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Kyle Lancaster had always been an attractive man—and still was—with the world at his feet. What people never recognized, thanks to the never-graying hair, hard jaw, and well-muscled physique, was that when I said he had the world at his feet, I meant literally. Buried six feet down, in the casket he picked out with a newborn in his arms.
His example had always made sense to me—never settling down again after my mother passed. In the early years, he had me to worry about, a crying, puking, screaming baby with all the stubbornness I had now and then some. But his routine in loneliness never waned, and I figured it was a move of a man who knew he’d had the right fit from the puzzle of life, and the rest of the pile was just pieces. Maybe, if you pushed really hard, they’d bend into place, but as far as being made for that spot, cut specifically by their maker to fit with him, he’d never find a duplicate. It was ironic, but lately, it felt remarkably like I was living his life in reverse. My mother had died during my birth. Up until then, my dad had had it all, and after, for the entirety of my life, he’d been living with just a mound of pieces—and so had I. But I was snapping in with my one fitting piece now. At least, I was trying my goddamn hardest to.
“Dad, this is—” I started to introduce then. Winnie’s eyes flared noticeably on the word “Dad.”
“Dr. Winslow,” she interrupted. “Winnie to you,” she added with a wink.
I smiled at the melodic confidence in her voice. “She’s—”
“The team physician,” she broke in again. “New to the team, but I really love it.”
“I like her,” my dad remarked with a batty old smile—the only part of him that hinted at his age. “Knows enough not to wait around for you. Gets right to the point herself.”
I wasn’t thinking that myself, though.
It felt to me like she was beating me to the punch to prove a point—to draw a line between us. A line that defined personal and business and meant a very specific thing about a meeting with my father. A goddamn line I didn’t want drawn because it was ugly and dark and reeked of permanent marker, the words “fuck buddy” illustrated perfectly in shaded bubble letters.
It conceded the point, finally, that we were friends, but it didn’t budge an inch on the possibility we might be more.
I wasn’t yet sure exactly what I wanted, but I didn’t want that.
“Actually, Dad, Winnie and I are dating.”
Winnie sputtered and choked on nothing more than her tied tongue and a mouthful of saliva. I pulled her tight body close and peered down into the distressed and murky pools of her too-pretty eyes.
“Okay, Fred?”
The use of her ridiculous nickname only agitated her more. The seas of her blue eyes raged, and her plump lips thinned into a tight line. In some twisted way, it felt fucking satisfying to make her feel the same way I’d felt only moments before by stating one simple fact.
“Uh-huh,” my dad hummed knowingly. “The sex between the two of you must be dynamite.”
Jesus. I jerked my head. My dad never said shit like that. Acted it out, implied it, sure. But said it outright? No. That was really more Dr. Cummings’s—Georgia’s mother—style. She was a sex therapist, and her knack for getting straight to the weird and dirty was quite impressive.
“What?” Winnie asked through a startled laugh, sure she’d heard him wrong, but I could guarantee she hadn’t. Each horrifying word was burned in my brain forever, a souvenir to take forward into each and every one of my nightmares.
I probably owe Georgia an apology because this is embarrassing as fuck.
My dad didn’t seem even a little ashamed, though—even when I dragged a very threatening finger across the line of my throat. In fact, if I wasn’t mistaken, I saw a goddamn twinkle of enjoyment in his eye.
“All that passion.” He smirked and looked directly at Winnie. “You went willingly into his arms, doll. That means the heart knows. All that fire in your eyes means your brain is the only part strong enough to fight.”
“Dad—”
“That’s how it was for Wes’s mother and me.”
My throat clogged at the unexpected mention of my mother. He spoke of her fondly always, but he never spoke about them as a couple. I always got the feeling that it hurt too much—that years and years did nothing to make it easier to talk about. Everything I knew about them together up until this point had been pure assumption.
But he looked at ease now.
I felt Winnie’s entire body shift with the force of her swallow.
