by Emilia Finn
I frown, turn away from the scene before us when the front door closes behind father and daughter. “How do you mean?”
“I mean… anybody wants to fuck with his little girl, he’s going for the throat, and he’s tearing it the hell out. He doesn’t play when it comes to her.”
“Oh, yeah.” I turn back to lay my cheek on his shoulder. “I guess I already knew that. He’s devoted to her. Selflessly. He would walk in front of a bus, if it’s what needed to happen to keep her safe.”
“He would.” Daddy’s forearms rest on his thighs, his hands dangling between his legs. But he brings them up now, clasps them together. “Any good father would. But still, Miles… it’s worth mentioning how intense he is about her. He’s been messed with, I think. And he’s done being the kid on the bottom of the pile.”
“The mother… do you know anything about her?”
He shakes his head. “It’s not for me to ask.”
“You wanna know?”
He scoffs. “Of course I do. But I can’t ask. Someday, some barbecue, he might bring it up, and I’ll listen, but until then…” He shrugs.
“Her name is Karla.”
He turns to me. I can feel the movement, even if I can’t see. “He told you that?”
“Mm. Just before. Twenty minutes ago. He didn’t say much else, just her name. I didn’t ask anything else.”
“Baby?”
I smile, because Miles Walker and Bobby Kincaid are more alike than either of them realizes. “Mm?”
“I get that he’s nice. And I also get that he’s not really a hell of a lot older than you…”
I snuggle in a little closer and close my eyes. “Uh huh…”
“But I’m not ready to be a grandpa yet. You’re my baby, you were a baby just last week, but now you’re hanging out with a guy that has a baby, and it does things to me. Here.” He takes my hand, presses it to his heart. “I know it’s not the same, I know you’re a good girl. But it’s a little scary all the same. A guy like that,” he pushes his chin toward Miles’ house, “if he’s gonna be interested in a girl, if he’s going to bring a woman into his daughter’s life, then it’s not going to be a revolving-door-type setup and casual fling. Which, of course, is comforting to me. But still, if he’s interested, then it’s gonna be serious. And I’m not sure I’m ready for that.”
“She’s a sweetheart, isn’t she?”
“Alyssa?” He sighs. “Yup. She’s fuckin’ adorable.”
I laugh so hard that I make us both bounce. “Frankly, it’s annoying that she’s so cute. Why couldn’t she be a brat?”
He shrugs. “Sometimes life just ain’t fair. The least she could do is demand all of her dad’s attention, scream whenever a pretty girl is near, get mad that he might be looking.”
“Like how Ben went crazy when his mom started dating?”
He tugs his arm from mine, but only to wrap it around my shoulders and pull me in tight. “Exactly like that. The sasquatch knew what was up.”
“And yet, his mom still got married.”
“Goddammit,” he whispers. “Goddammit, Brooklyn. You make me feel older than I am.”
“Sorry, Daddy. You don’t have to worry about anything yet. We’ve literally spent maybe forty-five minutes together. Total.”
“I knew I wanted your mom when I first saw her.” Warm breath flitters over my forehead as he exhales. “Literally. I saw her from across the room, fell in love, asked her to dance…”
“And here we are.”
He grins. “Here we are. Dammit, why couldn’t I have been less obsessive about her? Then I’d have a leg to stand on when I wanna lecture you.”
“Sometimes life just ain’t fair,” I repeat his words from a moment ago. “You can relax, Daddy. Everything’s okay.”
“What would you say if I suggested a year-long vacation in Amsterdam? Fully paid, the trip of a lifetime so you can write in a foreign country, live it up, and enjoy being twenty?”
I laugh. “I’d mumble something about getting stoned and making bad choices in the red light district.”
“Goddammit.” He lets his head droop. “I’m gonna snitch to your mom. She’ll fix this.”
“Doubt it. She thinks Lyss is adorable too.”
Roman DeLuca reaches a meaty arm ahead of us and pushes a branch out of my way so I can pass through the lush forest.
