Southern Charms (16 page)

Chapter 31

“This stuff tastes like shit.”

Xander looked over the back of the couch into the kitchen, where Elizabeth was glaring at the bottle of liquid antibiotics. Shaking his head, he turned back to the show he was watching. “Take your meds, Sugar Britches. And while ya in there, don’t forget the iron pill this time.”

Elizabeth turned that glare on the back of Xander’s head, giving him the finger while she was at it. The meds tasted like someone took a shit on her tongue, and the iron pill was bigger than she was. She didn’t
forget
to take shit. She just didn’t take it. It wasn’t like she
knew
he was counting to make sure she took her pills.

She was gonna get the gummy ones.

Tossing the spoon in the sink, she went and plopped down next to Xander on the couch, leaning into his side. After a few minutes, she looked up at him. “I’m bored.”

Xander looked down at her, cocking a brow at her. “Whatcha wanna do, Little Darlin’?”

Thinking for a minute, she hummed. “I wanna see the ranch.”

Humming in his throat, Xander nodded slowly. “Alright. Go change into somethin’ lighter. It’s too hot for sweats. I’ll meet ya out at the barn.”

“Barn?”

Xander smirked as he nodded again. “You’ll see. Go change.” After a look from his girl -who then went to go change out of the sweats she has been living in since they arrived at the ranch- Xander got up, put on his boots, grabbed his hat, and was out the door.

They had been there now for about three weeks, and this was the first time that his girl had felt up to leaving the house. Between the antibiotics she was on and her body trying to get used to actually having iron in her blood, she has been having trouble with stomach aches and sleeping issues. She was also a cranky bitch over the fact that her doctor told her she wasn’t allowed to have any red meat... at all... until she finished taking the meds and the salmonella poisoning was cleared out. She might not have been a Texan, but she was as gung-ho about her cow as any born and raised one. She still had a week or so left, and she was not happy about it.

He figured her lack of pissiness over the discovery he was keeping secrets from her was because she wasn’t up to snuff when they got there. He was proved right when she finally let him have it a few days ago, once the worst of the poisoning passed. She wasn’t so much pissed off as she was ‘hurt over it’. He, as a guy, didn’t understand that one. It wasn’t like he was
hiding
it. He just didn’t think to mention it.

He was right in assuming that she figured that he didn’t live with his parents at 26, but she hadn’t anticipated that he lived on a fifteen square acre ranch on the border of California and Nevada five months out of the year. He was actually only in Texas for a couple of weeks, collectively, over the year when he went down for the county fair and his mama’s birthday. This year was the longest he had been there in the last five, and that was only because he broke his foot.

She didn’t seem to stay mad about it long though, and had since spent a massive amount of time exploring the house, relaxing in the library or by the closed in pool, because she hadn’t felt up to going outside. Now that she seemed to be feeling better, Xander was actually excited about showing her around the grounds, one place in particular.

Before he had the chance to get too far from the house however, he heard Elizabeth scream. Pivoting on point, he bolted through the house, slamming into more than one wall due to the lack of traction his boots had on the wood floors, then shoulder checked the bathroom door, throwing it open to find his girl staring at her phone in absolute horror.

Going to her side, he gently took the phone from her, setting it on the counter and placing his hands on her shoulders, trying to pull her attention from the device to him. Giving her a light shake, he watched her eyes snap from the phone to his. His eyes narrowed when he saw those eyes again, the ones from the day they met. Glancing behind him at the phone sitting innocently where he put it, he turned to Elizabeth. “What happened?”

Elizabeth looked into the jade green eyes looking deep into hers, the eyes of a pissed off guardian angel ready to lose everything to protect her. Her voice trembled and shook, but she was able to get out, “He found me.”

Pulling his girl to him, he wrapped an arm around her shoulders, so she buried her face in his chest. He picked up her phone, hitting a button to light up the screen again, and read the text that had his lady in tears.

Enjoy your time playing house. Soon, it’ll all be over. You’ll be right where you belong, and so will the backwoods hick. By the way, love the little blue suit. You should wear it more.

