by CP Smith
Nate carried me back to bed and landed on his back, pulling me on top of him. “Since you didn’t let me beat the shit out of that asshole, I need to burn off testosterone.”
Worked for me.
I started to peel his shirt off, but he stayed my hand. “What did I say?”
I looked down at the shirt.
“But he’s gone.”
“Keep it on.”
I rolled my eyes.
See? Jealous Neanderthals were cute!
Eleven
DADDY
“I NEED TO GET GERTIE,” NATE informed me, walking into my bathroom as he pulled down his shirt. He stopped when his head cleared the hole and stared. His eyes went inky black. After a second round of morning nookie, we took a shower together. That resulted in a third round.
Go me!
“At your mother’s?” I questioned in the mirror, but he wasn’t listening. He stepped behind me and ran his hand across my bare stomach. I had shorts on but hadn’t donned my shirt yet. I’d worn my favorite pink lace bra because, well, Nate! It raised and formed my girlie parts spectacularly. Nate apparently thought so too. He hadn’t taken his eyes of the girls. His dark brown eyes were glued to them in the mirror.
“Yeah,” he answered absently, then dipped his head and tasted the skin at the base of my neck.
“Does Gertrude ride on the back of your bike?” I giggled at the image.
“Not yet,” he mumbled through a grin, “so you’re followin’ me with your car.”
I met his eyes in the mirror. He was watching me for a reaction. He wanted me to meet his mother. I thought about that. Was I ready to meet the woman who raised him? What if she didn’t like me? What if she saw I wasn’t good enough for her son?
My face paled. “What if she hates me?”
“She’ll fuckin’ love you.”
“You can’t know that,” I wailed. “Just borrow my car. I have to meet Sienna and Knox for lunch anyway.”
One brow rose on his beautiful face. “When did that happen?”
“While you were pourin’ beer last night. He and Shirley came by the table.”
“Sneak attack,” he grumbled.
I shrugged. “He promised not to say anything about you and what happened.”
I felt his body stiffen behind me. We hadn’t discussed what happened to him growing up. I didn’t know how to bring it up. How do you casually ask someone, “So you killed your father?”
“You know I’m here for you any time you want to talk,” I finally said.
Being short, Nate was able to rest his chin on the top of my head. He held my stare without expression. If I had baggage from my childhood, he had a shipping container. How he was able to move past the beatings and killing his father to protect his mother was incomprehensible to me. It boggled the mind, which didn’t help since mine was a roller-coaster ride most days.
“I don’t want that shit in your head.” It was said without inflection. A statement of fact. It also told me he didn’t want it in his head either. He was a man. He shoved it to the back of his mind to process another day, rather than pick at it until it bled like women did.
“I don’t want that shite in your head either.” He needed to get it out just like I needed to face my past. Lance the wound so it could drain. Beat the dragon over the head. Pulverize it until it didn’t exist. Dance on its grave and . . . I looked up and realized he’d said something.
“What?”
His lip twitched. “You do know you’re still sayin’ shit.”
I blinked. “Duh, but it’s a kinder, gentler form of the word.”
I could tell he was trying not to laugh. “What about the word fuck?”
“Um. Petunias.”
“Ass?”
I grinned. “Bottom, tush, posterior, rear end, backside—”
“—So no asshole?”
“A-hole works in a pinch.”
“And balls?”
“Twiddle diddles, of course.”
He grinned deviously. “What about hot, wet, dirty, sex?” he breathed against my ear.
“Sex was changed to you know what by Cali.”
“Then I wanna rip your clothes off right now and have hot, wet, dirty, you know what,” he muttered against my neck.
I looked at the clock on the counter while he teased my neck. I had little time before I needed to be at Knox’s. “If you want my help with Gertie before I go to Knox’s, then we’ll have to leave now.”
“Gertrude can wait.”
Hmm.
“Can I record us?” I asked, arching my neck. He’d missed a spot and I was an equal opportunity kind of gal. The whole neck or not at all, I always say.
