Vulnerable [Suncoast Society] (Suncoast Society #29)(27)

Leo chuckled. “I’m sure they do.”

Keith reiterated some safety issues, about how and where it was safe to hit, and with what. Stay away from the spine and kidneys and bony parts, like knees and elbows. Avoid the tailbone. Try to stick to ass and upper thighs for now.

“Will you stay there with me and coach me?” Leo asked.

“Absolutely. I think Tilly would kill me if I didn’t. Frankly, I’m a little scared of her.”

Jesse laughed. “Not many people aren’t scared of her.”

“Wow, and she’s y’all’s friend?” Leo asked in disbelief. “How come you’re friends with her if she’s so scary?”

The other two men shared a knowing glance and laughed again. “You’d have to meet her and get to know her,” Jesse said. “She’s actually very loving and sweet to her friends. But you cross her, or hurt one of her friends…”

“She’s like a ball of lightning,” Keith finished.

Jesse snorted. “At least she’s never shot any—”

“Shh!” Keith hissed, cutting off Jesse’s comment and tipping his head.

Leo’s gaze followed, and he spotted Scrye, a huge bear of a man. From the look of it, he was getting ready to suspend his wife, June, who was tiny, petite.

“What?” Leo asked.

Keith glanced around and leaned in close. “Long story short, one of our friends was literally beaten up by her boyfriend. She escaped from him and called Tilly. A group of our friends got her out of there and safe. Well, then the f*cker eventually made bail right before his trial, but the state attorney’s office failed to notify her attorney of that. She and June went down to Manasota Key to do some tai chi and walk one of the nature trails, and he stalked them and attacked them. Then…”

Keith mimed shooting with his right hand. “June has a concealed carry permit.”

Leo’s eyes widened. “Wait a minute. That was your friend? I remember that. I was down in Englewood at a marina doing a job that day and you couldn’t hardly move because of all the law enforcement.”

Keith pointed over his shoulder at June. “She shot him,” he whispered, barely audible over the music. “We don’t talk about it around her, though. Scrye asked us not to. She doesn’t want to talk about it. They cleared her of it, of course. Self-defense. The guy had a knife and jumped them, came at them. Witnesses and everything.”

“Holy crap.”

Keith leaned forward, leaning on his elbows, fingers laced together in front of him on the table. “Like I said, we’re kind of a family, a lot of us are. Many of us are closer to our friends here than we are our blood relations. We’ll literally kill—although not usually literally—to protect our friends.”

Leo couldn’t help but stare at the couple. June looked like she’d blow away in a stiff breeze, and she’d shot and killed a man?

“Then there’s Laura,” Jesse said, looking at Keith.

“Yeah, but that was, again, self-defense. He absolutely was going to kill her. That’s why he took her out on the boat. Unfortunately for him, she knew the boat better than he did and was smarter than him.”

“Wait…” Leo searched his memory. “That was a couple of years ago? During that storm?”

Keith nodded. “Rob and Laura don’t get here very often anymore. Not with their baby. They make the private parties fairly often, though.” He tipped his head. “I’ll find out when the next one is and let you know.”

“When are they held?”

“Usually on a Saturday.”

“Oh. I probably won’t make many of them, then. Most Saturdays, I have Laurel at my place. I’m sorry, but I won’t give up my time with her.”

“I don’t blame you,” Keith said.

Leo noticed Jesse had gone silent and now wore a disappointed expression.

“Are you okay?” Leo asked him.

“Yeah.”

He wasn’t going to play this game. He’d had twelve years of it with Eva and he wasn’t going to let a new relationship—if that was where this was heading—go the same direction.

“In all seriousness, you need to tell me. I won’t play the guess-what’s-wrong game with you.”

Jesse’s gaze focused on his. “Is this going to be a problem with your daughter? If…I mean, obviously nothing sexy or kinky will happen around her. But are you going to have a problem with having me in your life because of your daughter?”

Before Leo lay a steep cliff with jagged rocks and only one tiny, treacherous path down to safety. At the bottom of that path lay happiness.

Disguised in the form of Jesse.

For now, at least.

He slowly shook his head. “If things work out between you and me, yeah, you’re going to have to meet Laurel. Because she’s part of my life. I’m a package deal. If you can’t deal with having a partner who’s got a kid, then I’m not going to be able to be anything but friends with you.”

Jesse smiled. “I don’t have a problem with it. I think it’s great that you put her first.” His smile faded. “At least there are some parents out there who put their kids first and not their own selfish agendas.”

Leo’s thoughts had first gone in a different direction until he processed what Jesse meant.