“I feel like I’d know if she wasn’t alive,” I continue after a brief pause. “Grandmother Clara is a weave in the very fabric of my existence. She’s my blood, Rome. My history. I’d know if they killed her…” I pause. “Right?”
He shrugs, takes my hand to help me from one rock to the next. “I think that we’re about to go to war, and one way or the other, we’ll find out if they’ve hurt her. Either way, Malachai Noble dies at the end of my sword.”
“Oh, damn, sorry.”
I jump and slam my hand down over the keys of my laptop so that when I glance back to the screen, I find a long stream of ‘bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb’.
It’s Saturday, almost noon, and the sun beats down over me like it knows it’ll soon be banished for the winter. But here I sit, working, and hoping that Miles and Lyssa would eventually make their way to my backyard.
Alyssa bangs her fists on the security gate to be let in, but Miles merely stands over her, his hand resting on the gate lock, unmoving as he stares.
He’s shirtless already, tanned from lifting his weights in the sun the last few weeks. Green and black boardshorts sit on sculpted hips, the V line that doesn’t usually impress me dips into his shorts, and with it, a dark black trail of hair that disappears beneath the thick waistband of the underwear that sits a little higher than the band of his shorts.
Alyssa is wearing her rainbow bathing suit again, her long hair tied in a messy half-up-half-down do, as though they started the day with good intentions, but in the three hours since breakfast, she’s been rolling around and messed it up. She wears cute little flip-flops with the stretching band that wraps around the back of her ankle.
But Miles is barefoot. Bare-chested. He makes me nervous with his proximity alone.
“We can come back,” he murmurs and extends a hand for Alyssa to take, fully expecting her to comply. “Come on, baby. Pool’s full for now, but maybe we’ll come back this afternoon.”
“Daddy, no!” Lyss bangs her fists on the gate again. “It’s not full. There’s nobody even in it.”
“Miss Brooke is busy, babe.” His eyes flip to my laptop. And to my bare legs where it rests, barely hiding my bikini bottoms. “We’ll try another time.”
“Daddy! You promised. We worked out, and now we get to swim.” She lifts her arms. “We already did the floaties.”
“Babe, I said—”
“You can come in.” I reach to the chair beside mine, snatch up a ballcap that I’ve been meaning to put on for an hour.
The glare coming off the water is making me squint, putting wrinkles on my face two decades earlier than they should be there.
I pull the Padres cap low over my eyes, creating my own shade, and reseat my laptop. “The pool is free,” I say. “I take a dip once an hour to cool off, then I come back here and keep working.”
“She’s working, baby.” Miles’ voice is almost pleading. “We can’t interrupt—”
“I don’t need quiet to work.” I push my laptop aside, close the lid halfway, to keep prying eyes away, just in case. Then I climb to my feet with a groan – my hour is up – and straighten my spine with a quiet grunt. On bare feet, I pad my way across the warm concrete in a sky-blue bikini with frilly bits that dangle over my breasts and hips. It’s almost modest, except for the fact it’s also basically underwear.
I’ve never in my life felt self-conscious about a bikini near the pool or lake, but then again, I’ve never liked a guy who is currently staring, nor have I had to look into whiskey eyes that belong to a little girl that is his first and only thought on a daily basis.
I knew what I was weari
ng when I came out here, and I even hoped they’d come to visit, but now Alyssa’s eyes follow as I move, and suddenly I consider diving for my towel and draping it over my body.
“I like your earring, Miss Brooke.”
I open the gate, look to the little girl as she darts through, and press a hand to my earlobe. “Ah, thanks. I like your earrings too.”
“I don’t have one like yours.” She stops by my chair, peeks at my laptop, then turns back to push her stomach out and play with her navel. “It dangles.”
“Oh!” I press a hand to my belly. “That earring. Thanks. I like it too.”
“Daddy,” Lyss turns to him, “can I—”
“No,” he throws down without hesitation. “Not until you’re eighteen. And even then, don’t show me. I don’t wanna know.”
Is he grumpy today, or merely caught off guard that I’m here?
“Good morning, Miles.” I continue to hold the gate, since he hasn’t stepped through. “Coming or going?”
