Page 86 of Tempted By Danger

“But did you see her, though?Like, really look at her.I mean… you get what I’m saying. I tried.I really tried. I tried hard to fight it.”

“Whew. A week of fighting. Don’t know how youwould have lasted six months.”

That made me chuckle.

While wecontinued onto my parents’, I checked out the Reddit page that Quinci was talking about, and she wasn’t lying.There were several girls in there comparing their sex stories with me.Ionly remembered a few of their names, but if I saw them again, I’d know.I wondered what Quinci thoughtwhen she first read them.

“Inhale… five seconds… exhale…five seconds.” I breathed when Bernard turned into theyard of my parents’ home and my childhood home.

Over the last couple of years, they’ve hadseveral renovations done.Everybody still stayed in the house except for me, but Denim and Diesel had their own apartments in the city. Declan, his girl, and son stayed in their own suite.

As for me, I came out here as less as possible. Our relationship hadn’t been repaired since the day they took it upon themselves to send me away from school. Or to keep how I came to be away from me. Sure, I couldn’t change any of it now, butan apology would’ve helped.

Anything, but nope.

My father thought handing the business over to me would make us cool, and my motherthought inviting me to thesewhackass dinners would changeshittoo.They would do anything except apologize for what they did. They were probably too embarrassed to apologize because I was the one who was supposed to ruin the family, but I was the one who saved it, knowing nothing about his hotel business.

Yeah, I had a chip on my shoulder, and I didn’t care.

“Youcomingin?”

“Ha. I have a crossword puzzlethat I would like to finish.” He looked at his watch. “A few Mondays ago, you stayed for, like, twenty-five minutes. That new pussy got you wide open, so you won’t hear any of the insults until, like, forty-five minutes in. So, I’ll be finished with my crossword puzzle by then.”

“Am I that predictable?”

“With them, yes.”

“You want a plate?”

“No, thank you.”

While walking up to the door, I inhaled and exhaled slowly.When I walked in the house, a sweet swell permeated the air. Immediately, I thoughtofQuinci and wondered if she couldcook. More than likely she could because she from the country.

As soon as I rounded the corner out of the foyer, my nephew jumped out with his Nerf gun.

“Gotcha, Uncle Dymon!” He pulled the trigger, and the orange Styrofoam piece hit me in my leg.

“Ah!” I grabbed my leg and slowly fell to my knees. “You got me.”

“I’m sorry, Uncle Dymon.”

“Only a hug can make it better.”

When I opened my arms, he dropped the gun, ran into my arms, and rested his head on my shoulder. Donavan Danger wasone of the best things that Declan ever did. He was the perfect five-year-old and always tugged at my heart strings.In a way, he was the glue that kept us together most times, and he shouldn’t have that much responsibility on him.

When everything went down with my dad, our family was a mess. We thought we were prepared, but we were not. It was hard to leave the house without the press all in ourfucking faces. Everybody being confined to the same housewas ashitshow.The 12,000 square-foot house wasn’t big enough forall ofus.We were barely speaking to each other if it wasn’t for meetings with PR’s or lawyers.

Duringthat storm,we found out Donavan was allergic to peanuts in the worst way. He’d been givena peanut butter cracker for a snack, and, like, a few minutes later, he just dropped to the floor, face swelling and eyes rolling in the back of his head. He’d gone into anaphylactic shock. We were able to get him to the hospital, but his little brain had been without oxygen for five minutes. He was in a coma for two weeks.

Talk about the worst two weeks in my life.Our lives. That was the one time that our family came together. All our fighting had been replaced with tears and prayers. I prayed from outside the door because all it took was one time to see him hooked up to all those machines to know that I could never see him like that again.There were a couple of times that the doctor told us to prepare, but he kept fighting. Kept fighting until hefinally woke up.

So, when I said that hewas the glue, I meant that everyone always dropped everything for him.We didn’t miss a school program.We didn’t miss an activity program.

“Donovan, come get washed…” Declanstopped when he saw me hugging him.

I stood with him in my arms.

“Dad, can Uncle Dymon get me washed up?”

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