Page 75 of Anchor Point

“Where was she?”

Big Mo, who’d been standing vigil, perked up at my words. He hurried to me and took a seat next to me.

“She was who she was supposed to be with. But she won’t be allowed to have any unsupervised visits with Ryan for a very long time.”

Ryan, the little shit from homecoming. Still, I couldn’t get past the “she’s home.”

“I’m going to let you go so I can go grill your daughter about birth control now.” Olivia’s voice was ice cold and, frankly, a little terrifying. “I’ll call you later.”

She hung up before I could say anything else. My hand dropped uselessly to my lap.

Had we been a normal couple, I would’ve been able to be home with her. But under the current circumstances, I had to sit by and wait here at work, trying not to puke or break down in tears or make any sort of scene. Because fucking rules dictated that I couldn’t let my feelings be known for Olivia. And it sucked.

Mo laid a hand to my shoulder. “Everything okay, Captain?”

I sat a little straighter. “Yeah. Yeah. She showed.”

“She okay?”

I shrugged. “At least until her mother gets done with her.”

His chuckle was a low rumble. “Moms and daughters can go for hours. Your best bet is to stay here, let them hash it out, and pick up the damage when they settle down a bit.”

I nodded dumbly. I’d run the gamut of emotion throughout the day, cycling through everything from ice-cold fear, to heated anger, to blinding relief. And now I sagged from the weight of it all.

“How do you do it?”

“What’s that?”

“You’ve got girls, a wife. How do you manage them?”

He chuckled again. “Dude. I don’t. I just hold on for dear life most days.” He clapped me on the shoulder, then pushed to his feet. “But man is it a sweet ride.”

By the time I got home the next morning, Rosie and Olivia had made a truce. Olivia called in, and Rosie skipped school. So I took my girls out to the pond.

“Do I need to have a word with Ryan?” I asked, paddling out to the best fishing hole.

Rosie blushed but owned her mistakes. “No, Sir.”

“We will be going to the doctor about birth control, though,” Olivia added, and I nearly dropped the oar.

They both dissolved in laughter. Brought together by their pursuit to harass me, the sound so bright and such a relief, it didn’t matter if they were laughing at my expense. I splashed them until they begged for mercy, making a mental note to definitely have a chat with Ryan.

But through it all, the thought that I should’ve been there was in the back of my mind. I should’ve been the one out searching. And I didn’t know how I was going to survive parenting.

Chapter Twenty-One

Mac

It was amazing how fast time moved when you weren’t paying attention. As I threw the ball with Buster one cool fall morning, I looked back over all that had changed in the few weeks since Olivia and Rosie had barged into my life.

For starters, tossing the ball with Buster was no longer my chore, and something that now belonged to Rosie. But she’d spent the night with her friend Shae, this only after Olivia and I had had a long talk with Shae’s father about the day she’d scared the shit out of us by sneaking off with Ryan, so here I was in the yard while Buster played in the dew-covered grass.

I still didn’t know if Rosie and Ryan had snuck off and had sex—didn’t want to know because that would possibly mean jail time for me. What I did know was that not even a week later, he was out of the picture, and Rosie was hanging out with Shae more.

And this chilly morning, she was gone, and I had plans with my woman… just as soon as the damn dog was settled. Buster forgot the tennis ball and started making his necessary poop circles, spinning to the left and right in combinations of two to the left, three to the right, and we were in business.

I was trying to decide whether breakfast-in-bed seduction was necessary, or if I wanted to just go in and wake Olivia with my mouth between her legs, when the screen door banged behind me.

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