“Coming, I guess.” He steps through the opening with a rough clearing of his throat, and makes his way to the chair at the end of a row. We have five plastic recliners in a line, since when us kids were younger, the moms – mine, Aunt Iz, Aunt Tink, Aunt Britt, and Aunt Tina – liked to sit in the sun while we played in the pool. The dads hung out by the barbecue on the deck, checking their wives out like they thought they were sly, and the moms chilled in the sun and pretended not to be posing for them.
It was all quite ridiculous, since they were already married, but that helped me become an adult that doesn’t blush when her dad grabs her mom’s ass and kisses her with tongue.
Miles sets two towels on the chair furthest from where my laptop sits; one navy blue that I know came from the set my mom went shopping for before they moved here, and the other, pink, orange, yellow, and has a hood. We definitely didn’t supply that one.
He drops a set of keys on the towel, then his phone, and though he reaches up and moves his hat out of habit, he keeps it on and kneels down in front of Lyss. His eyes remain far, far away from me.
“Swim, baby. But stay close to the edge.”
“I got it, Daddy. Miss Brooke?” She leans around his broad chest. “Wanna come for a swim? I could show you how I touch the bottom.”
“You touch the bottom?” I close the gate and make my way across the space until we’re closer. Miles remains on one knee, his shoulders hunched, and his eyes down. “All the way down to the bottom? Not even I can do that.”
“Yes you can!” Lyss giggles. “I bet you can stand on the bottom even in the deep end.”
“Well…” I move around father and daughter, step between my chair and the one beside it, and when I peek behind me at the last second, I catch him.
His eyes, so heated and wide, flick away from my ass, snap to my eyes, and then away.
I laugh. “I didn’t wanna brag or anything, Lyss. But you’re totally right. I can touch, even in the deep end. Ya know, I think we have a few toys and stuff around here, like rings or whatever that you can dive for.”
“For real?”
“Yeah.” I look around my backyard with a frown. “I’ll have to ask my dad. I’m not sure where they are, but I promise to ask when he gets home.”
“He at the gym?” Miles asks, as I sit down, fix my towel over my lap, and set my computer on top.
“Uh huh. He’s always at the gym on Saturdays. It’s a busy day, lots of kid classes to get through. He’ll be home a little after lunch, I suppose. He tends to stick around to eat with whoever lingers, then he comes home to chill with the fam.”
“Like family funday,” Lyss inserts. “Like that, Miss Brooke?”
I look to the girl and grin. “What’s family funday? I guess it sounds kinda the same.”
“Family funday is where we get our work done early – like Daddy’s training, and maybe my reading if I have some—”
“And chores too,” Miles adds with a grunt as he sits on the end chair.
Prude.
“And chores too.” Lyss grins. “If we work really hard and really fast, we can get it all done before breakfast.”
“No way!”
“Yes way. And then we have breakfast, and the whole day is ours.”
“Family funday.”
“Uh huh. Sometimes Daddy takes me to the store, and we can pick out a fun snack to eat with a movie.” She holds her chest and sighs. “It’s my favorite day of the week.”
“It sure sounds amazing.” And exactly like what my dad does after Saturday morning training. “What movie are you going to watch today?”
“I don’t know.” Her eyes snap to Miles’. “Did you pick one, Daddy?”
“Stuart Little,” he grumbles and doesn’t let his eyes leave the trees over my back fence.
“An oldie but a goodie.” I nod my approval. “I used to watch that when I was little.”
“For real?”
She’s so unspoiled, so awed by so many things, her innocence makes me smile. “For real. It was out even when I was little. It’s fun. Have you seen it before?”
She shakes her head. “After lunch for sure!”
“For sure. You’d better jump in the water, pretty girl. You’re starting to go a little red.”
“Oh!” Alarmed, she creates a double chin as she tries to look at her shoulders, and when she spots the reddening patches, she draws in a deep breath and tosses herself into the pool in the most dramatic way that not even the dramatic-Smalls could compete.
“She’s gonna ask you to watch the movie with us,” Miles murmurs. He sits back in his chair, keeps his hat pulled low, and closes his eyes to sun himself. “Bet you anything, she’ll ask. Just tell her no, she’ll get over it.”
