His boy felt his daddy’s pain when mentions of Judge’s mom reared their head.
Judge massaged Zeke’s neck.
“I’m not being a dick,” Rix said quietly. “I’m being a friend. I got good parents, both of them. I have no clue what it’s like to have a dad like your dad, who’s on your ass to make more of yourself. And a mom like your mom.”
Rix didn’t put any definitions on Judge’s mom.
But he’d met her.
She called herself a free spirit.
Judge called her a functioning alcoholic and drug addict.
Nope.
Strike that “functioning” part.
Regardless that bar was low, “functioning” was what he wanted her to be.
The brutal truth: she was just an addict.
“I’m just saying, turn the tables, and what would you say to me, Judge?” Rix asked. “You’d look after your boy. You’d say the same damn shit.”
“I don’t see you shacked up with the woman of your dreams.”
It came out before he could stop it.
And before he could do anything about it, Rix tossed a hand to his stubbed legs and returned, “I did. She just couldn’t deal. So she took off. None of them can deal, Judge. They like my big dick and what upper body strength means with the way I can use it. They’re not such big fans of me walking on my hands to the bathroom when I don’t wanna dick with my wheelchair or put on legs. What’s your excuse?”
“The word hasn’t been invented for the kind of woman Peri is,” Judge said low.
“She was normal. She met and fell in love with a man who became not that man. So she took off. She tried. But it wasn’t on Peri.”
It was Judge this time who twisted fully to Rix as he demanded, “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Rix threw forward his shoulders. “I’ve come to terms with it.”
“Saw her in Sprouts the other day.”
Rix’s jaw bulged.
He so had not come to terms with it.
“She tried smiling at me. I flipped her the bird,” Judge finished.
At that, Rix’s lips spread wide in a huge white smile. “Seriously?”
Was Rix being serious?
“Dude, she fucked you over,” Judge bit off. “Of course I’m serious.”
“Think about it, man. Am I not better off without her?”
He absolutely was better off without that weak, cowardly bitch.
“You’re a pain in the ass when you get all Zen,” Judge mumbled.
“You do PT after a double amputation, learn to race a wheelchair, handle a handcycle and get used to new legs and running blades. Zen’s the only way to go.”
“Fuck you for being superhuman, then.”
Rix let out a longsuffering sigh at how awesome he was. “It’s always been the way.”
Judge chuckled, but he didn’t miss how quick Rix looked away and how he further hid what he was feeling behind another sip of beer.
Yeah.
Peri was a weak, cowardly bitch.
“I know you want to, check your phone,” Rix invited to the blanket of midnight-blue, starry sky.
He’d turned his sound off, but he didn’t get a vibration for a text.
Still, when he flipped the phone over, he had a notification he hadn’t noticed.
An email.
From Chloe.
“She emailed,” he muttered, opening the mail.
“Okay, maybe she isn’t a player,” Rix muttered back.
But he was wrong.
“What the fuck?” he asked his phone.
“Oh shit,” Rix replied.
“She’s blowing off Wednesday.” He started opening attachments. “And Saturday.” The attachments loaded, began coming up, and he skimmed. “And she did all the preliminary work on the project.”
“That’ll save you some time.”
He looked to Rix. “And she says she wants to move forward through email,” he glanced at his phone then quoted, “for the time being.”
Rix did not look at all happy that he was right.
Judge returned to his phone, reread the message, and then pulled up his text string with Chloe.
“Right, hothead, take a breath,” Rix advised.
“Fuck that,” Judge gritted.
“Suit yourself, but you’re gonna regret it.”
He looked to his friend. “I broke through. And now she hands me this shit?” He waved his phone in the air.
“What makes you like her?” Rix asked.
“I told you. She’s funny and—”
“Bullshit. What makes you like her, Judge?”
“I told you, man.”
Rix leaned his way.
“Bullshit,” he clipped. “She’s different. You told me that after New Year’s. Why?”
“There’s something…”
Judge couldn’t finish.
“You don’t understand it yet?” Rix asked.
Oh, he understood it.
“She’s vulnerable.”
Rix’s considerable muscled bulk landed back in his chair as if the power of what Judge said shoved him there.
“Lady in White Satin is vulnerable?” he asked with sheer disbelief.
“Don’t give me shit.”
“She’s the visual definition of a maneater.”
“She’s also carrying the entire weight of her ludicrously famous, once worldwide-celebrated for the functional healthiness of their love, but now very broken family on her shoulders.”
Rix winced before he replied, “Well…fuck.”
“Uh, yeah,” Judge concurred.
Rix had nothing to say to that.
Judge did. “There’s more to it, I know it. She can’t share because she can’t be sure I won’t buy a new car by selling it to some rag. That’s a whole new version of alone we don’t get.”