Chapter Eleven
brIDGER
B efore I can even process that question, let alone answer it, Dani keeps going, the floodgates open.
“I mean, it’s okay if we are. It’s totally fine. I just want to make sure we’re on the same page because it’s been such a confusing week. God, not that that’s your fault, I just…we had such a good time last weekend, and then all hell broke loose, and I’ve hardly heard a peep from you until earlier today when you stormed over here and railed me in the garage, which was totally fun, and I’m a big fan, but I just need to know if we’re only going to have sex when we have the opportunity and otherwise I won’t hear much from you so I can just prepare my brain and my heart for that because my loins are in. As long as it’s monogamous, though, because otherwise, gross.”
She takes a breath, and I take that opportunity to cover her mouth with my hand, and she frowns at me .
“Stop talking for two seconds, okay?”
She nods, watching me with those expressive eyes that shine like diamonds in the moonlight, and I move my hand back down to her belly, under my hoodie, against warm, soft skin.
“It’s not okay,” I begin, “to just be fuck buddies. Jesus, I can’t believe you said that.”
“I got nervous.”
“So, you swear when I’m inside of you or when you’re nervous?”
She starts to say something and then pauses. “I guess that’s right, yeah.”
“Baby.” I brush my thumb back and forth over her skin. “No . We’re not just anything. This week was a shit show, and that might be the case until we catch the fucker that’s decided to play with fire, literally, and there’s not much I can do about that.”
“I know, I just?—”
“My turn, remember?” I lean in and kiss her cheek, nuzzling it with the tip of my nose. “If you need me to keep reassuring you, I will. I have no problem with that. Because eventually, you’ll believe me and the doubts won’t fuck with you anymore. You are all I see, Dani. Just you. I hate that I had to say goodbye to you on Sunday, and then I barely saw or spoke to you until today. It was fucking torture. Last weekend was a big deal, right?”
“I thought so,” she whispers, and that earns her another kiss, this time on the lips.
“Yeah, me, too. This isn’t just sex for me. Don’t get me wrong, it’s the best fucking sex of my life, and I plan to be inside you as much as humanly possible, but that’s not all it is. Every minute with you is the best part of my day.”
She smiles and reaches up to cup my face. “Aww. Same here, Chief.”
“Nope.” I roll closer and nip at her chin. “That’s still a no-go.”
“Come on, it’s cute . ”
“No. It’s my job, and you are not my job. Not even close.”
She sighs, and her eyes are happy, the insecurities I saw earlier wiped away.
“Eventually, I’m going to come up with a nickname for you.”
I move my hand up farther on her stomach, ghosting over the skin, and then narrow my eyes at her. “No bra.”
“It’s late, Bridger. Of course, I’m not wearing a bra. The girls need to breathe a little.”
My fingers graze over one nipple, and it’s satisfying as fuck when the nub puckers right up for me, making Dani sigh in that sexy way she does that makes my dick twitch.
“If you want labels on what we’re doing,” I tell her softly, “that’s fine with me. I want the world to know that you’re mine. You’re mine , sweetheart. I’ll make that perfectly clear, right here and now. You want to call me your boyfriend? Go right ahead.”
“Wow, we’re really clearing the air.” She pushes her hand into my hair and uses her nails to lightly scratch my scalp, and it makes my eyes roll back into my head. “You like that.”
“You can do that for a million years. Holy shit.”
She giggles, and I pull my hand out from under the hoodie. I like having free rein to touch her, but this isn’t the time to get us worked up.
I need to make sure she’s okay . All the way okay. I hate that this woman has so many doubts, especially about us. That’s unacceptable, and we’re going to permanently squash it right now. If I’m honest with myself, I’ve always considered Dani to be mine. Even when I was living in a nightmare marriage to Angela, she was never far from my mind. Except back then, I thought I’d never get to kiss her, let alone have her in my arms. Fuck, I’m not sorry Angela bailed on us either.
“I need to veto one of your rules, by the way,” I inform her and roll back a bit.
“Which rule?”
“The no touching you at your job rule.”
