Page 63 of For Crosby

“Nice. Stay like that.” I took a couple more pictures, but he wasn’t smiling.

“Wait a minute. Does she even know about us?”

Trying to ignore his question, I checked the pictures to be sure they were focused.

“She doesn’t, does she?” The surprise in his voice caused me to cringe.

I forced my eyes up. “I’m not ready to hear her say, ‘I told you so.’”

A smug grin slipped across his lips. “I guess you should’ve listened to her then.”

I cocked my head, not needing to hear it from him either.

He walked over to the bed and sat beside me, the mattress drooping beneath his weight. He leaned over and his wet hair brushed against my cheek as he peppered my neck and collarbone with kisses. “Any way I can convince you that I don’t need to go?”

I shook my head.

His gentle kisses turned to open-mouthed kisses. “I could be persuaded to drop the towel for a few more pictures.”

“What’s the point? I can search online and find plenty.”

Without missing a beat, he pinned me beneath him on the bed. His body held me in place as water droplets from his hair dripped onto my face. “That was cold, woman.”

I giggled, loving the way his face relaxed when he looked into my eyes. “You need to go,” I said.

He closed his eyes and nodded.

“I’ll wait in the car for as long as you need me to.”

He inched closer. “Thank you.”

Crosby

My mother’s prison had been a day spa compared to the hellhole my father now resided in. It was the type of place you saw in movies. Century old rusted bars crisscrossed the small windows on the cobblestone exterior. Barbwire circled the tops of the multiple fences surrounding the building. And misery plagued the faces of guards and visitors in the drab gray waiting room where I sat completely unprepared to come face to face with the man I hated.

“Parks,” a guard called.

I jumped to my feet and followed him through a locked door into a room filled with old wooden tables and chairs. My father sat at a table with his back to me. My shoes suddenly became cement blocks, dragging the closer I got to him. Why had I decided to do this? Why had I let Sabrina convince me it was something I needed to do?

I slipped into the seat across from him. Prison had aged him. That or his weekly trips to the spa had concealed the aging man now seated before me. One with hard lines around his eyes and gray wisps of hair around his ears. “Hi.”

His emotionless eyes stared back at me. “I didn’t think you’d come.”

“I hadn’t planned on it.”

He nodded. “You were always closer with your mother.”

I didn’t argue the fact. Seemed like a moot point. He’d been a cold son of a bitch who never invested time in me.

“Have you spoken to her?” he asked, though given the offhandedness in his tone, I wondered if he actually cared.

“She calls almost every day. I saw her on Thanksgiving and I’m heading there tomorrow.”

“I suppose you didn’t see me because I don’t call,” he said with the snide condescension I’d grown up expecting from him.

“I suppose,” I said.

“So, what’s changed? I don’t have any money to give you.”

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