“It’s okay, Daddy. You can take a peek if you want,” Kai snarks over my shoulder. “It onlylooksbig and scary. I swear, it doesn’t bite.” He sways his hips a little, before releasing his grip on my arms and making a show of bending to pick up his towel. He bites the tip of his index finger. “Golly gee, did I drop this here towel? Whoopsie!”
I swear I hear a growl from the entryway, as Evan steps in and quickly shuts the door behind him.
“Kai!” Ithwaphim upside the back of his head. “I’m so sorry, Evan. Kai was just going upstairs to get dressed,” I grit out with annoyance over Kai’s alarmingly worse-than-normal behavior.
“That’s not how I remember it,” Kai rebuts. “I distinctly recall youtryingto tell me to do that, but I don’t ever remember thinking that was my actual plan.”
“Kai, listen to Brooks. Go put your clothes on, and stop acting fucking petty,” Evan snaps, still facing away. “Christ, I already scold my teenage son enough. How old are you?”
Kai’s expression morphs from playful to scowling. “Thirty-two.”
“Act like it.Brooks tells you what to do in his house, you listen,” Evan grumbles.
That statement does nothing but send Kai stomping up the stairs. The imagery makes me chuckle. He’s storming off like a toddler, yet he’s a grown adult, ass muscles flexing underneath the bobbling globes of his cheeks. It’s not that sight that has my blood running south towards my khaki cargo shorts, though. It’s the tone in which Evan delivered the command.
Ooh-la-la. Does setting boundaries turn me on?
“Thank you,” I tell Evan. “Sorry, it’s not what it look—”
“You don’t have to explain yourself,” he cuts me off. “What you do in your own home is your business. What I don’t take kindly to is him continuing to undermine you.”
“He doesn’t mean it like that—” I try to get out, but he stops me short again.
“Brooks,” he sighs, “I’ve only been here a few days, and I’ve already watched that man walk all over you. He’s a condescending bully.”
“Did you need to do some more laundry or something?” I ask Evan, wanting to change the topic. The more I try to defend Kai, the more I see it falling on deaf ears anyway.
“No, I just came up here to let you know that,apparently,someone decided to play a prank in the staff cabin. My bunk, specifically. I don’t have your number though, so I couldn’t text you.”
Huh, it’s almost like I purposely never gave him my number, so he’d have to come seek me out in person, if he needed anything. Didn’t expect him to need me forthis, though.
“What happened?” My brows knit with confusion.
Evan gestures to the view out my living room window. The campers and counselors are getting a campfire lit. The sun is setting, casting a yellow-orange glow over the rippling water, and a few hundred yards beyond the last of the swim docks, something rectangular is bobbing on the lake.
“That’d be the mattress to my bunk,” Evan replies with annoyance.
“Ugh,” I groan, scrubbing my palm down my face, “it’s far too early in the year for this pranking business. Maybe the campers are taking advantage of the younger counselors this year.”
“Doubt it was the kids at all. It probably was one of the counselors, if I had to guess. I’m trying to respect your wishes that I not address this with my son, though. You wanted me to treat him like a coworker, so here I am, coming to you as his boss. That wayyoucan reprimand him.”
“Do you have proof it was Colton?”
He rolls his eyes at me. “Who else would it be? My kid’s a punk with a taste for vandalism…”
My eyes narrow back out to the bobbing rectangle in the lake. “Then why does it appear he and his friend are currently swimming out to retrieve it?”
Evan spins quickly and leans in to squint out the window.
“Please don’t be so quick to judge him,” I ask of Evan. “Colton’s past behavior doesn’t have to define who he’d like to be.”
While Evan was back in Ternbay grabbing his things, Colton did take me up on the offer to swing by and chat. We sat at my dining room table, and we talked for hours, actually. I would never breach patient-provider confidentiality, even though technically I’m working with Colton pro bono, but I can see already that Colton’s vandalismisn’t based on malice—it’s truly based on what I had suspected before: he’s crying out for attention.
And, he’s got a big secret.
I can tell he’s a good kid, with a good heart; he just has an awfully artistic way of showing it. Once I can convince him that maybe spraying paint on other people’s property isn’t the answer, Evan can see that too. Though, at the moment, Evan seems too taken aback to admit that perhaps he was wrong about the mattress in the lake.
Evan is indeed a prideful man. Noted. I was right about something when it comes to the enigmatic Evan Waters, I guess.
