“My mom works the front desk at the ER,” I tell him. “Over in Cannon Beach.”
“And your dad?”
I think for a moment. I don’t freely offer up information about my dad very often, because I don’t have much to share. He was asurfer, driving up and down the coast in a van full of guys. Honestly, Bennett’s Grandpa Dean was more of a male parental figure in my life than my own father.
Now, I don’t even have that. We had heard that Grandpa Dean passed away last summer. It was a private funeral, and Mom didn’t feel comfortable reaching out beyond a condolences card, which meant I never got to say goodbye in any real way. All the grouchy old man cared about in his retirement were his beehives and following tennis. But when I went through my stage of being deathly scared of thunder and lightning, he would let me sit curled up behind him in his rocking chair while he watched the storm with Bennett. I felt safe without being left out.
God, we were a little Frankenstein of a family, but at least if Bennett’s mistakes and lies hadn’t led to our lives imploding, things would be how they used to be. Even if they were never perfect. And I would have had a chance to say goodbye to Grandpa Dean.
“I never knew him,” I finally tell Tate, my gaze lost in a dark corner of the yard over his shoulder. “My dad died in a car accident a few years after I was born.”
Tate gives my hand a gentle squeeze, and I glance up at him before laying my head against his chest. His fingers stroke up and down my back. “That fucking sucks,” he says.
I hum and give a little shrug. “There’s no missing what you never had.”
“Well, if that’s true, I think I’m going to be disappointed the next time I have to spend a Friday night doing anything but dancing with a pretty girl with a bizarre sense of humor.”
I smile up at him to hide the flush of pink staining my cheeks.
We sway for a while longer until Tate spins me out again, and this time when he reels me back in, my back is to his chest, and this feels even more intimate than before.
He leans down so that his words tickle my ear when he says, “I think we have an audience.”
When I look up, I see him glaring at me furiously from the other side of the firepit.
My husband.
CHAPTER 10
Clover
Bennett is sharing a small log with a beautiful girl with brown curly hair. She’s even more stunning than the four that were sprawled across my bed just this afternoon.
The girl, the definition of lean and strong, is whispering in his ear, but he is watching me with unflinching concentration, his jaw working.
Tate’s hands drop to my hips, and we’re still swaying, but now his body curves to mine as he drops a soft kiss to my neck.
If I weren’t so consumed by the angry bastard across from me, I might have taken a moment to enjoy the warmth of his lips and the fact that a guy this hot and funny and charming is coiled around me like a snake.
Dancing flames frame Bennett as he stands and says something brief to the girl beside him. His gaze narrows on me for a moment before he storms off around the side of the house.
I reach up and cup the back of Tate’s neck to pull him down tome just in time for Bennett to glance back and see. I expect to find a hard, angry expression on his face, but what I see is harder to read. Hurt? Pain? That can’t be right.
“I’ll be right back,” I whisper to Tate.
“Sure,” he says. “Don’t go disappearing on me, pixie.”
Without Tate’s body heat and the proximity to the fire, an immediate chill hits me. I grab my empty drink from where I left it beside Tate’s and toss it in a recycling bin on the side of the house.
Now, I’m angry. He wants to stomp off with hurt feelings after I walked into our room this afternoon to find four girls hanging all over himon our bed? I don’t think so.
In the front yard, Bennett is pacing up and down the sidewalk, and the moment I see him, I hate myself for following him out here. It reeks of desperation, and an old ache that I’ve worked so hard to bury begins to resurface.
I spin around to go back, take three steps toward the backyard, and then turn around again, reinvigorated with rage as I march toward him.
This is a ridiculous waste of time.
What am I even doing?