She shakes her head and starts to talk, but I interrupt her.
“There’s no rule with the school that says you can’t date a parent. We’re both single, consenting adults who aren’t doing anything wrong. Jesus, I’m not going to make out with you in front of five hundred students, but I need to be able to cup your cheek or kiss your lips. Simple touches, Dani. I need them, just like you needed to know what’s going on with us tonight.”
That makes her bite that lip, and she finally nods.
“Yeah?” I rub my nose over hers. “You can live with me stealing a kiss at the drop-off line at school?”
“I can live with it,” she confirms. “I want the world to know that you’re mine, too, you know. You’re a smoke show. See what I did there?”
I can’t help it. I bust up laughing and bury my face in her neck, pulling her closer.
“We’re going to have to invest in some kind of mat or foam or something for out here because this is not comfortable for long, intimate talks.”
Dani chuckles and then sits up, pulling me with her. “I do have chairs on my porch. I don’t know if you noticed, but I bought an extra one, just in case you wanted to come out and sit with me.”
My head whips to the porch, and there it is. The second chair. And I don’t know why, but that makes my heart stutter. And the tiny seat sitting next to it has me leaning in to plant my lips on her cheek.
“You bought me and my daughter our own chairs for your porch?”
“I didn’t think you’d fit in my lap.” She grins and stands, and I join her as we walk to the porch. “Oh, I need to return this and your T-shirt to you.”
She plucks at the hoodie, and I scowl.
“The fuck you do. You’re keeping that. I love seeing you in my shit. I don’t want it back.”
“You didn’t let me finish. I need to give them back to you because I’ve worn them pretty much nonstop for the past week, and they don’t smell like you anymore. I need them to smell like you. ”
Without a word, I march over to my house, quietly let myself in so I don’t wake my daughter, and gather up a sweatshirt I wore yesterday, along with two of my T-shirts out of my drawer, then walk back to where Dani’s still sitting on the porch and hold them out for her.
“Here. You can have them all. Keep them.”
Her eyes bounce from mine to the clothes I’m holding, and then she takes them and buries her nose in them, inhaling deeply.
“Nothing smells better than you,” she murmurs, and it makes my heart stutter again , and my cock twitch. “Hold on.”
She hurries inside and returns ten seconds later with the T-shirt, and passes it to me. Then, she looks around to see if anyone’s watching, turns her back to the street, and quickly strips out of my hoodie, shoves it at me, and replaces it with the zip-up I just gave her, pulling the zipper all the way to her neck.
She buries her face in the red material and sighs happily.
“That’s so much better.”
“You just stripped on your porch, kitten.”
“I wanted to trade you.” She shrugs while still sniffing my sweatshirt. “No one saw.”
“You’d better hope they didn’t, because if anyone sees what’s mine, I’ll fucking tear their eyes out of their head. Don’t do that again.”
She blinks and then walks right into my arms, holding me tightly around the middle, her head pressed to my chest. “Okay. ”
I kiss the top of her head and brush my fingers through her soft, dark hair. “Come out to the ranch with Birdie and me tomorrow. We’re going to spend the day riding some horses and hanging with the family. Come with us.”
“Oh.” She shakes her head and frowns up at me. “You should spend some time with Birdie, Bridge. I know that if I didn’t see much of you this week, neither did she, and?—”
“Whoa.” I kiss her nose and cup her jaw, my fingers in her hair. “I want you with us . I want Birdie to spend time with you outside of school, when it’s the three of us together. I want you out at my family’s ranch, and you’ll stay for dinner, too. Sundays are usually a big deal out there, and I think even Blake is off from the hospital, so he’ll be around, too. Bee’s gonna come for dinner after the bookstore closes. Brooks closes down the garage on Sundays. Come be with my family, sweetheart.”
I tip her chin up and brush my lips over hers, and her hands fist in my shirt.
“Okay,” she whispers against my lips. “What time should I be ready?”
“Come over for breakfast at nine. Hell, come over whenever you want and come cuddle with me in bed.”
I waggle my eyebrows at her, and she chuckles.
