Their eyes are slightly different colors, but there’s a similarity in the way they both look at me, and I have to wonder if that’s part of the reason I felt so comfortably drawn to Lana. Did I meet her and feel that familiarity at a time when I needed my best friend? Is that why I felt so connected to her?
I search Lana’s eyes again and experience the same powerful sense of connection I’ve felt since we met. She’s everythingI could want in a woman. In awife. But under the current circumstances, making a life with her is not an option. It looks like my dream girl will have to remain a dream.
Sighing, I step away, hold my hands up in surrender, and march to the back of the truck to launch myself into the tray with the gear.
12
LANA
Dad checks his mirrors and looks behind him. “Is he definitely in?”
“Yeah.” I pull the door closed and put on my seatbelt.
“Good. I need him.” He glances at me sideways. “Thank you. For that. It was quick thinking.”
“I can be useful,” I reply with a shrug.
“I know,” Dad growls. “Why does it always feel like you’re angry and arguing with me?”
“Usually, it’s because I am.”
“You’ve got me there.” He laughs softly and nods. “It’s going to be an interesting season, alright.”
I turn and peek out the rear window again. Bates has his back pressed against it now, so I can’t see his face, but I wish I could. I feel as if it might offer me the clues I need to figure out what to think about everything that’s happened in the last twenty-four hours.
I met a wonderful stranger, shared an amazing night with him, floated up to the Yukon on a massive high, got shot down immediately when I found out that lovely stranger has in fact been my dad’s trusty mechanic and foreman for the many years I was ignoring him in the hopes that he’d actually make somefatherly effort and seek me out — which he did not. And the wonderful man I was hoping would want to see me again or at least keep in touch, also just broke up with some other woman, and they recently lost achild…?
I feel devastated on his behalf, even though it’s now sinking in thatIwas a rebound fuck.
That’s on me. I was inexperienced and didn’t realize my need to clarify what kind of fuck I wanted to be — as Bates so obviously had.
Lesson learned.
Best to find these things out when you’re young.
I pull out my notebook and make a note to be more mindful of such things with my next sexual partner.
“What are you writing?” Dad asks, trying to peek.
I shield my writing. “It’s personal.”
“Oh.” Dad nods and tries not to sigh too loudly. “Howisyour personal life?”
“I’m not sure it actually exists yet, but I’m working on it.”
My father has the same confused look on his face that Harper gets when you ask her where her sensible shoes are. The tension around his eyes relaxes slightly as he considers me from a different angle, and I see parts of myself in him then — right before he gets the same determined-looking forehead wrinkle Martha will one day sport upon her brow from pulling the same face. My dad’s three daughters might have different mothers, but we’re all definitelyhis.
“Tell me more, kid. You keep me in the dark too much, and I feel like an asshole for it. You’re my daughter, and I’m interested in your life, okay? Give me something.” He makes a littlegimmemotion at me with his hand. “Anything. Should I be worried about any guys you’re dating yet? … Or girls?”
I don’t bother to moderate the volume of my sigh. “I thought I was tooineptto date?”
He sighs again, so I throw him a bone. “I’m not really dating anyone. Unless you count the woman I tried to have dinner with last night or the guy I fell in love with after that.”
He squints out the windshield as if he can’t see, then shakes his head. “I don’t get it.”
I rest my face against the side window. “That’s okay. There was nothing to get.”
“That wasn’t one of your jokes?” he asks, all perplexed again.
