“Quit flirting. What’s wrong?” The words come out gruffer than I want them to, like I’m demanding she tell me instead of asking her to, but I don’t like seeing her like this. She obeyed me so prettily when she was Red. Maybe if I used the right tone, commanded instead of asking, I could get her to just be blunt about it.
“Nothing’s wrong. How many times do I have to tell you to stop fawning over me like I’m one of your little sisters? You’ve seen my pussy,” she reminds me, and dammit if my dick doesn’t twitch because of it.
“Well-the-fuck-aware,” I tell her through gritted teeth. I keeptrying to forget about it actually, but between her snarky comments and my reawakened sex drive, I haven’t been able to. “Not sure what seeing your pussy has to do with checking on you, though.”
Austin’s breath hitches just the slightest bit and if I hadn’t been paying such close attention to her, I wouldn’t have noticed.
“Did I do something wrong? Did I make you uncomfortable on the chat site? I didn’t know it was you, Tex, I swear. I wouldn’t have kept watching without you knowing it was me.”
Her eyes squeeze shut for a second like she’s pained by my words and I feel like I’ve made things even worse somehow. I reach for her again but drop my hand when I remember how she’d stiffened up earlier.
“I’m spending the night with Kenny tonight,” she finally says, voice low as she opens them again. “That’s why I cancelled the show.”
My eyes flick over her face, desperate to read her better, attempting to read her body language like Jameson had tried to teach me.
God, I’m so bad at this. I wish it were simple. I wish I could just have a productive conversation with someone without having to focus so hard on making sure I was interpreting every little bit of it the right way.
“Tex, what did I say last night that upset you?” I ask quietly, stepping closer. Kenny said Austin doesn’t like being vulnerable, but how did I make sure I wasn’t making her feel that way? How did I get her to understand how badly I wanted to fix whatever was wrong?
Austin’s eyes lock on mine, pretty and guarded. I know how they look after she’s had an orgasm, but I don’t know that I’ll ever see them without this constant leeriness she carries around with her.
“Did you tell anyone?” she finally asks just as quietly. It throws me off—both the sudden change in subject and the way she sounds. Insecure, uncertain. So unlike her usual boldness.
“No, Tex,” I swear. In fact, I was probably gonna end up taking this secret to my grave.
She bites her bottom lip and nods, tucking her red hair behind her ear when she looks down at her socked feet. She wraps her arms around herself and I swear she flinches, but Bailey rounds the corner of the staircase at the same time.
She stops short at the sight of us and only then do I realize how this looks—Austin and I alone in the hallway, barely any space between us, whispering low. I jolt away like a cow being branded.
“Smooth,” my sister remarks with a quirked brow.
“Wasn’t doing anything,” I mumble back to her like I’m a kid in high school that got caught with a girl in his room.
Austin uses the distraction to her advantage, slipping past me to head downstairs. Bailey passes by to go to her bedroom across the hall.
I sigh, rubbing a hand over my face and grumbling to a man I wished could still hear me. “Dad, what in the hell’s going on with me?”
TWELVE
AUSTIN
After Sunday dinnersat the Whittaker house, everyone just sort of lounges around the living room. It’s common decency that a person doesn’t just eat and run, but more than that, Whittaker Ranch feels like home. June Whittaker has a way of taking in strays—Me, Theo and Callie, Tyler. She could start a non-profit, probably. Families for the Family-less.
She looks pleased as punch as she sits in her rocking chair, surveying the living room with a smile on her sweet face. The only one missing is Colt, but Bailey’s upstairs on FaceTime with him.
Jameson snoozes on the couch, his cowboy hat covering his face and hands folded on his chest. He can’t help but go straight to sleep after eating, I swear. If anyone calls him out on it, he’ll claim he’s not asleep, but why else would he have gotten his hat off the hook on the wall just to cover his face with it? It definitely wasn’t because he liked the smell of his own sweat.
Maddox is sitting on a dining chair he dragged into the living room, socked feet propped up on the coffee table. His eyes linger on me too often for me to ignore, considering how just the sound of his voice saying the word pussy earlier had made mine perk up like her name was being called.
I’m squished on the loveseat with Tate and Rainy—who is taking up way more than her fair share. It’d draw attention if I told her to get down, so instead, I’m trying my damndest to keep my ribs away from her wiggly, 40-pound body.
Tyler sits on the floor between Tate’s legs, leaning back against the couch and flipping his pocket knife open and closed. She’s absentmindedly coiling a piece of his hair around her index finger and scrolling on her phone with her other hand. It’s all pretty nauseating, honestly.
Theo is next to Kenny by the fireplace, looking down at her and Callie like they’re already the family I know they’ll be one day. Callie doesn’t talk much. She talks to Theo, of course, and she talks to Mama Whittaker when she needs to, but her mouth runs a mile a minute with ‘Miss Kenny’ and they’ve only gotten closer since Kendall started working at the feed store. Right now, though, the little girl sleeps, cheek squashed against Kendall’s chest with her tiny rosebud lips slightly parted.
I genuinely believe some women are born to be mothers. Not all women—certainly not me—but Kendall, for sure. Come September, she’ll even be a kindergarten teacher, for Christ’s sake.
“Don’t wake her,” Kendall complains, frowning at Theo, who was reaching for his daughter. Her hand cups the back of the toddler’s head.
