Page 9 of Break the Barrier
I start to wave and walk away, but he falls into step with me. Our vehicles are parked next to each other, him with an oversized Ford truck and me with a tiny little two-wheel-drive car. It looks like his truck could swallow my car.
“Thank you for meeting me.”
“Of course,” he says, casually grabbing my arm. He stops me from moving toward my car. “But you are not driving.”
“What?”
The question gets asked, but I allow Logan to steer me to the passenger side of his truck.
“Logan,” I say as he opens the door, and as I step up into the truck, he grips my hips and hoists me in.
“Logan.” I try again as he reaches for the seat belt and pulls it across me, expertly buckling my belt. I allow this to happen. I’m not unaware of the fact that he’s essentially manhandling me.
Even if he is right about the drinking and driving.
“Logan.” I say this with a little more exasperation in my tone.
He finally looks at me and says, “Dorothy, this has been a long night. The last thing we need is you hurting yourself or anyone else.” His eyes feel like they’re gazing into my soul. It’s aridiculous statement, but maybe Iama little drunk. “After what you’ve told me tonight, just…” He pauses, and I watch his throat move as he swallows. “Just let me take care of you.”
I lick my dry lips and find that I don’t have the usual fight in me to argue with him. “Okay.”
4
logan
Smiling with a wide grin,my daughter completes her lines. “And I have found Demetrius like a jewel, mine own and not mine own.”
“Wow.” I give her a little clap and sit back in my chair. This is not the first time I’ve sat and watched her rehearse a play for school, but it sure as hell was the longest one.
“Did I do okay?” She nervously twirls her long brown hair, her too-pretty, green eyes looking at me nervously.
Lue has been doing school plays her entire life, starting as young as kindergarten when she played a fairy.
Ever since that first time she stepped foot on a stage, she’s been obsessed with everything theater. She would beg me to buy her scripts of her favorite plays when she was younger, just so she could read them and memorize them for when the time came.
She also loved doing Shakespeare plays, and when she found out that her drama teacher was doingA Midsummer Night’sDreamfor the end-of-summer play, her squeal just about gave me a heart attack.
“Baby, you did that perfectly.”
“Oh good.” Her cheeks rise with her excitement. Somehow, I’ve raised a girl who loves dressing up, singing, dancing, and acting, even though she was raised by me and my pack of brothers. “I’m excited about it, but so nervous I won’t get the role I want.”
“You want the more playful character, right? Helena?”
“I do. I think it’ll stretch my acting wings to do something less serious.”
Last year, her class had done Annie, where she had played Annie herself and taken it so seriously that the play had become our whole life for months.
If I never hear that soundtrack again, I would be good with it.
“Well, I think you’ve got it in the bag.” I grab the script that she gave me, something to read back to her in between her own lines, and I frown. “Think they’ll do the entire play?”
She frowns at me. “Of course. Why wouldn’t they?”
Because it was long as hell…but I just say, “No reason. Just curious is all.”
“I hope they do. I can’t wait for it to be here, but there is so much prep to do! We have to get the sets ready and the costumes! Do you think Uncle Mitch will be here to help with set design? He’s good at that.”
“I don’t know. I thought Ethan did it last year.” Ethan was a family friend and a local woodworker who builds some amazing tables, chairs, and anything else he could get his hands on.
