“You didn’t have to bring me coffee.”
“Yeah, I did. You’re my wife. You take one sugar, and no cream,” I tell her, holding out the mug.
She takes it. “How do you know how I take it?”
“I noticed how you made your coffee that day you were in my office.”
Her eyebrows fly up. “You seriously notice everything, don’t you?”
“It’s what I do,” I say, and I pull the chair from the small desk and sit down, because we need to talk this out. “Tell me about Devon Marsh. I want to know everything.”
The mug stops halfway to her mouth.
“Who told you about him?”
“Mac. He was worried about you. Apparently, the asshole has been sniffing around askin’ questions. Now that I’m your husband, it’s my business to know possible dangers in your life.”
Frustration, and something that looks an awful lot like relief, show on her face. She takes a mouthful of coffee, and then answers me, “It’s not a big deal.”
“Mac thinks it’s a big deal. He’s a sixty-year-old man who stayed overnight at the Sons of Rage clubhouse just to make sure I knew about this situation.”
“Mac worries a lot,” she says with a careless shrug. “He’s always been a worrywart.”
I can’t believe she’s trying to minimize this. “That old man knew your grandfather for thirty years and is doing the best he can to look out for his granddaughter. I think we should take his worries seriously. Why won’t you just talk to me?”
“It really is a big nothingburger.”
This conversation is pissing me off. Nova isn’t even great at deceit. It’s one of the things I like best about her. I can’t get my head around why she is intent on fuckin’ deceiving me now.
“Look, Nova, I don’t like it when you lie to me. I don’t expect to be forced to pick information out of my own wife about shit like this.”
She glances away and goes silent for a few minutes. It looks like she’s either trying to come up with a better lie or trying to pull together her thoughts in order to have a decent conversation. I fuckin’ hope it’s the latter.
Finally, she explains, “We dated a few times. He got controlling, belligerent, and it seemed to be ramping up to violence, so I noped out of the relationship. He didn’t handle the rejection very well.”
Her words set off alarm bells in my head. “How badly did he take you breaking it off?”
Her expression turns grim and she doesn’t seem to know what to do with her hands. “Let’s just say I was glad my grandfather stepped in because he wasn’t listening to me. Devon didn’t show up at the funeral because he was serving time for assault and battery. I think it was due to some random bar fight.”
“He sounds like a gigantic fuckin’ asshole. So, I assume he’s been contacting you again, right?”
“Yeah, he’s been getting bolder since he found out Vulture passed away. He mostly sends texts that swing between love bombing me, insulting me, and even being vaguely threatening at times. He showed up at our trucking business a couple of times. Mac said he came off as someone with an impulse control problem.”
“It shouldn’t fall to an old man like Mac to handle shit like that for you, especially now that you have a husband. You didn’t mention this during our negotiation. Didn’t it occur to you that I’d want to handle this prick myself?”
“I don’t need you to handle him. I can do that myself. If he gets too intrusive, I’ll just call the police. My personal business is none of yours,” she says bitterly.
“It was your business. Now it’s my business too,” I state firmly because I’m not budging on this issue. “You signed an agreement that puts you under my protection.”
She comes to her feet. “I don’t need you to manage my life.”
“I’m not trying to control your life. I’m talking about a man who has been escalating for over three months. A guy who’s been sitting in jail thinking about you for the last thirty days, and now he’s out. This is the dude that Mac warned you had an impulse control problem. How can you not see this as a serious threat, Nova?”
“If I’d brought it up in the negotiation, you probably would have used it as leverage.”
“Leverage for fuckin’ what exactly? What have I leveraged you into? Explain it to me like I’m fuckin’ five.”
“I didn’t know what to think or who to trust,” she says finally. “I still don’t. I’ve only known you for coming up on two weeks. You can’t really know a person in that amount of time.”
