Page 69 of The Devil's Reward
Me: I’m good. Sorry I cut out.
Sniper: Viper told me. I get it, brother, and we both know that everyone else gets it too. You coming back now?
Me: Just getting dressed. Clubhouse or hospital?
Sniper: Hospital. I’m calling Church later.
Me: Viper tell you that it was our mole?
Sniper: He did. We’ll leave that part out when I give orders, but I want details as soon as we’re alone.
Me: Done. Be there soon.
I pull on my cut and put my phone in my pocket and then quietly put on my boots. Quinn doesn’t even stir. I feel lighter than I have in a long time, and while I would love to say that it was the blow job, I know it’s more than that. Quinn listened, let me lose my shit, and she was here for me. In my book, that’s enough for me to know that she’s it for me.
I’ll make her my Old Lady after this is all said and done. Screw the past, because she and Macy are my future.
I lean forward and kiss her gently on the forehead. She gives a soft sigh but doesn’t wake. I head out of the room, tiptoeing down the hall to the stairs, but I stop when I realize that I’m not the only one up early. Shit. What the hell do I do now?
Macy turns her head from where she’s watching cartoons, her hair sticking up in an adorable mess. She doesn’t look surprised to see me and gives a small wave. “Hi,” she whispers.
“Hi,” I whisper back, walking down the stairs towards her. “What are you doing up so early?”
She shrugs. “I’m always up early. I wanted to watch cartoons. Where are you going?”
“I have to go see some friends,” I explain. I don’t want to say why. That is not a discussion I want to get into with a five-year-old this morning.
“Will you be coming back?” she asks.
I smile softly at her. “I’ll be back, but I’m not sure when. My friends were hurt, so they might need some help.”
She frowns. “That’s not good,” she sympathizes. “Do you need to kiss their owies better? That’s what my Mom does for me.”
I chuckle, thinking of how Bullet would react if I was kissing his owies better. Fastest way to get a punch in the face. “I don’t think they need that, but they will need some help to get better. Do you need anything before I go?”
“Can you do my hair? I want a braid,” she says after a moment’s thought.
I nod. I have time, and this feels important. “How about you go and get a hairbrush and I’ll do it quickly before I leave.” Thankfully, Sam showed me how to do a couple when we were waiting in the Amazon Rainforest. We had to sit on our hands until we got the go-ahead to move, and she had been miserable. It took a few tries, but we finally found a style that worked, that she wasn’t always pushing out of the way or saying it was giving her a headache because it was done up too tight.
The guys had teased us about it, until Sam shut them down and made the point that knowing how to do a woman’s hair might just help me land a woman. They weren’t long in having her show them too when we got back from our mission. Funny as hell at the time to see a bunch of big men learning how to do hairstyles and using tiny hair bands to keep them in place.
Now to see if I can remember the skill.
Macy runs off, dressed in a pair of cute pjs with ducks on them, and then runs back with her brush and a hairband. She gives me a winning smile as she sits on the coffee table in front of me and hands me back both items. The hair band is far too small for my wrist so I put it on the top of my thigh. Gently I start to run the brush through her hair, careful with any knots and tangles that I come across.
“Where did you learn to do hair?” Macy asks quietly, her eyes on the screen in front of her.
I freeze for a moment, but figure there’s no harm in her knowing some of the story. “I used to be in the military and—”
“Like my Dad?” she interrupts.
“Yes, like your Dad, but in a different division. I was on a team, and we had one woman and she had long blonde hair that sometimes got in the way when we were working. One time, she needed help with it, just like you, so she showed me how to do some braids and a ponytail.”
“What was her name?”
“Her name was Sam.”
“Was she pretty?”