Xander glared at the screen for a moment before clearing out of the message and making a call.

Three rings later, ‘
Hello?
”

“Wyatt, it’s Xander. I’m callin’ in that favor.”

There was a chuckle on the other end of the line. “Took ya ass long enough, Xan. Whatcha need?”

Xander glanced down at the top of his girls head, watching as she trembled. He could almost
smell
the fear coming off her. Voice turning darker as the glare on his face deepened, “Everyone.”

That boy thinks he can do whatever the fuck he wants and not face the consequences of it? Xander had no issues showing the spoiled little bastard why no one messed with ‘backwood hicks’.

Chapter 32

By six that night, there was a knock on the front door. Looking at his lady, Xander got up to answer it, leaving her at the kitchen table. Not bothering to see who it was, he opened the door, a smirk coming to his lips as he held out a hand to a very old friend of his from childhood. “Been a long time, Wyatt.”

Shaking his hand in return. “Too long, Xander. How’s ya mama doin’?”

Moving to the side to let Wyatt in, Xander shut the door before leading him to the kitchen. “Doin’ real good. Daddy threw his back out again few months back, but he doin’ fine now.” Once they got to the kitchen, Xander went over to his girlfriend, who was well on her way to drunk, wrapping an arm around her. “This here’s my lady, Elizabeth. Sugar, this is Wyatt Vega.”

Elizabeth didn’t say a word to him, simply lifted her glass in a saluted hello before taking her shot and reaching for the bottle of Jack on the table again.

Xander glanced at Wyatt quickly before looking back at his girl. The reason that Xander called him, not his brother and cousin about this, was because Wyatt had experience dealing with battered ladies... as well as the pieces of shit that did the battering. He also had connections and the like that were gonna come in mighty handy.

Wyatt set the case in his hand on the kitchen table and took a seat across from the young lady. After folding his hands in front of him, he cocked his head to the side. “You know that ain’t gonna do nothin’ but make ya hate yourself in the mornin’, right?”

Tossing back another shot, Elizabeth sighed, “Yup.” She pointed a finger at him and winked, “But it numbs ya,” then lowered her voice into a stage whisper, “Hurts less.” With that, she smiled and poured another shot.

Xander let her have that last shot, but took the glass from her once she swallowed while snagging the bottle off the table, prompting his girl to pout. Before she had a chance to verbally protest his actions, Xander leaned on the counter, looking at her. “You still on medication, so if memory serves, you ain’t supposed to be drinkin’ at all. Get over it and pay attention... if ya can.”

Elizabeth continued to pout for a minute, but never said a word about it. Instead, she just nodded, turning to the guy Xander had been telling her about over the course of the afternoon. “Sorry, it’s been a really bad day.”

Wyatt just smiled at her. “Think nothing of it, Dolly.” Nodding to Xander, he asked, “He tell ya why I’m here?”

Elizabeth shook her head. “No, not really. He told me some stories about you guys growing up, but that was about it.”

Wyatt glared over her shoulder. “I bet he did.” Xander just winked at him. Letting that go for the time being, he turned back to the Betty. “Can I have your phone, Miss Elizabeth?”

“Lizzy...” Reaching into her back pocket for the requested phone, she held it out to him. “Why?”

Taking the phone and opening the case he had with him, Wyatt smiled at her. “Well, since this guy knows where you are, don’t you think it’s only fair you know where
he
is?”

Blinking at him, Elizabeth cocked her head to the side. “How?”

Hooking the phone up to a cord before flipping a switch, Wyatt glanced at her a second, then went back to what he was doing. “I’m gonna track the phone he contacted you from. I’m gonna assume it isn’t the number you know it to be.”

She shook her head. “No, it wasn’t, but I tried and it came back as a disposable cell. I thought you couldn’t track those.”

Wyatt smirked, sitting back and crossing his arms as his equipment began to beep and whirl. “You’re right,
you
can’t... I can.”

Dropping back against the seat, Elizabeth just stared at him a moment in astonishment. “How?”

