Then without looking at them again, I walked away, my eyes going to Rees and I called, “Come here, honey, let’s go upstairs.”

She looked to me, nodded, we joined at the mouth to the hall and I walked her to the door of her room where I stopped her.

“They’ve trashed the front yard and you aren’t helping with clean up,” I told her. “And when you go into your room, I ask you, please, do not phone Fin. Tomorrow, he can learn of this. Now, you read, you listen to music, you do whatever to settle down and go to sleep, but don’t call Fin and don’t look outside. Please.”

“Is it bad?” she whispered.

“Yes,” I answered honestly.

“I can help,” she told me.

“You can but you aren’t going to,” I told her. “Your brother and I have this.”

“I –”

“Go into your room, Rees, please. We’ll sort this.”

“Is it about me?” she whispered, her voice trembling and I got close and took her hand.

“Honey, the good news is, boys grow outta this stuff. The bad news is, you being so pretty, you have about three years left of it. They have no shot at you. They have no shot at being as cool as Fin. It ticks them off and they’re too young and too stupid to know how to deal. So they feel like making you pay for just being you. Sure, stuff like this happens amongst adults. But by then you’ll have grown old enough and smart enough you’ll be able to handle it. Now, you let your Dad, brother and me handle it. And this is where you’re lucky because my guess is those kids down there have no one who cares about them enough to cushion them from anything. You do. Take advantage of it.”

Her teeth worried her lip and they did this a while. Then she nodded.

Then she said, “Okay, Dusty.”

I nodded back, squeezed her hand and let her go.

No came out of his room dressed and with his tennis shoes on. He gave me a look that told me he took his time to prepare for what he would see before hustling down the stairs.

I turned to Mike’s and my bedroom in order to get dressed.

*

Mike hit the top of the stairs and saw the light coming from his and Dusty’s bedroom at the end of the hall. The door was slightly ajar and Layla was already nosing through it to get to him.

He greeted her halfway with a rubdown then she trotted at his side as he walked the rest of the way.

He barely had the door pushed open before he heard, “Please, God, tell me you threw the book at them.”

He did not think he would smile so soon after what had happened that night and the fact that he’d spent the last two hours at the Station watching Colt explaining to three sets of angry parents that their children would not be released into their custody. They were being charged and they would see them in juvenile court the next day. Except Brandon Wannamaker who was eighteen. He would face his charges as an adult.

But he smiled and this was not only at her words but that he’d come home at four o’clock in the f**king morning after dealing with that bullshit to see her in his bed looking like she was comfortable there, looking like she belonged there. She was smack in the middle, her back was propped against the headboard, her knees cocked and she appeared to be reading something.

He’d waited a long, f**king time to come home from a shitty night dealing with shitty people to find a good woman in his bed waiting for him to get home and the beauty of that moment was not lost on him.

Not in the slightest.

Mike closed the door behind him, pulled the badge from his belt and tossed it on the dresser, saying, “They all have past run-ins with cops, there’s strong evidence they committed the other reported cases and they were caught in the act by me. The spray paint and another three boxes of condoms were found in their car as well as evidence that ties them to the other acts of vandalism. They’ve been detained and charged. Their asses are sitting in jail for the night and Wannamaker has reached majority. He’ll be facing charges as an adult.” Mike’s hands went to the buttons of his shirt as he explained, “It’s piddly shit, vandalism, destruction of property, but we can nail them on months of that crap. A judge won’t be lenient. Still, it’ll likely be community service. All of them have juvie files but Wannamaker just opened himself a sheet since his eighteenth birthday was a month ago.”

“Community service isn’t the death sentence but I suppose I’ll have to find a way to live with that.”

Still smiling, Mike tugged this shirt down his shoulders, glanced at the floor littered with Dusty’s clothes, thought about it for half a second then thought, f**k it, and dropped it on the floor.

His hands went to his belt and he said softly, “Yard looks good. Thanks for doin’ that.”

She nodded, reaching out to her nightstand to set her book aside and when she settled back, she replied, “No helped, as you know. What you don’t know is that you need to have a chat with him. Those boys hit school, he and his posse are gonna take action. Fin isn’t the only one who’s gonna lose his mind about this. No has already lost his. And I’m not talking about the unfun chore of picking up seventy-two condoms and, by the way, we counted. I’m talking about that shit on his car. And also not that his car is out of commission and why it is but what they wrote about his sister.”

Belt undone, Mike nodded then he sat on the bed and went for his boots already knowing this would happen. His kids might fight but No loved Reesee and he was his father’s son. Shit was going to get ugly.

He dropped a boot muttering, “I’ll have a word.”

Then he finished undressing, tugged on the pajama bottoms he abandoned two hours ago and climbed into bed. Once there, he turned to his woman.

“How’s Rees?” he asked.

“Freaked, upset her brother and I were in the yard at two thirty in the morning cleaning up what I hope she still doesn’t know we were cleaning up. When I checked about half an hour ago, they were both out.”

Mike drew in breath then rolled to his back and stared at the ceiling.

Dusty rolled into him, pressing her soft body down his side and resting her warm hand light on his chest so he tipped his eyes to her.

“They’re ass**le kids, Mike,” she said quietly. “It took us less than an hour to clean up. The big thing is No’s car but he can use my truck. I’m rarely in it and I can use Rhonda’s car if I need to. She doesn’t go anywhere.”

“Teenage war,” Mike replied and saw her blink.