Page 21 of The Run Home
His darkening gaze took in the way her tongue darted out to lick the peanut butter again. Jeez, the girl was barely legal, and Boon hadn’t wasted any time zeroing in on her attempts to snag his attention. I rolled my eyes and looked away.
“Alyssa! I’m the school nurse!” Why did everything she say have to come with an exclamation mark at the end of it?
Lydia nudged my foot under the table and made a motion about wrapping up our lunch. I nodded in relief. We stuffed our food back in our bags and stood.
“Well, this has been…lovely.” I plastered on a fake smile for both Alyssa and Boon and scurried away. They probably wouldn’t even notice we were gone anyway. Maybe Boon couldhelp her lick up the peanut butter she was dripping all over like a toddler with her first semi-solid food.
Every time I thought I got a glimpse of a good man under all that muscle and swagger, Boon reminded me of what a conceited a-hole he really was inside. Which was exactly the reminder I needed to put him firmly out of my brain.
“Wow,” was all Lydia had to say as we went back in the direction of our classrooms. I didn’t know if she meant the blatant flirting right in front of us like we didn’t exist or the magnetic appeal of the a-hole named Boon when he turned his laser focus on you. Either way, I didn’t care.
Not one bit.
CHAPTER NINE
Boon
“Cheers, little bro,”Colson said as he handed me a long-necked bottle of local beer. We both took a healthy gulp, staring out at the front of the family farm from the front porch.
The whole family was over for dinner tonight, a requirement Mom had badgered us about all week. None of us would have missed the event, even without her constant harassment. Contrary to how we spoke to each other in curses and mean names, my brothers and I loved each other. It wasn’t exactly a hardship to spend a Friday night together under the same roof again.
It had been one hell of a week. I just needed a minute outside in the cool breeze of a fall evening before I faced everyone inside. The smile hadn’t left Kinsley’s face the whole time my brothers, their wives, and their children surrounded her. I’d never thought about it before, but she was an only child, and as far as I knew, her mom didn’t have any family around. The loud voices of a house full of family must have been overwhelming for her.
I was about to step in and tell them to give her some space, but then I studied her face. Her eyes were lit up and sparkling. Her cheeks were flushed, and the grin was genuine. I headed outside instead, letting her get to know her uncles and aunts and cousins, a terrible ache in my ribs for keeping her from them for so long.
“Kinsley’s amazing,” Colson said finally, breaking into the comfortable silence between us.
I pushed against the wood porch floor, sending my rocker swinging. “Yeah, she is.”
“Warrick said he’s going to buy her a pair of Rottweilers to wear to school. Got any idea what the fuck those are?”
I barked out a humorless laugh. “Probably some godawful expensive jeans only douchebags wear.” Warrick was fairly wealthy after selling off his businesses before returning to Blueball, but the kind of wealthy with no taste.
“There a reason you’re avoiding Kinsley?”
My head swung immediately in his direction. Leave it to Colson to shoot the shit and then whack me across the face with a two-by-four of a question.
“I’m not avoiding her.”
Colson shrugged. “Sure seems like it to me.”
I shook my head, pissed all of a sudden. “I’m not avoiding her. I try to talk to her every day. She mostly gives me eye rolls and the cold shoulder. Sometimes she smiles and laughs, and that’s when I leave her alone. I like seeing her happy. She’s just never happy around me.”
Colson stood up and headed for the front door. “Well, not to sound like Mom or anything, but you need to figure that shit out. You’ve got a half a year to make things right with your own daughter.”
With that parting shot, he went inside. I guzzled down the rest of the beer in a fit of self-pity. It wasn’t my fault I spent mostof Kinsley’s childhood on the road for my job. The infrequent visits had always been fine when she was little. Things had started to change around middle school. By freshman year of high school, she hated my guts. I wasn’t sure what changed, and I sure as hell didn’t know how to fix it.
I rolled my shoulders back and went inside, forcing my real feelings behind the easy-go-lucky, life-of-the-party guy I’d always been. When we sat down at the dining table to eat, I got to brag about Kinsley playing in the volleyball game last night.
“She hit the shi—boozy out of the ball,” I said excitedly, barely remembering at the last minute to filter my swear words in front of Georgia, Warrick and Emmerleigh’s six-year-old daughter.
Georgia giggled. “What’s a shiboozy?”
“It’s when you hit the ball and you score a point because of it,” Kinsley answered her smoothly.
I shot her a wink in thanks for saving me. She rolled her eyes. Hey, at least she hadn’t flounced out of the room when I complimented her. I’d take that as progress.
“Well, your dad used to hit a lot of shiboozies too, so I guess that makes sense,” Mom drawled. “Ms. Fletcher came by earlier today and told me you’re doing great in class too.”
