Page 100 of More, Daddy
Someone knocks on my front door. Our gazes idle, a rumple of confusion in my forehead. “Dean, maybe? To talk about Tanner? I don’t know.” I slide out of bed and tug on my t-shirt, then hold one finger out to her. “Hang on.”
More loud thudding as I pad down the hall, toward the front door. When I pull it open, I find Austin Reeves on my porch, chest puffed, angry eyes set on me.
“Where is she?” he asks, sounding like a protective father. I almost want to laugh.
I clear my throat, stroking a hand through my hair, glad that I put a shirt on. “Who?” I know who he’s asking about. And he knows I know who he’s asking about. But fuck this kid, breathing and touching all over what’s mine. I don’t care if he knows it or not. When he leaves this porch here today, he’ll more than know.
He peers around me. “Briar.”
I turn to see her wearing my pajama pants, arms wrapped around herself in comfort, blonde hair now up in a messy bun. She looks past me, directly at Austin.
“Austin.”
He glares at me, then looks back at her. And suddenly, with the woman I’m obsessed with, head over heels, madly inlove with, I feel like I’m intruding on their moment, that I’m the odd man out. I hate how it feels, and I hate more than anything that he’s known her longer, had access to her longer.
“You rode your bike here after school… but I didn’t…I didn’t knowyoulived here, Dupont.”
The Mr. has been shaved off, a casualty of Austin’s moral compass. I am no longer worthy of a title in his eyes.
He continues. “I waited until someone came home, so I could figure out, you know, whose house this is…” he looks at me, speaking to Briar. “Why you’rehere.”
His focus is only on her when he asks, “Are you sleeping with Dupont? Is he why you can’t be my friend anymore?”
She doesn’t answer, so I reply for her. “She is mine, yes.”
Austin laughs, even going so far as to press a hand to his stomach, as if his laughter knows no bounds. “Yours?” he says, rubbing a tear from his eye. “She’s a person. She isn’tyours.”
I step onto the porch, and my movement makes Austin step back, moving down one of the old wooden stairs. Both of us still enveloped in the shade of my old house eave, I reach out, and cup his shoulder. Between our normal height difference, adding in the porch step, I tower over Austin as I grip him.
“Briar is mine. I own her. I own her lips, I own those perky fucking tits that you probably think about when you’re alone in the shower at your mom’s house every night. I own her sweet, plump little ass, and that cunt, that hot, drippy, horny, swollen, desperate slut cunt of hers? Fuckingmine,” I say, throwing my thumb between my pecs, enunciating every syllable to eliminate any possibility of confusion. “Get right with that this second, or I’ll help you get right with it.”
I take another step down, but Austin doesn’t move, so we come as close to eye to eye as we can, considering he’s notnearly as tall as I am. I move my hand from his shoulder, to cup the side of his cheek, then, I smile. “Don’t put me to the test.” I pat his chest gently, then leave him there, on my porch, swallowed up by the shadows of my house.
I close the door, and turn to find Briar with her hands on her hips.
She looks pissed, but she’s here, and that I can work with.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT
“You just toldhim we’re a couple,” she finally says, after her cold, stern look has me collapsed to my knees at her feet.
I shake my head. “So?”
“We are supposed to be taking this month just for us, remember? But now you told Austin. Why does Austin need to know, West?”
“He fucking followed you on your bike to see where you were going, Briar. Then he waited out front, planning his speech. He’s in love with you, baby, and I can’t stand that. It makes me goddamn insane to think of someone elsewanting you.”
She purses her lips. “You can’t verbally attack every guy that looks my way.”
My brows furrow. “I can. And I will.”
Her arms fall to her sides, exasperated. “About what you told me earlier, in there,” she says, alluding to the bomb I dropped on her in the bedroom. “You know, I came home and took a nap today because I was so tired I could hardly keep my eyes open. I’ve been exhausted lately, West. And I think it’s this roller coaster.”
Our gazes idle. My heart almost stops. “What?”
She steps nearer, reaching for my hand, which I give her. “Stand up,” she says, and I get to my feet. If she said jump, I’d do that, too. “I said,” she says, sultry seduction vibrating in her words. “I’ve been so tired lately, I could hardly keep my eyes open. I get that you wanted to take time after everything that happened but… I don’t want to be your secret anymore.” She smiles. “I didn’t want Austin Reeves to be the first person to know you’re my boyfriend, but I’m glad it’s out there.” Another warm smile with zero knowledge of the terrible, controlling thing I did to her. To us. “I want it out there, West. Not just with Austin.”