“Don’t look now, but you’re sounding a little needy.”
“A little ? I need to up my game. Because when it comes to you, I’m a lot needy.”
“Aww, that’s cute. I’ll see you in the morning. ”
“For cuddles or for breakfast?”
“Probably both, who am I kidding?”
She came for both, arriving right around eight. I wanted to pull her into my bedroom so we could snuggle in my bed, but I didn’t want Birdie to walk in on that and have questions.
I need to talk to Birdie about Dani being around more often.
Instead, we cuddled up on the couch, me lying on my back and Dani curled up on top of me, with a blanket over the both of us.
I could have stayed there all day, but eventually, I heard Birdie stir, so we got up to make breakfast before we got ready to head out to the ranch.
We’ve been here all day, and it’s now mid-afternoon. Time for the three of us to take a ride. Nothing too crazy because Birdie’s still learning, but I’d like some time alone with them.
“Daddy, I want my own horse today.”
“I think that’s okay,” I reply, eyeing my daughter. “We won’t go far.”
She just doesn’t have the stamina in her tiny body for a long ride yet. But I love that she enjoys the horses. She has no fear where they’re concerned.
Dani and I get the horses saddled and ready to go, and before long, the three of us are wandering down the same path I took Dani on last weekend.
“The trees have already started to change so much in just one week,” Dani says with a smile. “It’s fun to watch. Pretty soon, it’ll be time for pumpkins and apple picking and all kinds of fun things.”
“I like to carve punkins,” Birdie says. “And I want to be a princess for Halloween.”
“Of course, you do,” Dani replies. “Because you are a princess. Which one do you want to be?”
“Guess!”
I grin, enjoying the two of them. They’re so natural with each other. It makes me want things that I never dared want before because I knew that I was never going to make a family with Angela. She wasn’t ever going to fit in with us like this.
But Dani? Dani fits in just perfectly.
“Hmm.” The woman I’m falling in love with taps her chin, as if in thought. “Snow White?”
“No.” Birdie shakes her head, grinning. “Try again.”
“Jasmine?”
“Nope.”
“Okay, tell me. I’m dying to know.”
“Tiana,” Birdie says with a little wiggle. “I like green, and her dress is so pretty.”
“Her dress is beautiful. You’ll be a lovely Tiana. Do you have a frog?”
Birdie laughs. “I have a stuffed one.”
“Perfect.” Dani winks at me, and then it’s time to circle back around to the barn. Once we’ve put the horses away and have given them treats and rubs, we make our way to the house for dinner.
“Can we see the chickens?” Birdie asks, and my gaze immediately goes to Dani, who’s gone pale.
“Are you guys back already?” Blake asks as he comes around the barn. He’s with both Brooks and Beckett, and they’re all grinning at us.
“I want to see the chickens,” Birdie tells him, and Brooks’s gaze immediately moves to Dani.
We all know that Dani and her sisters have a difficult past with animals on the ranch because we all experienced the many times when the Lexington girls would arrive at our house looking haunted. Fucking traumatized by their asshole father.
“Why don’t we take you?” Beckett offers my daughter with a grin. “Let’s see if the ol’ girls left anything for us, and then we’ll go inside and pull dinner together.”
“Okay,” Birdie says, letting Beck take her hand, and along with Brooks, they set off for the chicken coop behind the house.
Blake stops to brush his hand lightly over Dani’s hair. “You okay, gorgeous?”
I growl, but he ignores me. It may be stupid, but I don’t want any man touching her, even my brother.
“Sure.” Her voice is thready, and neither of us believes her.
Blake’s eyes turn to mine, and I nod, silently telling him that I have this.
We all love her and want to protect her .
So, my brother follows the others, and I take Dani’s hands in my own. Her eyes look glassy, like she’s somewhere else, and I press my lips to her forehead.
“Baby, are you really okay?”
“No,” she whispers, and I’m relieved that she trusts me enough to tell me the truth.
Without overthinking it, I scoop my girl into my arms and carry her to the house, up the steps of the wraparound porch, and settle her in my lap in one of the rocking chairs, holding her to me.
