Page 15 of Happenstance
My lips curled in a crooked smirk. I could play dirty too.
My father’scar was parked outside when I pulled up to the house. Unlike my friends’ parents, mine preferred to be involved in our upbringing. I grew up with nannies, but my mother was the one to tuck me in at night, and my father taught me how to ride a bike. Maybe it was because of my brother?
Safety wasn’t a factor associated with Preston. The only other one of my friends that had parental involvement to the same degree were Micha and Mase. Lou was so embedded in their lives, it bordered on the obsessive.
I walked into the house, hung my keys on the hook by the door, and headed for the parlor, where I knew my father would be. Another difference between my friends and I was the place I called home. Yes, we lived in a gated community where I could look outside and see my neighbors. It wasn’t that we couldn’t afford the grand estates that everyone else had. This was my father’s choice. He believed extravagance rotted the brain.
Mike Brady didn’t have shit on my dad. Dean Whitley had a saying for everything. If I fell off my bike, he’d tell me to get back on and keep trying. Never let the world defeat me. When Preston killed my dog, it was the everything has a season speech. And when I lost my first game, he said I could never understand the value of winning, if I’d never lost. I skipped down the steps to the parlor, wondering what he’d say about this situation.
I found him sitting in one of the wingback chairs, reading today’s newspaper. He looked up long enough to nod at me and set his glass of brandy down on the table beside him.
“How was school, son?”
Rage still boiled through my veins. All I could think about was how my hands would look coated in Luke Lannister’s blood. Logically, I knew he was probably just talking to Lana. That’s what teachers did. They found the lonely student and tried to encourage them to participate. What I couldn’t shake was the way his eyes sparkled up at her. I knew that look. Fuck sakes, Logan perfected that look. Sly prick had it so perfected that chicks didn’t even know he was flirting with them until it was too late.
“School was fine,” I muttered, while sauntering over to the bar to down a shot of scotch. It wasn’t Luke Lannister’s blood, but it might dull my craving for it.
“Buck up, son, everyone has bad games.”
I stopped and glanced back at my father, bothered by the fact that he could tell something was wrong. Huh? Bringing the shot glass up to my lips, I tipped my head back and let the alcohol burn a path down my throat. Lana’s little games were making me slip. I didn’t slip. Even fucking Lou, the esteemed psychologist, thought I was a regular chip off the old block. Now that shit took talent.
“You need to just move on.” My father looked up from his newspaper and raised his fist in that ‘go get ‘em’ way he did. “That’s what makes a man.”
I leaned against the bar and forced my tense muscles to relax. “That’s what makes a man, is it?”
“That’s right.” He nodded and picked up the glass beside him. “It’ll only get you down if you let it. Just pull up your pants and move forward.”
Yeah, I’d heard that one before too. Though it was oddly fitting for this situation.
“I got someone pregnant.”
Brandy went flying everywhere as my father hunched over in a coughing fit.
“Kinda too late to pull up my pants now, Dad.”
After managing to catch his breath, my father sprang out of the chair and began pacing around the room. I rested my elbow on the bar behind me and patiently waited for him to stop muttering under his breath. This was pretty much the same thing he did when Preston knocked someone up two years ago. Right down to the curses he was grumbling. That girl was given a choice; get rid of it, or free fall off the bluffs. The second Lana let me touch her, she lost all freedom to choose.
“Okay,” he finally stopped pacing and looked at me. “We can take care of this.”
“I don’t want to take care of it.”
There was the shock again. “You’re saying you want to keep it.”
“Yes.”
He cocked a brow at me. “And the girl?”
“Her too,” I nodded.
The strange thing was how quickly the unease on his face morphed into a smile. That, I did not expect.
“Alright. We’re going to need a few things. But first things first, we have to get you a contract, my boy.”
“That’s gonna be a problem.” The contracts with the Order required the signature of the male head of house. In Lana’s case, there was none. “She doesn’t have a father.”
“That’s fine. We can go to her uncle, brother, or grandfather if we have to.”
I shook my head. “She doesn’t have any of those either.”
