Page 43 of The Run Home
Boon
I spentthe whole weekend ruminating over Shae and what we’d done together. Listen, I wasn’t exactly a purist when it came to sex. I felt like two consenting adults shouldn’t restrict themselves sexually. Bodies were made for pleasure, and this world was hard enough. Why not indulge in a little pleasure when we could? The point being, I’d slept with plenty of women in my years on the road and yet not one of them had stuck with me the day after like Shae.
Every second of our time together the last two nights had been memorable, most of it pleasurable. What I didn’t like was that moment when she kept calling it hate-fucking and then told me to get out after I made her scream my name. What woman didn’t like a little cuddling after the fact? Most women begged me to stick around for the night and have breakfast with them in the morning. Shae though? She wanted megone.
It was weird.
And it was messing with my head.
“There’s no way I’ll find a dress this late,” Kinsley whined to my mom at the dinner table.
I pushed lasagna around my plate, wondering if Shae was going to leave her back door unlocked for me tonight like I’d asked her to. She owed me a schoolteacher fantasy, but there was one thing I was learning about adult-Shae. She wasn’t a pushover anymore. If she didn’t want me to sneak in, she’d bar me from entering and wouldn’t apologize for it. Her newfound self-confidence just made me want her more.
“We can just go to the mall tomorrow after practice and see what the department stores have left. Something is better than nothing, right?”
Homecoming was this weekend, and Kinsley hadn’t stopped talking about it. The two of them kept chatting as I tuned them out. I wondered if Shae would wear her glasses while I fucked her. I really liked her in her glasses.
“Yeah, Tatum said he booked a hotel room for us afterward.”
My head snapped up and I could barely see Kinsley through the sheet of red coloring my vision. “Excuse me?” I thundered, ready to get in my truck and head to Tatum’s house to tell his parents what a little piece of shit he was. Right before I locked Kinsley in her room.
Mom and Kinsley burst out laughing. I narrowed my eyes. “What’s going on?”
“Welcome to the conversation, Dad,” Kinsley said dryly.
“Ha, ha. What did I miss?”
Mom sniffed. “Everything. Where’s your head, boy?” She looked at me over her glass of water, a knowing little smirk there that spelled trouble.
“Coming up with drills for this week’s practice,” I lied.
“Well, I’m going to homecoming with Tatum.” Kinsley held up her hands before I could explode. “No hotel, and we’re going in a group, so you can calm down.”
Now I understood why women hated it when you told them to calm down. I was officially not calming down until Kinsley came back home from the dance without one hair on her head out of place. I grumbled, and the two women cracked up again.
I helped clear the table, and Kinsley and I did the dishes together. Mom went into the living room to knit in front of the television. Kinsley officially didn’t flounce out of every room I was in, and I was taking that as a huge step in our relationship.
“Listen, Kinsley,” I began.
“Iamlistening. You just have to say something worth listening to,” Kinsley interrupted.
Jesus. “You sound like Ms. Fletcher.”
Kinsley grinned. It made her look about ten years old again. “I know. That’s where I learned it from.”
God help me if the two of them ever teamed up against me. I waved the topic of Ms. Fletcher away. I couldn’t think about her while talking to my daughter. “I don’t mind you going with Tatum, but you’re going to have a curfew. And absolutely no drinking or drugs. Understand?”
She rolled her eyes. “Of course. Mom didn’t raise an idiot.”
The innocent comment hit me in the chest. Her mom raised her. Not me. “I know. And I’m thankful every day that she did such a good job.”
Kinsley studied the side of my face as I handed her a rinsed plate. She didn’t put it in the dishwasher. “You know, Mom never said bad things about you.”
I looked at her. Surprised she wanted to talk about this. She normally shut down all my conversation about her mom or her life with her. “I’m glad about that too. Your mom’s a good person, Kinsley. We weren’t married and wouldn’t have worked out as a couple, but that didn’t mean we didn’t care for each other or didn’t respect the other person.”
Kinsley nodded, putting the dish in the machine finally. “Yeah. I was talking with Cassie the other day. Her parents are divorced and they hate each other. She says they scream at each other all the time, even on the phone. I guess I just never really considered it could be bad like that between you and Mom. I’m glad it’s not.”
Well, shit. Maybe I’d done one small thing right when it came to Kinsley. We continued to put the dishes in the dishwasher and clean the countertops in silence. Afterward, she escaped to her room where she kept the door shut and earbuds in.