“You can tell me.” I kiss her head, run my hand down her arm, and hold on to her shaking hand. “Talk to me about the chickens, kitten.”
It took Holden a while, but somehow, he talked his father into only keeping the larger animals on the ranch.
“Something especially bad must have happened with the birds.”
She shivers and wraps her arms around my neck, burying her precious face in my neck, and a sob makes its way out of her that tears my chest wide open.
“Ah, baby.” I hug her close, rocking us back and forth, my lips pressed to her. It’s like she can’t get close enough to me, like she wants to be safe inside of me, and it makes me ache for her. “I’m so sorry, honey. I’m so fucking sorry.”
“He would p-p-pluck them”—my eyes close because I can guess where this is going—“while they were still alive. And they would scream so loud. And he would laugh . ”
Fuck, I want to kill him. I want to raise that motherfucker from the grave and tear his guts out.
“He liked to make things bleed.” She’s still clinging to me, pressed as close as she can get, and I hold on tight, not letting her go. God, I’ll never let her go. “He liked to make them cry. God, Bridge, he was so damn mean . ”
“And he liked to make you girls cry the most.” My voice is rough, and she nods.
“He never made me bleed.” It’s a whisper, and I have to listen closely to hear her. “But p-p-poor Darby.”
I feel my eyes widen. I had no idea that he made his oldest daughter bleed, and I wonder if Holden knows. Christ, I can’t imagine it. I can’t fathom putting my daughter through that.
I’d kill anyone who even tried to look at Birdie wrong.
“He hurt everything. Everyone,” she continues, her voice stronger now. “He got off on it. We had a cat once. I can’t go there. I can’t talk about the unspeakable things he did to those poor, defenseless animals. But the chickens, Bridge. They were the worst, and they were my chore.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was in charge of gathering eggs, and I had to go out there every day, and they were just so sad. And I couldn’t help them. If I tried to help them, he’d run the water over my face.”
Fuck me.
“I just can’t do the chickens, and I’m sorry for it. I wish I could, but I just can’t?— ”
“Hey, you look at me.” I cup her face and urge her back so I can look in her pretty eyes. “Baby, you don’t ever have to see another chicken as long as you live if you don’t want to. Birdie’s fine out there with me or my family.”
“I wish I could enjoy that with her.” She sniffles, and I swipe at the tears on her cheek with my thumb. “But I can’t.”
“I know, and it’s okay. You need to let that guilt go, because it’s okay . And it’s not your fault. I promise, baby, we only want you to be comfortable here, and if that’s the one place that’s your hard limit, we’ll respect that.”
“Thank you.” She wipes at her tears and takes a deep breath. “I hope we’re not having chicken for dinner.”
I can’t help but chuckle at that, relieved that she has some color back in her cheeks.
“I think we’re having pot roast.”
“Yum.” She sighs against me and rubs her hand over my chest, as if she’s comforting me as much as herself. “I’ve worked really hard to keep the shit I carry around because of that man away from my everyday life. I did a good job of it when I lived in Bozeman.”
“But you’re here now, and there are going to be some hard moments.”
“I’m sorry if I’m a lot.”
I feel my brows pinch together. “I can handle it, kitten. Don’t worry about me for a second. And if you have one of those bad moments, you just tell me, and we can do this until it’s better. ”
She swallows hard and then offers me a small smile. “You’re pretty good for me, you know?”
“I like to think we’re good for each other.”
A car pulls in, and we both look over to see Bee parking in front of the house. When she climbs out of her car, she looks tired but very happy.
“I’m making a killing at the shop,” she says by way of a greeting. “Here’s hoping that trend continues. Hey, you okay, D?”
Dani nods but takes Bee’s hand when she approaches.
“Chickens,” is all Dani has to say.
“Got it. Better now?”
“Yeah.”
Bee’s gaze finds mine, and I nod.
“Good. Let’s go eat before our brothers scarf it all down and we’re left with the dregs of mashed potatoes and a sliver of pot roast.”
“Let’s go eat,” I agree.