Page 19 of Kind of a Bad Idea

I can’t.

Even if I could, this isn’t the time and certainly not the place. Her entire family is inside, not to mention my mother. If we were going to give dating a try, it would have to be something we kept quiet. I wouldn’t want my mother or Sprout to get excited about something that might not work, and it’s obvious her parents think I’m trash. Getting involved with an ex-con, no matter how long ago I served my time, would only make her relationship with them more strained.

I don’t want that for her.

Especially not for something that wouldn’t last.

But it would last. That’s the problem. She doesn’t mind that you’re intense as fuck and color outside the lines. You’re perfect for each other. At least for now. You’d draw her in, tie her down, and use her up. By the time she realizes she threw her youth away on an old man, it’ll be too late. You’ll be a grandpa and she’ll be stuck trying to find another partner in middle age, a thing you know sucks all the fucking ass.

Or you’ll be dead, and she’ll be alone.

The men in my family don’t live long, healthy lives. The ones who don’t self-destruct get taken out by heart disease or lung cancer or some weird twist of fate.

I’ll be lucky if I get another twenty years.

In twenty years, Binx will be forty-six, around the same age I am now, and I sure as hell can’t imagine myself with a sixty-year-old woman. Hell, my mother’s only sixty-eight. But under all the blue dye, her hair is nearly white, and she can’t get up off the floor after playing games with Sprout without holding onto the couch.

The aging process between twenty-six and forty-six might not be that big of a deal, but a lot more degeneration happens between forty-six and sixty-six.

I can already feel myself starting to slow down. I can’t work a twelve-hour day without a good night’s sleep anymore, and I get injured so much more easily than I did as a younger man. I haven’t had something major go wrong, but I deal with enough weird, new aches and pains to be irritated with my body on a regular basis. It’s only gotten worse since I hit my late thirties. It’s enough to make me pretty sure that fifty-two is going to feel a hell of a lot different—and more physically unpleasant—than forty-two.

That’s my future. I have maybe ten more good years left, and Binx deserves so much more.

And…so do I. I’ve worked too damned hard to turn my life around to fuck it up now. I don’t want to spend my golden years plagued by guilt or feeling like a selfish bastard or a burden.

My only choice is to walk away and do whatever it takes to get this woman out of my head, even if it means taking Pammy up on her offer to stay at her mother’s timeshare in Cancun this December. We haven’t done anything more than kiss goodnight at this point, but maybe it’s time we should.

Maybe if I start touching someone else, then not touching Binx will get easier.

But when she reaches out, grabbing a fistful of my sweatshirt in her hand once again, I don’t pull away. I hold my ground as she steps closer, and even the feel of her knuckles against my skin through the cotton is enough to make me hard. “Come on,” she murmurs, tilting her chin back to hold my gaze. “Tell me. You have your faults, but I’ve never known you to be a coward.”

“I’m going inside,” I tell her, but my hand is already curling around her hip.

“Then go,” she says, gripping my shirt with her other hand now, too, holding on tight. I bend closer, until our lips are only inches apart, and I’m practically crawling out of my skin with the need to kiss her.

I want to lift her into my arms, pin her against the fence, and show her exactly why I told Pierce to get his hands off her. It’s because I want my hands all over her, memorizing every inch of her skin, giving her pleasure, making her scream my name, showing her that she’s all I think about these days when I’m alone in bed and reach down the front of my boxer briefs.

I’m about to do it—to let this genie out of the bottle and ruin both of our lives—when a strident voice calls across the patio, “Binx, what are you doing?”

We startle apart, Binx releasing my shirt with a spasm of her hands as we both turn to face the petite woman standing just outside the back door. She has salt-and-pepper brown hair and eyes the same brilliant blue as Binx’s.

Fuck, it’s her mother. We’ve never been introduced, but I’ve seen her around town with her kids and grandkids. She’s usually smiling and saying hello to everyone, playing her role as “pillar of the community” to the hilt.

But she’s not smiling now. She’s looking at Binx like she’s a naughty child and I’m a pile of dog shit she’s been playing in while the grown-ups were distracted.

“Nothing,” Binx says with a rush of breath. She flaps a hand toward the kitchen door. “I was just talking to Pierce about his tattoo while he finished up the barbeque, and then Seven said he might…want something.”

Her mother scowls. “Want something?”

“Yeah, a tattoo. A, um, a flower or a bee or something. What was it you said you wanted? I’m sorry, I’ve been running around like a crazy person all day making Jello shots.” She glances up at me with a “thinking face” that looks nothing like her real thinking face.

She’s a terrible actor, and her mother isn’t buying any of this, but I nod anyway and say, “A bee, yeah. Maybe with blackberries around it. I thought we could weave it into my sleeve on my left arm.”

Binx hums a little too loudly. “Oh yeah, that’s right. Sure, we can totally do that. Just come by the shop next Wednesday night. That’s when I have apprentice hours.”

Apprentice hours…

So, she still hasn’t told her mother about changing jobs. And tattooing for a living is a lot less scandalous than dating an older man who spent eighteen months in prison for driving a getaway car, who also has a kid.

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