Page 112 of Family Bonds- Kelsey & Van

He took Frankie out of her hands and gently towel-dried him.

Her puppy appeared to be in heaven with all the attention he was getting right now.

“Close enough,” she said. “If he lay down or sat he might be under water.”

“If he lay down or sat and put his head under and stayed that way then I’d say the term natural selection is there for a reason.”

Her jaw opened. “That’s not nice. Frankie is very smart.”

“You forget how we first met, right? He was under the porch and then took off on you down the street?”

“That was just his playful nature,” she argued.

“If you say so,” he said.

“Bring him to my bathroom, please. I’m going to blow-dry him. It’s cold outside and I don’t want him getting sick.”

“You blow dry his hair?” he asked incredulously. “Now I know who is the high-maintenance one in the house.”

“At least it’s not me,” she said, strutting past him.

When Frankie was all dried and running around the house doing his version of the zoomies and racing from one end of the living room to another, she flopped back on the couch.

“It’s been a long twenty-four hours,” he said. “Not even that.”

“Nope,” she said. “Kind of crazy. But you know, all things considered, with everything you’ve gone through in your life, this is nothing. Or something we can look back at and laugh.”

“I guess you’re right,” he said.

“You didn’t sleep much,” she said. “What’s going through your mind? Or would you rather not share?”

She knew he didn’t always open up.

She was trying to get him to do it more, but there were things she might never find out about Van and she had to learn to accept that.

He shrugged. “Trying to figure my shit out.”

“The thing about life is you’ll never have it all figured out. Are you feeling overwhelmed about what happened yesterday? It’s like you want to disconnect now but almost can’t, right? And then you have to work starting tomorrow and won’t have the time.”

“Funny how you figured that out,” he said.

“Not funny,” she said seriously. “I’ve watched my parents balance this for years. I own a business with my mother. My brother owns two. I come from a long line of business owners. There are no days off. Just like being a detective, there probably weren’t either. Am I right?”

“Partially. The only time you were off was when you were on vacation. Even then I didn’t shut it off completely. Days off I was called in all the time. Here, I just go in, punch a clock, and leave.”

“And it’s boring,” she said.

“It is, but it’s giving me the time to figure the rest of this out.”

She scooted over to be closer to him. “You’re asking yourself if you want that life again. If you want to work twenty-four-seven. That if you took control of your half of the business like you can do, that you’d want to be notified of what happened last night. And then you’d have no life?”

“A lot of that is going through my mind,” he said. “I’m not one to shy away from anything.”

“No one thinks that,” she said. “Even if Christian was a dick about everything he said.”

“He’s threatened by me,” he said. “I get it. What he doesn’t realize is if he wasn’t such an asshole and didn’t get on my bad side, his job wouldn’t change. I don’t want the day-to-day things long term. I think in my mind that is what I’m coming to terms with.”

“My father is the one to talk to about that,” she said. “My mother has a different kind of career. She has some clients she only oversees but doesn’t actually do all the work. Just some. Everyone else does the day-to-day things with her signing off or reviewing. The same with me now. But my father, he has people in place who oversee the day-to-day things. He spends more time overseeingthosepeople and looking for more investments.”

---