Page 58 of Nave
My stomach twisted as I slid into the car.
I spent the whole ride back to the homestead reminding myself that it was for the best, that men hadn’t offered me much good in the past, that my baby and I were probably better off alone.
But when I lay down to sleep, all I could think about was Nave’s lips, his hands, the soft flutter of his breath on my skin, his hand holding mine.
“Dammit.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Nave
“As much as I appreciate not having to mow the lawn myself,” my father said, coming out on the front path with two glasses of iced coffee in his hands, “I have to wonder what has you up and over here at ten in the morning to do it for me.”
I pushed the ancient mower—the same one I’d been pushing through the yard since I was a teenager, thanks to Uncle Seth fixing the damn thing up anytime it broke—toward the garage and then met my father on the path.
I took my coffee and followed him to the front porch, both of us sitting down in the shade.
We’d had a momentary reprieve from the unrelenting August heat and humidity. But it was back at full blast. I was soaked through with sweat after just an hour.
“So, is it club shit or personal shit?”
“Why would it be club shit?”
“Eh, anytime a group of men gets together there can be issues. Especially when there are new prospects.”
“Nah. I like Spike and Cain. They’re polar opposites of each other, but it’s a good balance.”
“So it’s personal. You know I’ve never been one to tell you how to live your life, but I’m gonna lay the guilt on thick here. Your mother is not gonna take it well if you take off on the road again, doing God-knows-what with God-knows-who.”
“I’m not going anywhere. It was time to come home, and I plan to stay here.”
My father looked out at the distance, our profiles so similar that I had a glimpse into exactly what I would look like at his age.
Not too shabby.
“This wouldn’t have anything to do with a certain woman staying at the homestead. And the fact that you have been there every day since she moved in. Would it?”
It wasn’t every day. Not since the woods. I’d been trying to give her space. The last thing she needed was to try to put up with my advances while she was trying to stitch her life back together. And, you know, come to terms with being a single mom.
I still dropped in. Brought groceries that seemed less and less necessary, offered to take her to appointments, to do tasks around her little yard.
As time went on, I was finding fewer and fewer reasons to show up.
I didn’t talk about it to anyone. Not even my closer friends in the club, who kept giving me curious glances when I would take off in the middle of the day, knowing where I was heading.
But this was my old man.
The calmest, least judgmental person I’d ever met. And he was pretty solid with the advice-giving. As much as my teenage self would hate to know the adult version of me thought so.
“Yeah.”
“I heard it through the grapevine that you knew her from the road.”
“The grapevine stretches all the way out here?” I asked, shaking my head.
“Don’t believe the shit about women being gossipy. These men like to talk too.”
“Yeah, I met her when I was on the road. I was doing a job for a crew in the south who were robbing armored cars. For the record, I didn’t do any robbing.”