“While Xander here was the daredevil with a death wish, the rest of our circle actually went off to school after we graduated. I went to CalTech. There is very little with electronics that I can’t do. Tracking and tracing cell phones was 101 my senior year.”

Still shocked at the off handedness of his voice, Elizabeth just nodded, “So, what happens when you find him? Are you gonna call the cops?”

A very dark look settled on Wyatt’s face at her question, an amused chuckle rumbling in his chest as he shrugged a shoulder. “Eventually; once the prick learns his lesson.”

Elizabeth looked back and forth between him and Xander a few times, taking in their matching looks. She had a very bad feeling she knew what he meant by that, she just wanted to be sure. “What does that mean?”

Wyatt also looked over at Xander for a moment before locking his hazel eyes on her brown ones. “Don’t you worry that pretty little head of yours over the finer details, Dolly. Not somethin’ a lady should hear anyways.” Glancing at his own phone when it rang, he picked it up to look at the caller ID. “I’ve gotta take this. Excuse me.”

Once he was out of the kitchen, Elizabeth turned to look at Xander, who held a hand up to stave off any questions she was about to ask. “Please, Little Darlin’, don’t. I don’t wanna hafta lie to ya.”

Elizabeth looked hard at him. “I don’t wanna see you get in trouble, Xander.”

Xander snorted. “If that’s the only problem, ya ain’t got nothin’ to worry ‘bout, Sugar Britches. ‘Sides that, the little fucker threatened me, somethin’ ya just don’t do without gettin’ a good ol’ southern ass whoopin’, which is somethin’ the prick is in sore need of. I bet just about anythin’ that when he was growin’ up, he never even got put in a time out, while my parents busted my ass.

“That, Little Lady, is the biggest difference between us southerners and y'all from north of the Mason Dixon. Y'all got away with murder while we was knocked into next week for giving our parents a dirty look. My daddy still scares the shit out of me. I got him by six inches and over fifty pounds, but I’ll still cower like a toddler when he gets pissed off. We get the fear of God put in us at real young ages, and it’s because of that we actually have manners and respect for our elders.”

“There’s a difference between respect and fear, Xander. I was never spanked and I respect my dad.”

Xander cocked a brow at her. “Ya do, huh? You wanna know what woulda happened to me, had I talked to my daddy the way ya talked to yours the other week? My daddy would’ve hunted my ass down and knocked my fuckin’ teeth out the minute I said ‘fuck you’. There are times, places, and people ya talk like that to, but it ain’t
ever
to your parents. There ain’t shit they can do to ya to deserve to be spoken to like that. My mama’s favorite thing to say to me and my brother when we was growin’ up was, ‘I brought you into this world, I can take you back out’, and she fuckin’ meant it. Matter of fact, if we was at a friends house and fucked up, we got our ass busted by their parents before we was sent home to get it again when we got there.

“It was never about gettin’ us kids to be afraid of our parents. It was so we didn’t grow up and be like this sumbitch, thinkin’ it’s alright. We understand there are consequences for doin’ somethin’ wrong, and we know how to weigh that consequence against the gain we get for doin’ it anyway. I don’t want ya thinkin’ that I’m scared of my parents. I’m not. I respect my parents and love ‘em both with everythin’ I got. However, that’s not to say that I’ll ever be ol’ ‘nuff to not get my ass whooped by them for fuckin’ up. No matter how old we get, we still always gonna be their babies, so they always gonna be there to keep us on the right path. I ain’t ever gonna look back on my life, thinkin’ anythin’ bad about my mama and daddy. Can you say that?”

Elizabeth just looked at Xander a moment before dropping her eyes. No, she couldn’t. She wasn’t the biggest fan of her mother, and Xander knew that already. Plus, he had a point when it came to the way she last spoke to her dad. In her defense, she was pissed off, but that didn’t really make it okay to say half of what she did. After a minute, she looked back up at him. “You were never grounded, were you?”

