"And I regret that, thank you."
"Cal." Dad pins me with patience, like a man who has nothing but time and very few problems left in the world that aren't my problems. "What happened?"
I slouch into my chair.
"It was a kiss. That's all it was. We talked and then I kissed her and that was it."
"And?"
"And nothing, other than I am a dead man. Rome is going to find out and he is going to remove me from the land of the living and bury me in concrete at one of his builds and nobody will find me for decades."
"Rome isn't going to bury you," Dad says with a roll of his eyes.
"You don't know what Rome is capable of."
Trust me. Rome looks like the kind of man who would happily kill for his sister and only regret not doing it sooner. My dad does not know Rome Moreland like I do.
"I know he's your friend and men don't get killed over kisses anymore." Dad tilts his head. "Was it her idea?"
"No." I pause. "I don't know. It wasn't nobody's idea, it just..."
I stop, because I'm about to describe something that doesn't want to be described.
"It happened."
Dad is watching me closely, smiling in a way that's far too affectionate for my comfort.
"I knew there was something. From the first time I saw you in the same room, I knew."
"You knew nothing."
"I knew everything."
He is serene about it, deeply, maddeningly serene. "I watched that girl walk into my hospital room and decide she belonged there, and I watched you from the doorway, and I knew. The same way I knew when I heard about you walking into doors when she was there."
"That wasn't because of her. I had just come off a shift."
I fucking hate this town sometimes. A man can't walk into a door without it being news.
"She makes you throw out the rulebook. Every last page of it. That's not nothing, Cal."
I should have known Dad would do this.
"It's also not... It's not simple. There are reasons."
"Rome?"
"Rome is one."
"What else?"
I go back to scraping my thumb along the edge.
"She's twenty-two."
"And?"
"And she's twenty-two, that's the whole argument. She's at the start of everything. She's going back to school soon, she's got interviews and decisions and a whole life she's building in a different city. She didn't come to Harbor Hill to settle down. She came here to rest and recharge and then she's going back to all of it."
