Page 72 of Wild For You
“Look, if you want to go, I’ll take you home.”
Doing a complete one-eighty, she looked up at me with wide, angry eyes. “What? No way. I’m not missing dinner.”
“Okay.” I knew better than to argue with her and point out that she did, indeed, suggest she wanted to leave. But I also knew that hormones surged in pregnant women, causing their emotions to go all over the place.
Every night, we spent an hour reading over the pregnancy books. She got a kick out of learning size comparisons and even downloaded an app that showed her food that the baby’s current size matched.
This week, he or she was the size of a strawberry.
The front door opened with a flourish, and my mom stood on the other side with her hand planted on her hip. “I’m not sure if you know, but dinner will be served inside.”
“Sorry, Mom.” I leaned in and kissed her cheek before stepping over the threshold with my crutch under my arm.
“Kelsey, come on in. You can help me settle an argument with my daughters.”
I was propped up on the couch in the living room by the time Kelsey made it into the open concept kitchen.
My sisters were arguing about something, and it seemed like Kelsey was going to be the tiebreaker.
Nash walked in shortly after and kissed my mom before noticing Kelsey and I had arrived. He stood behind his recliner, greeting all of us. Nate, Owen, Talon, and Colton were focused on the hockey game playing on television.
“Mom says dinner will be ready in about thirty minutes,” Dad said to the group.
“Sounds good,” I said as Owen jokingly complained about starving.
“Hey, Andrew, can I talk to you for a minute?” I immediately reverted back to the kid who thought he was in trouble. Sweat prickled along my hairline and everything.
I was forty, for cripe’s sake. I shouldn’t be scared of my stepfather, but there I was, shooting worried glances at my sisters as I followed him to his office.
We stepped inside the wood-paneled room, and I closed the door behind me.
“All right, I’m going to come right out and ask. Am I in trouble?”
Nash let out one of those full belly laughs that left you smiling. “No, son. I don’t think you’ve ever actually been in trouble. I never had to worry about you.”
“What about the time you caught me drinking beer on the water tower and throwing the cans at the passing cars?” I reminded him.
He shrugged. “Not your finest moment.”
“You grounded me for a week.”
He smirked. “That was mainly because we didn’t like the kid you were hanging out with. And then the next week, football season started, and you never did it again.”
He was right. Football helped me keep my head on straight. It gave me purpose in a way that school never did.
“Other than that one scenario, we never had to wonder what you were up to. You were always a good kid.”
“I worried that if I acted out, y’all would send me away,” I divulged.
“What made you think that?” Nash asked, sitting on one side of the leather couch, gesturing for me to sit on the other.
Shrugging, I explained how the fact that I wasn’t his kid, and he and my mom had their own family, always made me feel like I was just the extra. And not in the good, bonus way.
It took every ounce of strength I possessed to be vulnerable with the man I looked up to my entire life. He was the only father I knew, and he set the mark on how to be a great dad. But even being great never squashed those insecurities.
I’d sworn to Kelsey that I’d talk to him about the internal battle I was waging by taking over the farm and where the self-doubt stemmed from.
His shoulders slumped. “You know, I made a promise to your mother when we married that I would never make you feel less than any children we would ever be blessed with. I’m sorry if I did that.”