Xander cocked a brow at her. “Fuck no, I ain’t ever been grounded. What the hell’s the point of takin’ somethin’ away from a kid when bustin’ their ass works much faster and leaves a longer lastin’ impression on the tyke? Get ya ass busted enough, you’ll make a mental note what not to do to avoid it happenin’ again. Now, don’t be thinkin’ that we was abused or nothin’ like it. We was disciplined for fuckin’ up, but we was leaps and bounds from anythin’ like that. I ain’t ever had no marks or nothin’ broken when my daddy busted my ass, least not as little kid. He did bust my lip when I was sixteen, which is exactly how I know what he’d do if I had said to him what you said to yours.

“Just like there is a difference between respect and fear, there is a difference between abuse and discipline. It ain’t abuse to swat a kid on the ass for actin’ up or pop ‘em in the mouth for talkin’ back. They ain’t gonna like it, but that’s kinda the point. They learn what acceptable behavior for different situations is real quick. When the time comes for me to be a daddy, ya can bet your little ass I’ll bust theirs in a heartbeat. Kids’ll test their boundaries, and it’s our jobs as parents to teach them what those are. Ya can be a friend to your kids, or ya can be a parent, ya can’t be both... not when they rugrats, anyways. When ya try to be a friend, they don’t learn the difference between right and wrong, then they turn into little bastards that ain’t got a lick of respect for no one.”

Before Elizabeth could say anything back to him about that, Wyatt came back in, a smirk on his face. He had caught the tail end of the conversation, and felt it necessary to goad Xander while waiting for the trace to finish up. “You ‘member when we were eight? When you got in that fight with Ben over who could climb the oak at the back of the field faster, and he ended up breaking his leg?”

Xander ran his hand down his face before eyeing the ceiling, nodding. “Yeah, little hard to forget that one. I thought my daddy was gonna kill me, so I didn’t go home. By the time they found me, my mama was nearly out of her mind. I wasn’t allowed out of her sight for like a week. Not the best time of my life.”

Wyatt smirked as he sat back down. “She even put you in an apron, didn’t she?” Xander glared at him, giving him the finger at the same time the thing Wyatt brought beeped, calling his attention back to it. Hitting a few buttons, Wyatt cocked a brow and hummed a bit. “Looks like he ain’t all that far from here. At least the phone ain’t anyways. It don’t have a GPS or nothin’, but it’s bouncin’ off of towers in the area. Can’t tell exactly where he is, though. Only a guess.” Looking up at the whimper, Wyatt smiled at the pale female across from him. “Don’t worry just yet, Doll.” Then he looked at Xander. “The gang’s all here. That was Lee. He and the others just landed, and are on their way to a hotel ‘fore they head on over. Should be here in ‘bout an hour.”

It never failed to amaze Xander at just how fast everyone dropped everything when Wyatt picked up a phone. Rolling his head on his shoulders for a moment in thought, Xander nodded to himself. “Then I gotta run out right quick. I’ll be about a half hour or so. Y'all wanna come along or ya wanna stay here?”

Elizabeth looked at him. “Where ya goin’?”

“Store. Been meanin’ to go, but ain’t done it yet. There ain’t enough food in the house to feed my boys, and we’re low on beer.”

At that Elizabeth giggled. “So, they’re a lot like my boys, then? You saw how much food I had to make when they came over.”

Xander gave her a flat look. “Baby Doll, you dealin’ with country boys now. That ‘big’ breakfast you made? That would be an appetizer for us.”

Elizabeth blinked at him, but Wyatt was the one that answered. “You g’on, Xan. Me and your Lady be fine withoutcha for a while.”

Both Xander and Elizabeth looked over at him, matching looks of ‘what the fuck’ on their faces. Xander looked at him for a long moment before he cocked a brow. “What you up to, Wy?”

There was a smirk on Wyatt’s face as he smirked. “Nothin’. I just wanna get to know the lady that finally wrangled your ass.”

Completely unamused at the comment, Xander crossed his arms. “Ya sure y'all be alright?”

At that, Wyatt stood up and reached under the back of his jacket, pulled out the 9mm, and cocked the chamber. “Positive.”