I jabbed a finger in his direction. “Erase that knowledge from your brain right fucking now.”
He grinned, just a flash of teeth before he sobered again, bracing his elbows on the counter as he leaned toward me. “Look, just keep doing what you’re doing, and don’t overthink it.”
Yeah. Great.Don’t overthink it. Overthinking might as well have been my middle name.
“Right,” he said with a laugh. “Forgot who I was talking to for a minute. That’s pretty much like telling Oscar the Grouch to stop grouching. I guess that means you’re going to have to talk to her about it. You guys talk about everything else—including your kink of the week—so this should be child’s play.”
I could only hope he was right and that we’d figure this out like we’d figured everything else out thus far. I should’ve talked to her before she left, though my pain-in-the-ass sister had made that impossible. Then again, Everly had so much else to deal with right now, the last thing she needed piled on her shoulders was this.
Chuck let out the softest bark known to man as she sat dutifully at Ford’s feet, tongue hanging out of her mouth, which made it look like she was grinning, and he fed her another piece of bacon.
“Where the hell are you getting that bacon from?” I asked.
“Got a whole pocket full of it.”
“Jesus. No wonder she was following you around out there.”
He grinned. “Women love a man with a dog.”
“She’s not your dog.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
I blew out a breath and shook my head. “You know grease stains are a bitch to get out, right?”
“They’re in a baggie. I’m not a Neanderthal.”
“I’m not so sure. And I bet I could get Quinn to back me up on that.”
He rolled his eyes. “Like I’m going to put any stock in what she thinks of me. That woman wouldn’t know a good time if it slapped her on the ass and handcuffed her to a bed.”
“Thought about that a time or two, have you?”
He avoided the question entirely and instead asked, “What time are Addison and Everly supposed to be back?”
They’d already been gone for hours, and I was about ready to call Addison and tell her to get her ass back here. “No idea, but knowing our sister, she’s keeping Everly out extra long just to piss me off.”
“Sounds about right.” He glanced at the clock on the wall, then back to me with a raised brow, chin jutting toward the bags we’d stashed behind the counter. “You want to do this when Everly gets back?”
I was shaking my head before he even got the question out. “Nope.”
She might know about Ford’s and my weekly excursions, but she didn’t have to witness them. My luck, that’d be the one time the bastard would answer the door.
“Then it’s now or never, I guess.”
With a nod, I picked up the bag I’d already packed full of three oversized meals that could be stretched out to six or seven, and Ford grabbed a couple books he’d picked up from the library. Then we headed out of the diner, Chuck at our heels.
She trotted along beside us, no leash needed, as we walked the same path we’d walked every Wednesday for the past almost ten years when Ford and I visited our father. Okay,visitedwas a gross overstatement of what we really did, which was drop off some food and a few books on his front porch without even knocking.
To be fair, wehadknocked. For months. And still never got a response, not even in the early days right after Mom had died. We assumed because there wasn’t a horrible stench coming from the cottage or flies incessantly buzzing around that he hadn’t joined her. That was probably a detached way to talk about our own father, but it was only a reflection of what he’d given us.
Over the years, I’d seen all my siblings—save for Levi—come and go from Cottage Thirteen. Brady dropped off groceries once a week, Addison took care of the property, and Aiden swapped out Dad’s linens, though none of them knew I knew, like they were ashamed or embarrassed about it, and I could understand why. None of them knew Ford and I made this stop every week, either, and I’d prefer to keep it that way. It was hard enough for me to reconcile wanting to make sure the father who’d abandoned his kids was still taken care of, while being furious at him over his choices.
The older I got, the more of him I saw in myself. We had the same outlook, the same surly temperament, the same off-putting nature. While I’d picked up Mom’s love for cooking, I was basically a carbon copy of my dad, and I hated it.
After Mom had died, he might as well have, too, leaving all six of us to fend for ourselves. Addison hadn’t even been eighteen yet, and we’d all had to step in and fill the role of her parent. Because one had left us by circumstances beyond her control, and the other had left us by choice because he felt like he had nothing left to live for. Even if he still had us.
I was terrified to follow in his footsteps, loving someone completely, only to have them leave in the end, because I’d already been there. My parents had both shown me love wasn’t truly unconditional. And it sure as hell wasn’t meant to last.
