Page 59 of The Ones We Fight For

“When you mentioned mini golfing earlier, it reminded me that we haven’t really done a whole lot together as a family lately. I thought you said you were going at seven, though. I didn’t mean to interrupt your evening,” Walker lied through his teeth.

“Nope, six,” Talia stated.

“I can see that.” Walker nodded, hoping she wasn’t going to pull her human lie detector hat trick out of the bag. “My bad.” She’d put her date as an event in her Google calendar, which he was linked to, so he’d have to have been incredibly daft to not know the real time.

“Why don’t you join us?” Clifford offered. The man was completely guileless and unaware of any tension between Walker and his ex. He also seemed like the sunshine and roses type of person that Walker hated, and what the fuck did he have to be happy about, exactly? Crawling back to Talia after making the huge mistake of breaking up with her in the first place should be embarrassing. His smiley Cheshire Cat vibe was going to make Walker lose his damn mind.

Wish he would vanish like the Cheshire Cat, too.

“Oh, no,” Walker waved his hand in dismissal. “We wouldn’t want to intrude.”

“Nothing to intrude on,” Talia clipped.

“Right.” Walker shrugged. “Well, if you don’t mind…”

“Not at all! I love kids,” Clifford bobbed his head.

“So I’ve heard,” Walker huffed under his breath. “Wouldn’t really consider them ‘kids,’ though. They’re mostly teenagers.”

Legally, they were all kids, and Walker had called them that plenty of times, but he was feeling a bit combative.He felt like mentioning that Carter and Pearl were adopted, too, just to poke at Cliff’s apparent aversion for children who weren’t his biological offspring, but Walker wasn’t about to use his niece and nephew as bait.

“Sometimes I still consider myself a kid at heart,” Clifford beamed.

“I bet you do.” Walker flashed his own teeth, hoping they looked less inviting. Talia shot him an angry look, and he ignored her. “Should we get started, then?”

???

They were only two holes in when Walker realized how good at mini golfing Clifford was. It set his teeth on edge. The guy was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and had probably gone golfing every weekend at an elitist country club with his very-present father from the time he knew how to walk. If Walker had to guess, Clifford earned all his high-paying clientele as a lawyer by schmoozing them on the greens, where he received a hole in one every other time he shot. Lucky bastard.

Pearl was easily taking second place and was surprisingly good, completely abandoning her complaints about the possible rain when she realized she could beat out all her siblings. The Hartricks were nothing if not extremely competitive. Carter and Piper were neck and neck and enjoying the competition between them while Cooper and Colin meandered about each hole, arguing about the best tactic to make it in. Cooper questioned Colin’s every move, which Colin used as an excuse to explain his strategy in a long-winded way which involved statistics he had researched on the drive over. The rivalry between all of them was comical, and Walker was thankful that at least they were getting some enjoyment out of it.

Having been mini golfing all of one singular time before then, and never at a full-fledged golf course, Walker was the epitome of total garbage with a club in his hand. Between the overcorrecting and how it felt to be towering over a tiny ball, it was not going well. Mini golfing required a gentle touch, and Walker was more or less the poster child for all aggressive sports. Give him someone to tackle or wrestle to the ground, and he’d come out with the upper hand, but a golf club? It felt like he should be using the metal-plated stick to smash something, not hunching over it to lightly tap a ball into a decorative windmill.

By the fifth hole, his nieces and nephews were all beating him by a long shot, while Clifford steadily kept the lead. When a dude was trying to win back a girl, the obvious choice would be to show her his strengths, and Clifford had chosen the right sport. The smooth invitation for them all to join Walker deemed another calculated move. Getting in a good impression with Talia’s friend—an unfortunate title Walker had bestowed upon himself—was a solid move. It was too bad Walker had no intention to befriend the man who had broken Talia’s heart and was acting like he still owned it.

Talia, who Walker had wrongly assumed would be good at golfing given that he had always pictured golf players as people with their shit together, had maxed out at six strokes on every single hole. She was in dead last, just behind Walker. It made him chuckle at first, amused that they could at least enjoy their mutual destruction together, but any ounce of enjoyment he was getting out of failure vanished the second Clifford started to give Talia pointers. Walker had written more than his fair share of romantic comedies— he knew where Clifford’s impromptu golf lessons were headed.

It started with a gentle adjustment of Talia’s hands here, then a purposeful touch of her hips there, to quote, “fix her stance.” It was all Walker could do to not forcefully pry the guy’s hands off of her. Talia didn’t seem to notice anything amiss. She took Clifford’s suggestions in stride, upping her game every time her ex touched her as if he knew how to make her body tick. The thought made Walker dig his nails into his sides, hoping to give himself a physical pain to focus on. All it did was make him wish the pain was coming from Talia’s nails raking down his back.

“Is that better?” Talia asked, shifting one of her feet forward and looking back over her shoulder at Clifford.

“Yeah, that’s good.” Cliff nodded and stepped forward, wrapping his arms around her and pressing his front to her backside. The lump in Walker’s throat and the pit in his stomach grew two sizes, to the point of suffocation. “Now you just need to hit it with the right amount of force, and you should get pretty close to the hole.”

This is straight-up pornographic at this point.

“Like this?” Talia pulled back her arms a little, and Clifford’s hands glided over her with an ease that made Walker want to throw up.

“Just like that. You’re good at taking suggestions.”

It was the last straw. Before he knew what he was even doing, Walker crossed over to them in a flash, ripping Clifford’s hand away from Talia’s and effectively placing himself in between their bodies to create a cavern of appropriate space.

“You two want to get a room?” Walker growled, glaring at only Clifford, the edge to his voice unmistakable. The fact that he was even able to say a single word with how tight his chest felt was a miracle.

Talia glowered at him. “What the hell, Walker?” He stepped back a little when he felt her seething energy burn his skin, but he wasn’t quite ready to give up the fight yet.

“I’m just saying, maybe you want to save the bedroom talk and the rubbing up against each other for another time. There’s kids here.”

Carter came up on his right side, setting a hand on Walker’s arm, a cautionary gesture. “Uh… Walker? I think we should go.”

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