“Oh… you want me to say no?”
“I want you to…” He considers. “Not be guilted into wasting your afternoon watching a movie you’ve seen a million times before, with a child who doesn’t know the art of subtlety. She’ll ask you, and won’t be able to see the way you’ll wish you could say no.”
He stops when Lyss emerges from the depths of the water with a deep inhalation of fresh air, then as she splashes her way to the opposite side to grab the edges.
“Just say no,” he repeats. “You’re working, you’re busy. She’ll only pout for a second, then she’ll get over it.”
I pull my bottom lip between my teeth, only for my smile to break free when Lyss throws herself backward in a type of backflip that ends with an underwater twist and her coming up again on a burst of air.
“Brooke?”
“Yeah.” I turn to him and nod. “I got it. She’s a good swimmer.”
“Mmm.” He turns back to watch her. “I would never leave her to swim alone while I stayed inside. She probably could, but I’m not there yet. But I don’t have to be in the water with her all the time anymore.”
“Did you have a pool at your old home?”
He scoffs and reseats his hat. “I think you underestimate our former level of poverty. There was no pool at our old apartment. There was a town pool, and we visited that sometimes, but it wasn’t cheap, and the amount of kids peeing in it gave me the willies. Mostly we hung around the lake, did our best there, despite the lack of walls to monkey walk or practice climbing out on. We’ve been here for a few weeks now, and you guys have the wall, so we’ve been practicing here.”
“So… you taught her all by yourself?” I nod. “That’s pretty cool. I’m not sure I’d have the patience to do that.”
“Your dad didn’t teach you?”
My cheeks plump, push my eyes half-closed as I try to hold my laughter in. “My dad…” I sigh. “I was the diva that didn’t want to swim. I didn’t want to come outside, unless it was to walk through the forest. And if I did come out, since my parents asked me to stop ignoring everyone, I came out with a book and pens, sat on a chair and did what I was doing just before you got here.”
I snort. “My daddy is a patient man, Miles, a very kind man, but
by the time I was eight or nine, and stull refusing to try, he decided he was done waiting. He shoved me in, told me that if I wanted to live, I would learn how to kick my damn feet.”
Finally, Miles’ hard countenance softens with a chuckle. “Harsh.”
“I looked like a baby bird. You ever see those videos online of the baby birds being shoved out of their nests for the first time? Learn to fly or splat? Well that’s what I looked like, but in water. That was the day I discovered I could touch the bottom. A second after that, I learned how to kick my damn legs and save my own life. My daddy is kind and perfect, but he only accepts bullshit excuses for so long. Then you’d better be prepared to sink or swim.”
“He would have come in for you if you couldn’t do it, though, right?”
I shrug. “Probably. Maybe. Eventually.” I laugh. “I was nine or whatever, my cousins and siblings were all swimming. We wanted to hang out at the lake, but I refused to prove I could be safe. Daddy was tired of worrying about the unknown, so he proved something to us both that day. My brother has always been about racing toward new experiences. He leaves scorch marks everywhere he goes, because he wants to be the first. And my sister, she’s sort of the same, though not even half as obnoxious about it. But me… I like to observe. I prefer to find a seat where I can see everything, then I watch and write stories in my mind. I prefer my way, and though my mom and dad accept me for who I am, sometimes they have to force my hand… ya know, for safety’s sake.”
“Fair call, I suppose… Any trust issues since then?”
I burst out laughing, only to slap my hand over my mouth when Lyss whips around to watch us.
Tired of sitting so far away from Miles, I set my towel and laptop aside, then jump up and scoot four down. I wave when Lyss does, blow a kiss when she does that too, and sit down a mere foot away from Miles when she turns back to ‘monkey walk’ along the wall.
“I trust my father,” I finally answer. “Very much. He has never been cruel, and he’s always explained why he did something. His reasons were always fair, so I accepted them and moved on with my life with that new skill under my belt – in that case, it was swimming. I was like a cat, I suppose. I didn’t like it, but I could do it.”