There was no way he was going to try and talk Tess into letting this man and the demons he didn’t want to hold for her but couldn’t avoid back into her life. A life Brock took pains to keep demon free, an effort that had, for nearly a year, succeeded and he’d do just about anything to make certain that streak continued.

But he owed this man the knowledge those pictures shared.

“Vegas?” Donald Heller asked.

“Yep,” Brock answered.

“When?”

“Late last month.”

He looked down again at the photo and then up at Brock.

“Her mother and sister made it,” he noted.

“Everyone did,” Brock replied.

And everyone did. It had been a fucking blast, wild, two days of family fun during the day and then Kalie, Kellie, Joel, and Rex looked after the kids and it was two days of drunken adult fun at night. Then they had the wedding, after which they ate, drank, danced, and laughed themselves sick and the next morning everyone left. Brock’s mom had looked after Joey and Rex while Brock and Tess stayed in Vegas and had four days of adult one-on-one fun, the first two of which they had without leaving their hotel room.

Definitely wild. Definitely a blast.

Perfect.

Heller looked back down at the photo and then again at Brock.

“You have good-looking sons,” he remarked.

Brock didn’t thank him for telling him something he knew.

Instead, he informed him, “They love her.”

“Hard not to love Tess,” he whispered.

That was the damned truth.

Then he asked the last question he always asked before Brock left.

“Can I keep these?”

And Brock gave him the answer he always gave.

“Yeah.”

He nodded.

Brock nodded back.

He opened the door and Brock went through it, turning as Donald Heller murmured, “Until next time.”

Brock jerked up his chin and walked to his truck.

* * *

Brock crouched in the wet grass. They’d had a relatively warm winter, a couple of snows, nothing that really stuck and when it did it didn’t stay for too long.

Tess loved it.

The boys hated it.

Brock didn’t care either way.

He shoved his hand into his inside overcoat pocket and pulled out the photo, another copy of the one that fascinated Donald Heller. A photo that, blown up, was framed and sitting pride of place on the shelves in their family’s living room.

He reached out and set it at the base of the gravestone.

“Shoulda been there, Dad,” he whispered to the gleaming marble.

The marble had no reply.

* * *

“Shit,” he heard Mitch Lawson say and his head came up to look across their desks to his partner.

If someone told Brock two years ago that he’d be partnered with Mitch Lawson, he would have laughed, or possibly growled.