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I could take no more.
“What?” I shouted in his face. “What didn’t you? I didn’t blame her.Youdid. But it wasnineteen years ago!”
“Tex, get my car,” Cap growled.
But I was all about my dad.
“Not cool, treating your wife like your dirty little secret,” I sniped. “Springing her on me like a nasty little surprise.”
“It wasn’t me who brought seven people to a dinner without telling me,” Dad shot back.
I got up on my toes to get in his face. “I didn’t ask them. They showed. Think about that, Dad. Think aboutwhythe people who love me are so worried about me having a dinner with my father, they turn up to support me. My father who has notoncebothered to come out and visit me, see the life I’ve built, the family I’ve made, the beauty I have. Think aboutthat.”
“You didn’t come home either,” he retorted.
I threw out my arms. “To what?Home,” I scoffed. “Home to me is your anger and shame and guilt, and you forgetting every…fucking…day you may have lost one daughter, but you had the other one, and you didn’t give that firstshit.”
His head jerked like I’d slapped him.
“Look after your woman, Julien,” Shirleen ordered.
She was a woman too, so she also knew me.
And I was about to lose it.
That was all she had to say.
It was me who had my hand tucked to Cap’s chest, we walked through the beautiful, fairy light-strewn courtyard of Lon’s down the brick walkway and to Cap’s waiting car.
Cap opened my door.
Tex opened Luna’s.
We got in.
And Cap took me away.
* * *
“Shirleen could get used to this.”
We were sitting in the courtyard of the Oasis.
Yes, all of us.
Since Luna had ordered in a bunch of pizzas, and Scott had gone out and got a bunch of craft beer, Linda, Martha, Jacob, Alexis and Sally had also joined us.
Luna ordered more pizza and added some boneless wings.
Shirleen was kicked back in a patio chair, her gold slingbacks on one of the tables, ankles crossed, sipping from a beer.
They’d all followed us to my place, and I’d begged Cap not to send them away, so he didn’t. He definitely didn’t take Luna to drop her off at her place first. He wanted my bestie close to me.
God, yes.
I was totally falling for this guy.
Jacob and Alexis were the only ones in the courtyard when we hit it. They were still frolicking in the pool.