“The fight is fun,” he told Winnie on a whisper, and then shook his head. “But not even half as much as giving in.”
Her body relaxed into mine minutely, as if commanded by his words, and I took the opportunity to plaster her side to mine even tighter.
Unfortunately, her phone rang almost instantaneously, shocking her out of the trance and robbing me of my enjoyment. Part of me felt like it was an emergency call that she’d planned in advance to bail her out of this completely unpredictable situation—the timing was just that perfect.
She put the phone to her ear and listened for three or four beats in time, and I knew what the words out of her mouth would be even before she spoke them. “On my way.”
Still, it was game day, and I did have a vested interest in any of the potential things that could have been happening on the other end of that phone call. When I raised my brows, she put my mind at ease. “Nothing big. No worries.”
Turning to my father, she took his hand in hers. “It was so nice to meet you, Mr. Lancaster.”
“Kyle, doll, and the pleasure is all mine.”
She smiled genuinely, the beam most women gave to flirtatious old men with something extra, and took off down the hall at a speed-walk.
She didn’t look back—and I hated it.
“I should have talked more about your mother,” my father whispered as soon as Winnie was out of earshot. I closed my eyes tight and shook my head.
I was too mentally wrecked to have the big talk now. I just couldn’t do it.
So, without acknowledging his admission, I started to usher my dad in the opposite direction. “Better get you to your seat, Pop.”
He pulled me to a stop and barked a harsh, “Bullshit.”
“Dad,” I warned and started to walk again.
“I’m not going to say much of anything,” he protested, pulling me to a stop a second time like an anchor would a boat. I could float all I wanted until the slack ran out, but until I let him say what he had to say, he’d just keep yanking me right back. “Just one, tiny little nugget from one man to another.”
I took a deep breath and nodded.
“She’s right to be wary of you.”
I tried not to let his words hurt because I knew they were true. Still, I expected a tiny bit more coddling from my father. Unbidden and unwelcome, an ache took shape under the left side of my rib cage.
“Thanks,” I said bitingly, reaching up to rub the tension in my forehead.
“Son,” he called, and I lifted my head to look him in the eyes—eyes that looked just like mine.
“You’re right to fight to prove her wrong.”
“Are we really doing this?” I asked Wes as I cut a fresh loaf of bread into slices.
He dropped the pasta into boiling water and hitched his hip against the counter. “Doing what?”
“The whole meet-the-parents thing?”
Wes had decided that he would like to join my family and me for our weekly Thursday dinners, and he then hadn’t given me a chance to say no. But he hadn’t given me a chance to say yes either, and I honestly wasn’t sure which answer I would have given.
Time with him, in general, felt like home. When we weren’t having ah-may-zing sex, we were flirting and teasing and being playful, and he genuinely made me happy.
But there was so much I didn’t know, couldn’t predict, about our future, and the more I inserted him into my life, Lex’s life—my family’s life—the more it would hurt if and when he decided not to be in them anymore.
“And meet the three remaining brothers, too,” he added with a smirk.
I laughed. “Yeah. That.”
He came up behind me as I stirred the pasta sauce and patted my ass. “You’ve got nothing to fear, Fred. I’ve got this,” he whispered into my ear and then placed a soft kiss to my neck. If I hadn’t been feeling anxiety about Wes spending an entire meal with my mother and four older brothers, my mind probably would’ve taken a detour from Serious Business Avenue straight to Pervy Road.
“I don’t think you know my brothers.”
“I know one of your brothers. And he’s really warming up to me.”
I turned in his arms, rife with skepticism.
“Remy’s warming up to you? How do you figure that?”
“Just a few weeks ago, he was telling me to go fuck myself every time he saw me. Now, he just glares. That seems like progress to me.”
I shook my head.
“A Christmas miracle, perhaps.”
“It’s not Christmas,” I said, and he pushed his lips to mine and spoke there.
“Almost.”
He was being lighthearted, my very favorite version of him, and my entire body started to throb as my heart rate sped up.
