AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Right?
Plausible deniability and all that jazz.
Okay, so I may not have been as sexually active as some of my friends were in my twenties, but I’ve slept with a few guys.Is three a few?I’m going with a few. I’ve slept with a few guys, not counting my one night with Sawyer.
A single night that doesn’t count.
It can’t. I won’t let it.
Because if it counts, I’m a horrible person and a terrible sister.
So it doesn’t count.
Regardless, none of the men I’ve ever been involved with managed to wake me up the way this man just did with one touch. Why does my traitorous body insist on sitting up at attention from one single touch—through two layers of clothing—when it’s his?
I need to fix this.
Because acting on that attention is not happening.
There’s got to be a better option.
* * *
Less than thirty minutes later, I walk into my parents’ kitchen and set a Sweet Temptations bakery box on the counter behind my father. “Daddy.”
He stands from his chair, a broad smile stretching across his face, and wraps his arms around me. It’s comfort and nostalgia and a serene sense of safety I haven’t felt in ages all rolled in one. I close my eyes and let my senses fill with the aromas of home. The crisp scent of Dad’s Armani cologne. And the fresh smell of Mom’s ginger-peach candle she’s always burning still lingers in the kitchen. It all has the power to transport me back in time. To a time in my life when everything was easier.
When I decided to go to college in California, I never expected to stay on the West Coast for ten years. Or for those years to fly by so quickly with so few trips back home. But standing here, in my childhood kitchen, it’s easy to second-guess things.
I missed this.
I missedeverything.
Sure, I came home for holidays when I could. So did Haley. But we were rarely all together. My parents flew out to me when either of them found a rare free weekend in their schedules, but that was few and far between. I missed so many little moments.
I was a woman on a mission who refused to settle, and that mission revolved around becoming a doctor. Getting into the best med school, then the best residency, so I could become the best ob-gyn I could be. It was easier to focus all my energy on that rather than everything else, and I did it well.
It meant giving up summers in Kroydon Hills so I could take more classes. Pull more on-call hours in the ER. Volunteer more in the clinic. It meant missing family time. Missing seeing my old friends. My old life.
I left home a bright and shiny, optimistic teenager and came back an exhausted adult, who feels more like she’s fifty than a few years away from thirty. And somehow, over the course of ten years, my dad went from being a giant of a man, who could take on the world in my eyes, to an average human. A little older, a little more wrinkled, and a little less invincible.
It doesn’t matter that it’s Saturday morning. He’s dressed in pressed khakis and a sweater like it’s casual Friday at the office. Handsome as ever, his salt-and-pepper hair is cut stylishly short, giving him the very George Clooney-esque look he’s rocked for the past twenty years. His arms tighten around me until I finally tap his shoulder, wheezing.
“I can’t breathe, Dad.”
“Sorry, sweetheart.” He kisses the top of my head and gives me one more tight squeeze. “I hated that I wasn’t here when your flight got in, but I couldn’t get out of my meeting in Chicago any sooner.” His eyes roam over me. “I’ve missed you.”
“I talked to Haley this morning. She says hi.”
“Good. Mom and I are planning on flying down to see her soon. We want to surprise her,” he tells me as he offers me a cup of coffee.
I decline and watch him pour himself another instead. “What’s your blood pressure these days, Daddy?”
He sips his coffee and tries to give me the stern look that used to work when I was a ten-year-old. “Dad...”
“Leave it, Wren. Your mother is already watching me like a hawk.” He picks a muffin from the pink bakery box I brought and smiles as he breaks it in half and throws it into his mouth.
“Apparently, not hawk-like enough if you’re eating pure sugar, dear.” Mom closes the garage door behind her, then leans in and kisses my cheek before she runs her palms over my father’s sweater.
