from prison.
He’d just finished off his eighth taco when he leaned back and stared at me.
“I can practically hear the wheels turning,” he teased.
I gave him a roll of my eyes.
“It’s been killing me,” I told him. “I have no clue why you’re out. I mean, I’m not complaining in the least. I’m just curious as hell right now, and I have no clue as to how this happened.”
It was a freakin’ miracle is what it was.
Trouper had literally served barely one tenth of his prison sentence for nearly killing a man.
I needed to know why.
Trouper gestured toward the front door with his head, and I stood up, gathering our trash.
Trouper picked Hiro and his car seat up and walked toward the door, waiting for me.
When I got to him, I immediately locked my arm on to his free one and held on tight, scared that if I let him go, he’d disappear.
It felt like a dream, having him here with me.
When we got to his car, he held my car door open for me, then struggled through getting Hiro’s car seat attached to the base.
It was only as he was getting into the car, and got his seat belt buckled in, that he started to talk.
“I got this really weird phone call while I was in prison back in Montana. It was a man who asked me a bunch of questions. About you. About my life. Why I went into prison. Things like that. Then, when I got to Bear Bottom, a man met with me and five other men that were in the same position as me,” he said. “Basically, he told me that he was going to get me out of prison. That he had connections, and that he was having the president pardon me. He gave this big spiel about us living our lives, but also helping him fix a few things that he didn’t like happening in the community. According to him, he chose people that were willing to do bad things for the right reasons.”
“Meaning, someone that would nearly kill someone because they hurt his wife?” I asked softly.
He turned to look at me.
“I was going to have more answers for you when I came home,” he told me. “Basically, I know that this guy got me out of prison. I asked around about him. I know that he’s a good guy. At least, as good as a good guy that does bad things can get. I know that this guy is hell bent on cleaning up East Texas. He’s also not very forgiving about how he does it.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means that he’ll take down someone that’s bad, and not give
