Page 3 of Love Takes Home

“But—”

He cuts me off again. “Do you want to marry this asshole? Say yes and I’ll walk you down the aisle to your doom.”

“You make it sound fatal,” I whisper.

“Is it not?” he challenges me.

“Daddy, I don’t want to be here anymore. This isn’t the life I want.”

He pulls me into his arms and holds me like he did when I was little and scraped my knee, rocking us both back and forth.

“I know, baby girl, I know. We were all just waiting for you to catch up.”

“Who’s the friend?”

“Harrison Bennett.”

“Who?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, you know him as Joker.”

“Joker’s real name is Harrison?”

Dad nods.

“Harry?”

“I don’t think I’d call him that to his face.” Dad smirks for the first time since he walked into the room. “He’s got a place. It’s safe and out of the way, but not too far from home. He’s going to take you there.”

I should think about this more. I’m going to let Joker take me away? To some place I’ve never been? I bet it’s in the middle of nowhere, some remote spot no one knows about. He’s going to drop me there and some ax-murderer is going to come chopme up in the middle of the night, and no one will ever find my remaining body pieces.

“It’s not quite that remote, honey.” Dad chuckles, reading me like a book. Like he always has.

“How do you know? How do you even know Joker this well?”

“I, um, think that’s his story to tell. But I trust him with my life. I trust him with yours.”

He pulls me back into his arms again before trying to move us to the door.

“I can really do this?” I ask, more to myself than to my dad, but he answers anyway.

“You can do anything you decide you’re going to do, Ginny. You are the maker of your own story, and your story is just starting. Take a breath, take a moment. And look around you. Look for the people who will help you, not hurt you. Look at what you could be passing up without even having the conversation.” It seems he’s trying to tell me more than what he just said, but I don’t know what it is. I’ve never been a good dad mind reader.

“Can I take this dress off?”

“No time. You can change when you get there. Let’s get you out of here.”

He grips my hand, tugging me through the door and down the hallway. He pushes open a side door that dumps us into the back lot used for overflow parking on Sunday mornings, and there’s a big, oversized truck waiting, its engine running.

“Um, Dad? How am I going to get in that thing with this thing on?”

“I got it.”

The voice. The immediate flutters in my stomach. The throb I always feel between my legs. Joker. He rounds the back of the truck and comes to me, nodding to Dad and taking my hand, drawing me to the passenger side.

“What? No. You can’t lift me up that high. You’ll hurt yourself!”

“Watch me,” he growls. “And you will never say shit like that again.”

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