AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I glanced over with a huff of a laugh. "Sounds good in theory. Sucks when it's one of them under the bull."
Dean just thrust out his lower lip and nodded. "Gotta be hard watching your lover get hurt."
My eyes jumped across his face. "Cody?"
He turned, looking me right in the eye. His were blue, the exact same color as Cody's. "I meant J.D. that time."
And ice ran down my spine. "Sir, I don't know what - "
"Cody told me," he broke in. "When we went to get dinner, she fessed up. Said you three got a thing that's working, and good for you."
"She..." And now my thoughts weren't working at all. "What?"
"Well, I saw you holding that boy's hand," he admitted.
"And what do you think about that?" I asked carefully.
Dean just chuckled. "Pretty sure it ain't my place to think about it. You boys are good with it, and my little girl's good with it, so it really ain't none of my business, is it?"
Wait, what? This man had just flown from Missouri to Iowa because he saw his daughter upset on television. He'd moved mountains, basically, to be here just in case she needed him. Now he was saying he didn't have an opinion on her love life?
"I don't understand," I breathed.
Because my parents had never hidden their opinion about "gays." Growing up, I'd heard plenty about it. The only thing they thought was worse were "those trans people." Rainbows had been prohibited from my childhood because they didn't want to give us kids any ideas, and movies with anything like that? Not in our house.
Dean just reached over to rub my shoulder, the man's calm somehow keeping me grounded. "Boy, I used to be in the rodeo. It was a hell of a lot like what y'all are doing with the PBR, but without the money. Gerardo and I would split gas, drive all over, and hope to make enough money on a bull to pay our way home." He grunted, almost like it was a laugh. "And I remember what happened after we rode too."
"The bars," I guessed.
"The bars, the beds, and the trouble we got ourselves in, yeah," he agreed. "A few nights, I woke up with a lady on either side. Now, don't you go tellin' Cody that. But I figure if I was real happy with it, then why wouldn't it work the other way round?"
"Not really the same," I mumbled.
"Sometimes was," he countered. "I mean, weren't any of us complaining when our girls kissed each other. Nope, we thought that was hot. So why would my little girl be complaining if her boys kiss?" He rubbed my shoulder again. "Now, that's all I got to compare it to, but it also don't matter. See, Tanner, that's the thing.It don't matter."
"That I'm pansexual?" I asked, deciding to just get that word out there.
"Is that the term you kids are using now?" he asked. "We used to call it bi."
"J.D.'s bi," I clarified. "Pan's more about the who than the what."
Dean just nodded. "Bi's about the hot body. Pan's about the hot mind?"
"Close enough," I agreed, feeling a little more of my tension fading. "But not like the PBR would be ok with either."
He hummed in thought, then nodded again. "Welp, then it ain't none of their business either."
For a bit, a silence dropped between us, but my mind was back to working overtime again. This man was not at all what I'd expected. Every time I thought I had him figured out, he confused me again. Dean came off as one of those salt of the earth types. Then he rolled with something like this as if it was natural?
The man was the tough kind. That oozed from him in a way everyone checking out Cody would feel straight away. He was the sort of overly protective father who'd have a shotgun ready - the one he was supposed to use to keep her chaste and innocent. Instead, he was her biggest fan, standing behind every decision she made.
Dumb ones, smart ones, or any other ones - it seemed Dean didn't care. He was on Cody's side, blindly. I was starting to get the impression his complete acceptance was carrying over to me and J.D., but I couldn't quite figure out why. I couldn't wrap my sleep-traumatized brain around the reason this man wasn't trying to chase us as far away from her as possible.
"Why?" I asked, not sure how else to phrase that.
"You mean about you and J.D.?" he asked.
I nodded. "And that we're with Cody. And that we're dragging her into shit. And that this shit is a sin."
