Page 20 of Off-Limits Daddy
Dad didn’t make it that far—massive heart attack before I even graduated. Mom hung on longer, but diabetes took her slow and mean, like it wanted to make sure she felt every bit of it. By the time I was twenty, it was just me rattling around this place, pretending the silence didn’t get to me.
I guess that’s part of why it felt natural, back then, to fall into step with the Jackson family. They were breaking apart around the same time I was holding the pieces of my own family together. Ari had been six. Sage, barely an adult himself, was busy working double shifts and trying to keep his little brother’s world from going sideways. And I guess I’d just... fit.
Didn’t feel noble then. Doesn’t feel noble now. Just survival, for all of us in different ways.
I parked out front, gravel crunching under the tires. Let the engine idle too long before finally shutting it off.
Porch light still burned—a soft yellow halo spilling across the concrete steps. Not cracked, not broken. Just worn in that way old places got when they’d been taken care of by someone who knew how.
It wasn’t new. But it wasmine.
And most days, that was enough.
Tonight, it felt like too much space with no one to fill it.
Inside, the house smelled like clean laundry and lemon polish—the kind of clean that came from habit, not from trying to impress anyone. The living room was small but comfortable, floors clean, a dark blue couch tucked against one wall, worn soft at the corners. The throw pillows didn’t sag—they were plain, solid colors, no patterns or embroidered quotes, just something to lean against at the end of a shift.
No TV on. Just the quiet hum of the fridge from the kitchen and the faint click of the old pipes settling for the night.
Tessa used to hate that sound. Said it reminded her of something crawling in the walls.
She’d left most of the decorations behind when we split. Said I needed something to fill the space. I’d packed most of them into boxes in the hall closet after she moved out. Didn’t feel right pretending like the framed quotes and fake succulents were mine.
We’d done it the way people hoped they could. Quiet. Clean. Signed the papers, hugged at the courthouse, promised to be kind when we ran into each other at the grocery store. And we were. Hell, she even sent a Christmas card last year from wherever she moved to up north. New husband, a dog in the picture.
No drama. No hard feelings.
But that didn’t mean I liked coming home to silence.
I stood in the kitchen, leaning against the counter, thumb tracing the Formica edge, thinking about Sage’s face when he left.
Ari needs you, Reid.
Ari wasn’t just a good time. He wasn’t some fling I could burn out of my system. He was more than that. Always had been.
Ari wasn’t the first boy I ever wanted, but he was the first one I never let myself have.
And now here he was, grown, smiling at me like the years in between didn’t mean a damn thing. Like he didn’t know what it would cost for me to want him back.
I pushed off the counter, heading to the bedroom. Everything neat, squared away—bed made, boots lined up by the closet, dresser top holding the usual: a folded pocket knife, a small tray for loose change and keys, and an old photo of Mom and Dad, edges curled from years of dusting. Simple. Clean. Like everything else in my life—kept in order, even when my head wasn’t.
It looked like a room someone lived in out of habit, not love.
I sat on the edge of the bed, elbows on my knees, staring at the floorboards, wondering what the hell I thought I was doing.
Wanting something didn’t make it right.
But that didn’t make it stop, either.
SEVEN
ARI
“You know I’ll always have your back, baby.”
Her voice was soft, but it carried, like it had been stitched with all the things she never used to have time to say when I was younger. She folded one of my Orion Skye T-shirts, smoothing the fabric flat like she was smoothing something in herself.
I sat at the kitchen table—the same one where I used to sit cross-legged on the chair, drawing dragons in the corners of my homework while Mom stirred dinner on the stove. The varnish had worn thin along the edges, and if you looked close enough, you could see the faint lines of old crayon—little flashes of color like the past trying to hang on.
