“That must be difficult.”
“Least it means she doesn’t ask any awkward questions about my job.” He smiled.
“It’s a good set-up you’ve got here.”
Dave shrugged. “Don’t think you’re special.” He waved a hand over my suit. “The veneer of respectability is distracting from your true self. We’re all doing the best we can.”
We shook hands, and I closed the door behind me.
Chapter Forty-Six
Haze
It was a ten-minute walkback to the car. Fox was walking fast. “What would you do if our kids dropped out of school?”
I thought about it. “If it was to do something they loved, something they were good at, I’d be okay with it.”
Fox nodded. “Yes. Exactly.”
We’d done this dance before. Every now and again, we’d test each other’s opinion on a parenting situation. It hadn’t taken us long to realize we needed to be in sync. Present a united front. We could not show weakness. Children could sniff it out, and then you were done for.
“And if what they wanted to do was illegal?” Fox looked at me.
Killing was not going to be a family business. Like all parents, we wanted our children to be better than us. And the risk of death or life imprisonment meant this was not a lifestyle we wanted to pass on.
“It’s not ideal, but if they could show us it was a good business model and that they had talent for whatever it was they were doing, I think we’d have to be okay with it.”
Fox stopped walking. “I don’t want them to ever get hurt, and in our world it’s a bigger risk.”
“We can’t always protect them from everything. Just like we can’t force them to do a job we want them to.”
A childhood was preparation for adulthood. We needed to load them up with a starter pack of strength and skills to get them into the next stage. They were going to get hurt. Who ever got to go through life without experiencing pain?
I knew all this, but maybe Fox wasn’t ready to hear it. He had the type of love where he wanted to wrap them up in cotton wool so no one could hurt them. Whereas I wanted a barbed-wire fence to cut the people who tried to.
“Let’s just keep them safe and fed. We can work out the rest later.” I touched his shoulder.
“Tonight felt good.”
I knew what he meant. We were back in sync. Working together. “We’re a good team,” I said.
He smiled. “We are.”
I felt a stirring of something. Muscle memory. I pushed Fox up against the wall and kissed him. He kissed me back and, in a flash, we were back to what we once were. Young. Powerful. Alive.
Laughter made us break away from each other to check who had dared interrupt us.
A few teenage boys were standing on the opposite side of the road. Looking at us—and giggling. What was so funny?
“Move on!” Fox shouted over at them. The laughter died, and they straightened and ran off.
A creeping dread hit me. “Do you think they were laughing because we’re old?”
“Perhaps.” Fox smirked.
“Can we kill them?”
“For what? Being young?”