He froze. “Record?”
“So I can show the girls. They’ve regaled me with tales of their Supermen and their instant recovery. It’s only fair since my man’s a sex god, instead of a lowly superhero. They need to be put in their place.”
His chest began to shake. I didn’t have to look to know he was laughing. He thought I was joking. Poor man. I tried to warn him I was messed up.
I whipped around and lifted his shirt, licking my way up to his nipple. “So . . .” I said, circling said nipple until he shuddered, “can I record us?”
_______________
Knox lived a few blocks away from me. He’d rented one of the new townhouses that went up on Oglethorpe. They’d designed them to blend in with the historic district, even used old brick so the exterior looked like it had been there for hundreds of years.
I sat in my car, waiting for Sienna to arrive. Sure, I could have gone to the door and waited inside, but the thought of being alone with our father didn’t give me the warm fuzzies. It gave me a gut full of bricks. Big ones. Why had I agreed to do this? I puzzled over that, reached deep inside behind the wall that still remained. It wasn’t covered with flowers anymore, Nate had ripped those down when he scaled it, but I came to one conclusion when I peeked over. I was terrified to meet my mother. I’d been pushing her behind my shields for the past two days because I couldn’t deal with it.
Trope 10) Heroine finds the man of her dreams only to lose him when she’s crushed under the weight of her past.
Sienna pulled in beside me and I deflated. I’d been hoping she’d be a no-show. But nope. She peeled out of her car with a huge grin on her face and that dang sun shining from her eyes like Knox. I sighed.
Families were a pain in the patootie!
“You ready?” she asked when I opened my door.
“Was Joan of Arc ready to be burned at the stake?”
She deadpanned me. “You’re hardly being burned at the stake.”
“I bet that’s what the English said when they escorted her to her death.” I returned. “I can hear it now. It’s just lunch, Maiden of Orleans. Ignore the pile of wood, that’s for roastin’ the pig!”
“Didn’t Nate stay the night with you?”
I blinked at the change of subject. “Yeah.”
“Hmm. I would have thought you’d be more relaxed.” She wiggled her brows, so I’d catch her meaning.
Ha! Speaking of!
“Speaking of.” I reached for my phone while she knocked on the door. I hadn’t convinced Nate to record our last nookie session, but I’d snapped a pic of his magnificent backside when he headed to the bathroom. It was evidence enough of his god status.
Knox opened the door just as I held up my phone. Sienna smiled at him then glanced at the picture I’d shoved in her face. “Is that—”
“Two hundred and thirty some odd pounds of Grade A prime backside? The world’s greatest posterior? A tush the gods wish they had? Darn skippy.”
“Is that all he weighs with all those muscles?”
I shrugged. “I’m only guessin’.”
I felt the air around us sucked into Knox’s lungs and I looked at him. “I don’t even want to know,” he growled.
Whoopsie. Guess fathers didn’t like to know stuff like that.
I shoved my
phone into my back pocket. “She started it,” I whined in defense. If he wanted us in his life, he’d have to catch up. Being a dad meant refereeing fights.
“Did not,” Sienna argued, using that pouty voice that always got her what she wanted with Bo.
“Cheater, cheater pumpkin eater,” I volleyed back. “No usin’ that voice.”
Knox leveled angry eyes on me, proving the voice worked. I pushed past him. “Of course, you believe her. She’s your favorite.”
I came to a screeching halt in his living room. He hadn’t just moved in. He was settled. With pictures and everything. Of me. Of Sienna. All ages. There was one of me that looked to be my fifth-grade picture and another of eighth-grade prom. I spun in a circle, taking in every surface and stopped on a photo of me in my cap and gown when I’d graduated from SCAD. All the pictures had been taken from a distance. The photographer had zoomed in with a telephoto lens.
“Who took these?” I whispered.
Knox walked in and scanned the room. “I did. I knew your schedule and came into town for every major event of your life. I watched from a safe distance and used a telephoto lens.”
