“That didn’t go down too good,” Joker continued to inform me.

Wonderful.

“Um… did the investigator find him?” I asked, curious for more than one reason, wondering if Tabby used Elvira’s boss.

“Yeah. And shit came to a head. They worked it out. But it was ugly.”

I pressed my lips together and felt my eyes go round.

Joker shook his head.

“Butterfly, you’re cute all the time, cuter some times more than others, and it’s fucked up because right now you’re bein’ a pain in the ass and this is one of those times that you’re cuter. But you gotta get this so you can get over it. My old man doesn’t exist for me. I left him and that life behind, and I don’t want it back in any way it can come back.”

“He burned you,” I whispered.

“Yeah, Carrie, he burned me. I took it. I survived it. I got outta that shit. And he’s there. I know where he is. The same house. The same broads he’s bangin’ on the couch. The same beer he’s guzzling, vodka he’s shootin’. An empty life full of bitterness and anger at absolutely nothing. Every day I walk into that Compound knowin’ I got my patch, which means I got my brothers. Every day I walk into the garage knowin’ I got nothing on for my day but usin’ my hands and brain to create things I like. And now, with you a part of my life, every day I got somethin’ more. Somethin’ he’d never get. Somethin’ he couldn’t hold on to. Somethin’ he doesn’t have it in him to earn. I don’t know if my ma was a good woman. I do know she left his ass and left him empty. That is not me. I got brothers. I got work I dig. And now, I got you and your boy. He lives a life of pain. I don’t. I don’t need to expend effort to get revenge, to give him pain. All I got that he doesn’t is my revenge, baby.”

That was so huge, so profound, so smart, so amazing, coming from a man who I was beginning to think really, truly had no flaws (at all), and he was mine, I couldn’t hold it back.

“I think I might be falling in love with you,” I blurted and watched his face change to an expression I would have rushed to my phone to capture if I wasn’t captivated by it, not wanting to miss an instant.

“Then quit thinkin’, Carrie, because I know I’m fallin’ for you.”

I stared at him a moment, feeling all that made me feel, before lifting my hand and waving it in front of my face, announcing, “I’m gonna cry.”