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CHAPTER TWELVE
“Wait, pix.”
Kelsey’s father caught her hand and held her back from returning to the kitchen, where she’d left Dex. They stood in the spare bedroom, where coats made a mountain on the bed.
When she was little, she’d loved to come into this room after the Santa grab, when the festivities were at their most chaotic, and tunnel under all the coats. It was warm and quiet, and she’d liked the weight on her, too. She’d make a little cave and simply be quiet, telling herself—or one of her stuffed animals, if she’d brought one, or gotten a new one in the grab—a little story until she fell asleep.
She’d told her mother that Dex was taking her home, and they were going to leave. She’d said she’d be by tomorrow to collect Mr. Darcy and help put all the new presents away. Her mother had, of course, gone straight to her father, and he’d followed her in here and repeated his list of concerns. The first item on his list had nothing to do with Dex: she was skipping out on the family tradition of the Rhema lights.
All the rest of the list was about Dex, of course.
Kelsey adored her father and didn’t like making him unhappy. She had never been a rebel, either, and something inside her twanged uncomfortably to resist him so directly.
But she was an adult, and she couldn’t have her father running her love life. So she stood firm.
Holding his hand in both of hers, she said, “Daddy, I love you. I don’t want you to be unhappy. I don’t want you to worry.”
“I do worry. Every day of your life I worry. Some more than others. This is more.”
“You have to trust me, though. You don’t get to pick who I love.”
His brow furrowed. The lacerations in his forehead and eyebrow were still sutured, so he eased away from the expression pretty quickly. “Youlovehim?”
“No, of course not. I don’t know him well enough for that yet.”
“That’s mypoint—you don’t know him and I do.”
She dropped his hand. “Okay, enough. We’re going in circles now. It’s time to stop. I’m the only one who gets to choose who I want to be with. I’m interested in Dex, and he’s interested in me. I don’t know any more than that, but I’d like to see if there’s something there. You said you’d back off. This is where the rubber meets the road, Daddy.”
They stared at each other. Kelsey could see him struggling, and a lot of her wanted to stop hurting him, to give him what he wanted so he’d be happy. But the rest of her understood that her father would never be happy withanyman in her life. He wanted his pixie to stay his pixie forever. He’d deny that, and maybe he didn’t even see it. But she did.
Likely, she’d been slow to date, to move out, to express any independence at allbecauseher father wanted her to be his pixie forever. She loved their relationship, and it hurt her, too, that it was changing. Not weakening, but changing.
She stepped close and wrapped her arms around him. His arms closed around her at once.
“I love you, Daddy. I will always love you, and I always know that you’re at my back.”
“I am. No matter what. I love you so much.”
“I trust you. Now you trust me.”
“I do.” He kissed her cheek and stood back. “If you need me—”
“I know. I will.” She lifted onto her toes and kissed his cheek.
~oOo~
With the obvious exception of her parents, nobody really noticed, or at least remarked on Kelsey and Dex leaving together. They found Grammo and Grampa D and said their goodbyes, and Kelsey hugged Grammo, and then they simply slipped out.
All the Bulls drove trucks of one sort or another. If they had cars, either they were classic models they were restoring or had restored, or their women drove them. Apparently a late-model car ran on estrogen or something.
Dex’s truck was an older model with some wear on it. As he opened the door, she prepared herself for a stink. Duncan’s truck smelled like farts and stale French fries, and the passenger-side footwell was about three inches deep in trash. And his truck was only a few years old—like twenty years younger than Dex’s.
But the cab was pristine, and smelled faintly of mulled cider—no doubt due to the brown cardboard pine tree dangling from the rearview mirror. She remembered that talk they’d had last weekend, when he’d said he liked to clean, to undo things that needed undoing. His house, as much as she’d seen of it, had been pristine as well—no small accomplishment with five dogs around. It hadn’t even smelled of dog.
Dex took her hand and guided her up into the cab. As she settled in and fastened her seatbelt, he went around the front to the driver’s side and climbed in behind the wheel.
“Where do you live?” he asked after he started the truck.