I picked up the frame holding my graduation picture and felt tears burn in my eyes. I remembered walking that stage with a lump in my throat. Wishing he was there to watch me, and he had been.
“Remember your eighth-grade prom?”
That one was hard to forget. A group of us had gone to have ice cream after prom, and Jimmy Hunt had broken up with me in the middle of the ice cream parlor. I was so upset, I shoved my cone in the middle of his shirt then ran outside into the pouring rain. I got soaked until a man came running over and threw his coat over my head before walking me back inside.
My head whipped around, and I stared at him. “That was you?”
He nodded. “I couldn’t risk making contact with you, but you looked so heartbroken that night, I couldn’t help myself.”
“You told me you were there for your daughter.”
“And I was.”
My head spun. He’d been there in the shadows my whole life. I didn’t know how to feel about that.
I sank to one of his couches, my knees suddenly weak. He’d abandoned me, yet he hadn’t. He loved me enough to keep an eye on me, but not enough to keep me with him?
“Where did you get these photos of me?” Sienna asked.
Knox looked up. “When I followed your mother home and she admitted you were mine, I refused to leave without pictures since I missed watching you grow up.”
“But you didn’t have to miss seein’ me,” I spat out, still trying to wrap my head around the fact he’d truly been there in the shadows.
He kneeled in front of me. “I was based out of California, but I flew in every three months like clockwork. I couldn’t let you go completely, even though it was dangerous. Dog, your grandfather, kept a close eye on my whereabouts, and so did his son when he took over after your grandfather’s death. I never flew into Georgia. Sometimes, I would fly into Oklahoma or Texas and drive from there.”
I searched his face for lies. His brown eyes were pleading with me to understand. But how could I? He’d abandoned me.
“What about Momma? How did she fit into all of this?”
“Your aunt,” he corrected.
“She’s the only mother I know,” I answered, feeling guilty I still hadn’t asked about my birth mother.
He rose from his knees and moved to an oak cabinet resting against his entryway wall and pulled out a photo album. Sienna came and sat beside me then grabbed my hand and squeezed. She knew as well as I did that I was about to meet my mother.
Knox handed me the album. I looked up at him with trepidation, then took a breath, opened the binder, and saw an exact replica of myself staring back at me. Only she was dressed in a leather biker jacket. Green eyes, the same color as mine, bored into me from Kodachrome aged with time. I could tell the pictures had been handled many times, as if Knox sat around at night and flipped through his past. A past that included the wife he loved and the daughter he had to give up to protect. Picture after picture of her and him. Then me wrapped protectively in her arms. Me resting on Knox’s chest, his arm around my bottom so I couldn’t roll off, sitting in a chair I knew was in my aunt’s home. I looked to be less than six months old at the time. He was staring out the window into our front yard, and his lips were pressed to my head in a kiss.
“That’s the day I had to say goodbye to you,” he whispered, and his voice broke as he said it.
What happened next came out of the blue. Some force welled up inside me that broke down every shield I’d built in the past two days, and I burst into tears. Anger and grief bubbled up together. For the mother, I would never know. For the father, who loved her so much he couldn’t let go. For the childhood, I should have had but didn’t. I’d lost it all. My whole identity because of my grandfather. It was time to put the blame where it belonged. On a man who was dead. One who could never hurt me again if I didn’t let him. Hanging on to anger against my father, after everything he’d been through for me, would mean Dog, whoever the heck he was, had won.
Knox sat down and reached out, pulling me into his arms. And I let him. I swear I crawled onto his lap like a child needing her daddy to make everything better. I buried my face in his neck and breathed him in. Memorized every scent so I could lock him up tight.
I could hear Sienna hiccupping behind me as she sobbed quietly. Reaching out an hand, I grabbed hold of her and pulled her into our huddle. Then my father was surrounded by his girls. We cried in his chest and he rubbed our backs. I clung to him, terrified he would disappear, but he kept rubbing our backs and kissing our foreheads, murmuring he’d never leave me again. Never leave his girls again.
