Page 7 of Off-Limits Daddy
The engine’s rumble faded into the distance, leaving me standing there, heart racing, one thought echoing louder than anything else:
This is gonna be fun.
THREE
REID
Lunch at the station was never quiet. Too many men stuffed into one break room, too much heat, too much teasing, too many damn stories about who caught what on the weekend or which idiot nearly blew his hand off with fireworks last week.
And it always smelled like someone overcooked bacon. Which was exactly what Marco was doing now, humming off-key and making the whole kitchen smell charred.
Griff leaned back, boots on another chair, working a toothpick between his teeth.
“I had no idea animal rescues were one of your kinks,” he said, flashing a grin like he’d been waiting all shift to say it.
“Shut it.”
I didn’t even lift my head to glare at my teammate, just kept cutting through my sandwich like it’d done me personal wrong.
Boundaries didn’t mean much around here. That’s what happened when you grew up in a town small enough that your kindergarten classmates were still around to watch you mess up adulthood.
I braced for Marco’s contribution. It didn’t take long.
He looked up from the stove, spatula dangling from one hand. “You hear him? SayingDaddylike that in public? People pay good money for that kind of show.”
“Christ,” I muttered.
More laughter. The cheap, easy kind that bounced off cinderblock walls.
Small-town stations were like that. You worked together, sweated through double shifts together, saw each other puking after fires or breaking down after bad calls. You didn’thideshit here.
But this was different. This was abouthim.
I hadn’t seen Ari Goddamn Jackson in years. Not since I made it a damn point to stay busy whenever he came back on breaks. Not that he came that often.
But he’d grown into his body, lean muscle under that soft skin, collarbones I wanted to get my mouth on, jaw clean-shaven, rose-pink lips parted like he was about to either argue with me or beg. Wild curls, curls I wanted to push my fingers through just to see how he’d react. Eyes sharp, like he already knew the kind of trouble he was. Skin smooth, too pretty for someone who never knew when to shut up.
He wasn’t a kid anymore. But he was stillSage’s little brother. The kid who used to trail behind us like a stray with scraped knees, carrying that stupid skateboard everywhere, always trying to get a laugh out of me.
He looked at me like I was both the problem and the solution.
That was the problem. And the temptation.
“Twenty-two going on menace,” Griff said around his toothpick. “Man, I remember when he tried to impress you at the county fair by diving off the dock. What was he, sixteen? He didn’t even see the rocks under the water.”
“Split his forehead open,” Marco said, a smirk curling at the edge of his mouth. “That didn’t stop him, though. Couldn’t keep that kid away from you.”
The way Marco said it made something sharp catch in my chest.
Griff just hummed, toothpick shifting between his teeth.
I finally set my sandwich down, appetite curdling. “He was just a kid.”
“Yeah,” Griff said, eyes wary now. “Was.”
Griff wasn’t lying. Ari wassomething elseentirely. And I’d seen the way he looked at me. Like he still thought I hung the moon, like I hadn’t spent the better part of three years doing everything I could to stayoutof his orbit.
It didn’t stop my gut from tightening like a clenched fist the second I imagined him chasing aftersomeone else. Men closer to his age. Men who didn’t know what to do with a boy like Ari, or how to hold him steady, or how to anchor him when his mouth got ahead of his sense, when his bratty little smiles started looking like pleas for attention.
