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“Hey, this isn’t what I want,” he implores when I start to turn away, “I really like you, Scandal.”
“Then give me a call when you figure it out.”
“He’s my brother, my best friend… don’t you get that?”
“I do, that’s why I’m not mad.” I shrug my shoulders, frowning at him as I walk backwards to the car. “But I’m not waiting around either, Carter. I’m not somebody’s dirty little secret. Not anymore.”
I pull open the door to the car and climb inside. Stanley blows a raspberry. “All good?”
“Boys are fucking stupid,” I mutter.
“I could’a told you that.”
Smiling, I flip down the visor to block the sun from my eyes and off we go.
A short while later he adds, “Just ’cause I swore last night, doesn’t mean you get free rein.”
I huff, but it’s done so in humor. Then I buckle in because I forgot to before, and he keeps on going.
“Are you coming to the shop when you finish?” he asks, sounding surprisingly hopeful.
I nod eagerly. “Definitely.” I pick up his house keys from the cup holder and look at the picture of him and Lane together on a water ride. Stanley is smiling and Lane is clearly screaming. Her eyes are squeezed shut and her mouth is wide open. “When did you both meet?”
“We met in high school; we’ve been together ever since.”
“That’s how many years?”
He blows out a breath and widens his eyes as he works out the math. His thumbs tap against the steering wheel in tempo with the clicking sound of the blinker. “Twenty-two. And we have been married…” He clicks his tongue against his palate. “Twenty.”
“Why didn’t you ever have kids of your own?”
His eyes flash with sorrow. “I was stationed in Kenya for a few months back in two thousand and five where I contracted malaria via a bug bite.”
“It made you infertile?”
He nods grimly. “Not so much the disease but the medications to treat it. We didn’t know until I returned and a year later we started trying for a kid of our own. Three years after that, I finally went to get checked out and we discovered the problem was me.”
“You didn’t consider a sperm donation or anything?”
“I was a stubborn idiot,” he admits. “I didn’t want to raise another man’s baby. I didn’t think myself capable of loving a kid at all, to be honest. The things I’ve seen while deployed… truth be told, when I discovered I couldn’t have kids, I was relieved. I’m not a good person. I haven’t done good things.”
“But you changed your mind?”
“I grew up, and learned to manage my PTSD, took me a while but I got there.”
“And now you have me.” I gnaw on my lip. “Why did you take me out of the asylum?”
“Because your doctor told me you didn’t deserve to be in there.”
I smile at the thought of Dr. Conway. She was amazing, such a lovely woman. She promised me she’d get me out of there and she did. “I didn’t know. She never said.” Another thought comes to mind. “But… if you’re not working for my uncle and never have been, how and why do you know about me?”
“Your mother,” he replies vaguely and we pull up outside the school. “Have a good day. I’ll see you in the shop this afternoon.”
I hesitate, my hand on the handle gripping it tightly as I pull and listen for the click. “You’d have been a great dad, Stanley.”
I climb from the car and don’t look back, though I know he lingers.
“Yo, Scandal!” Alice calls, waving me over to where she’s standing with Asher and Joey.
Smiling, I join my friends, a skip in my step and warmth in my heart.
“S’up, Scandy?” Joey says, raising his chin at me.
“S’up, Joey?”
He smiles and looks over my shoulder where Carter is coming towards us on his bike. He doesn’t look my way, but then I’m not sure he has time. He’s going way too fast.
An arm goes around my shoulder. “My name isn’t Jeff.”
I look up at the blond-haired angel of a guy and start laughing.
“Just gotta lock this up.” Carter yells breathlessly as he flies past us, ignoring Mr. Jefferson who shouts at him to dismount his vehicle on school grounds. Though I did notice his eyes flicker between me and Jeff whose actual name I don’t know.
Mr. Jefferson shakes his head and sighs, not bothering to go after him. There’s no way he’d be able to keep up.
“I better go meet him,” Joey says, pointing his thumb in the direction of the bike lockup area.
“I need to go warm up.” I nod to the entrance. “Meet you after second period?”
“Fuck yeah, I have so much to tell you,” Alice crassly blurts and hugs me briefly. “And so much to ask.”
I recall my conversation with Carter this morning and pull her to the side. “Don’t tell anyone about the Carter thing yet, okay? He’s umm…”