_______________
“You can actually cook,” I said to Knox.
We were sitting around his kitchen table eating tacos and they were great.
He smiled. “I had an assignment about fifteen years ago that required knowing how to cook.”
“Really?” Sienna replied.
He wiped his mouth on a napkin then took a drink of his cola before answering. “Outlaw gang. They smuggled guns by day and owned a Mexican cantina by night. I was on that assignment over a year. Learned a few things while working it.”
“Why do you go by the name Knox?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Needed a biker name and my deep cover ID was a guy from Knoxville, Tennessee.”
Sienna and I both nodded. Knox it was.
“I’m still unclear how Shirley got pulled into this,” I asked. “I get that she’s my aunt, but she gave up her whole life to take care of me.” As I said that, I realized I needed to thank her. What she’d done for me, for my mother, couldn’t be paid back. She’d given up love and a family to keep me safe. No wonder she was indifferent to me most of the time.
Knox rose from the table and took his plate back to the stove to make another taco. “Your mother and Shirley were tight. They both hated your grandfather. When Chrissy died, Shirley begged to come with me. I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep you safe unless I had someone I trusted looking out for you, so I agreed. I sent her the majority of my paychecks via bank transfers so she could stay home with you until you started school.”
“I’m still confused about something though. Why did she tell me you left us behind before I was born? Why would you want me to think that about you?”
His brown eyes lit from within. “She was supposed to tell you she was your aunt and Daddy worked for the government. That he would come to get you once his assignment was over.”
I rocked back in my chair. I felt like I’d been struck. If she’d told me that story, I would have grown up proud of my father. Proud the government needed him.
I stood so quickly my chair hit the floor. “She said you abandoned me before I was born,” I bit out. “Said the thought of being a father made you run.” I almost told him what I’d always felt from her when she’d get in a mood: it was my fa
ult she was all alone. I held my tongue because of Knox. He looked murderous.
His expression turned savage and his hands curled into fists. “I would have killed to keep you with me, and almost did. The only reason I’m not in prison for Dog’s murder is my gun jammed,” he roared.
I blinked.
Sienna blinked.
Then Knox blinked, shocked he’d admitted that to his daughters.
“All righty then,” I eked out. “Good to know you take being a parent seriously.”
Knox ripped his hands through his hair and turned his back on us, his chest heaving. I worried about his blood pressure at this point. He wasn’t old, but fifty-five-year-old men had heart attacks all the time.
“Jacobs did what I couldn’t,” Knox mumbled, sounding defeated. “He killed to protect the person he loved most in the world.”
I grabbed hold of the table to keep my legs beneath me. Sienna was still sitting, as stunned as I was, I suspected. I looked at her briefly. Yep. Wide eyes. Open mouth. Pale exterior. He just admitted he envied Nate. He didn’t hate my man, he was jealous.
“Knox,” I began, then cleared my throat and said, “Dad?”
His shoulders began to shake, and I came unstuck, moving around the table. I wrapped my arms around his back and held on. “You didn’t fail me,” I choked out.
“Didn’t I?” he asked.
I shook my head against his back.
“Then why is Bo Strawn compiling a list of child molesters while Devin Hawthorne is calling in favors from the FBI?”
Sienna gasped, and my heart plummeted so quickly I almost lost my balance. I knew Nate wouldn’t let it go. Knew with friends like Bo and Devin he would act quickly. But I’d forgotten my father was an ATF agent. He knew everything about Nate before he’d shown up at Shirley’s. Of course, he would keep an eye on Bo. He was dating his daughter.
Knox reached out to brace an arm against the counter. “Were you . . .”
“I wasn’t.”
“But you were—if I’d been there.” His voice was ragged. Broken.
“Knox, don’t do this,” I begged. “Even if you’d been there, it could have happened. You know this better than anyone. Sick people find a way. They can’t be stopped when they want to do somethin’.”