17. That’s My Boy!
17
THAT’S MY BOY!
WYATT
“ N o, Cruz. She’s taking me out to meet another woman tonight,” I mutter into the phone, glancing at my daughter, slapping her soapy hands in the tub. “I’m giving Vi a bath before we go.”
“Dada!” She squeals, splashing around in the bubbly water.
I reposition the phone in the crease of my neck. “Yeah, baby?”
“Dada! Duh!” she giggles, shrieking. The tingling sound warms me up from the inside. The “ck” sound is one of the last ones kids get, but I know what she wants. Her duckie.
She had a meltdown earlier because she was overtired and didn’t get her nap, so it’s nice to hear her laughing instead of screaming.
“You want your duckie? I got you, baby girl.” Sitting on the edge of the bathtub, I hand her the plastic duck.
She always gets this toothy, picket-fence grin on her face during bath time. I swear she’s going to be an Olympic swimmer or something because she loves the water.
“Sorry, she wanted her duckie,” I explain.
“No worries,” Cruz says. “Hey, is she walking yet?”
I clench my teeth, watching her splash in the tub. I’ve been debating calling her pediatrician to see if I should be concerned, but my parents are telling me not to worry, and I don’t want to helicopter over her.
Realistically, I know every child develops at their own pace, but I keep watching, waiting every second for her to take those first steps. I mean, she’s over a year old. She should be walking by now, right?
I don’t fucking know.
“Not yet,” I say. “But she did pull herself up on the coffee table, fell, and hit her head.”
I went from ecstatic to freaking the hell out in a millisecond, and then I spent over an hour googling what to do if your kid has a concussion and had to call my pediatrician (again) to ask about stunted brain development. Dr. Bigham is going to block my number.
“She okay?” he asks, sounding concerned.
“She’s fine. Just a little scratch,” I say, gently stroking the bump on her forehead. No need to make this into a bigger deal than it needs to be. “Isn’t that right, baby?”
I stick out my tongue to make her giggle. Her laughter fills the bathroom. “Dada! Mo!”
“Is Daddy funny? You want more tickles?” I coo, tickling her belly. She kicks around in the tub even harder.
I never realized how dangerous the world was until I had a kid. She could so easily knock her head on a kitchen counter or, I don’t know, put her hand down the garbage disposal one day.
People weren’t joking when they said having a kid is like having your heart ripped out of your chest and walking around freely on this planet, but worrying only makes me miss out on all the good moments with my girl.
“She’ll get there, man. When she’s ready.” Cruz must be able to sense that I don’t want to talk about that because he does a loud throat-clearing before changing the subject. “I still can’t believe you made a porn joke with Kodie. Do you need me to come down to Texas? Sounds like you need some reinforcements after that one.”
“Can we stop talking about that?” I pour some water over Vi’s head, dampening her golden curls to bronze. Every time I think of that, I cringe. “And no. Your ‘reinforcements’ would probably involve tequila, which would be a disaster. The last time I got tequila drunk, I rode a mechanical bull ’cause it made me think of Dakota.”
“I mean this in the nicest way, Patty, but you’re so down bad for that woman. You’ve got to get her, man. We’re gonna make this shit happen.”
I cast a quick look at the closed bathroom door to make sure she can’t overhear. There’s only one bathroom in our barndominium, and the door needs fixing, so it only locks if you slam it hard.
“What am I supposed to do?” I add, scooping up more water. “She’s taking me out to meet someone else tonight.”
He pauses, thinking. “If she wants you to be with someone else, then you should go for it. Make her see what she’s missing out on. Sometimes, people don’t know what they want until they see what someone else has.”
“No,” I say in an instant. “I can’t do that again.”
The idea of touching or kissing someone who isn’t her has my stomach twisting. I already tried getting over her that way, and it threw my life off track. Even then, I was the asshole who imagined it was Dakota when I was in bed with another woman.
“I’m not a one-night-stand kind of guy,” I admit. “So I’m not using someone else to make her jealous. That’s not fair to anyone, and I hate playing games.”
“It’s not playing games,” Cruz says in a low voice. It’s too quiet, like he’s trying not to say the wrong thing. “You’re a goddamn catch with an even cuter little catch. You deserve a woman who wants every part of you, Wyatt.”
Wyatt. Not Patterson, not Patty— Wyatt.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
“Aw, come on, Cruz,” I groan. “You’re really first-naming me?”
“That’s how you know I’m serious. I want you to be happy.”
I glance at the closed door to make sure she can’t hear me. “I still don’t think I can do that. It’s always gonna be her for me. She saved my life, and anytime I picture the woman I want my girl to grow up to be, it’s always like her. Determined. Hardworking. Caring… She’s it for me.”
Cruz pauses again. “Okay, then you’ve got to go back to the basics, man. Flirt with her.”
“What?”
“Dial up the charm. Stop acting like her fucking friend. Kiss her on the cheek. Put your arm around her. Let your hand drift down her lower back when you hold her. Act like it’s all normal. That way, when you make your next move, she’ll think it’s normal since you’ve been planting all these seeds in her subconscious. It’s psychology.”
There’s a gentleness in his voice I rarely hear. As much as I hate to admit it to myself, he might be right. I consider it. “That’s not a bad idea, actually—”
The door bursts open, and Dakota struts inside the bathroom—in nothing but a towel.
Her brown hair is piled up in a messy bun with little curls brushing her face, and I almost drop my phone in the soapy water at the sight of her. Christ, this woman.
If that towel falls, I’m going to have a problem in my jeans.
A big problem.
That might be the tiniest towel I’ve ever seen, and now all I can think about is what’s underneath, and that’s bringing up the visual of her in all that tight workout wear, and heat shoots to my groin. I have to think about saying goodbye to Grandma Patterson on her deathbed so I don’t get hard.
May she rest in peace along with my boner.
Her eyes land on me when she realizes she just walked into the bathroom in nothing but a towel. Both our lips part in sync.
She goes rigid and pulls the cloth up her body while I’m praying it falls to the floor. “Oh, shi—shoot,” she corrects with a glance at my daughter. “Sorry. I thought you were done with bath time. We need to fix this because it never locks.”
“Is that Kodie?” Cruz says on the line. “Tell her I say she needs to kiss the hell out of you.”
I don’t tell her that.
My voice is lost in the dryness of my throat because I’m too focused on her tan legs, those muscular, thick thighs that I want wrapped around my waist. I know how difficult it is to put on muscle, which makes her toned body all the more impressive.
I’m still staring.
I need to stop staring.
“Dee-Dee!” Vienna suddenly shouts, breaking me out of my trance. It’s actually pretty cute how she’s started calling Dakota Dee-Dee since she can’t say Kodie.
Dakota visibly swallows as she looks at Vi, and it seems like her eyes shine a little. After a moment of hesitation, she walks right up to her in the bath and smacks a loud kiss to her damp cheek while I try very hard not to look at the way her towel climbs up her thigh when she bends over.
“Hi, little devil. You look like you’re having a mighty fun time with all those bubbles. Can you say Kodie like we were practicing this morning with our peek-a-boo sessions? Ko-die ?”
They played peek-a-boo this morning? My heart feels like it’s growing.
Vi garbles something unintelligible and then squeals, “Dada!”
Dakota chuckles, clutching the towel tighter as she brushes the hair back from Vi’s forehead. “Well, it seems like we all know who the crowd favorite is. I’ll let y’all finish bath time before we go.”
She winks, and having her standing there, smiling at my daughter, winking at me in a damn towel is too much for me to handle, so all I can do is nod because, apparently, I’ve lost the ability to string words together.
She drops another kiss on my girl’s head before striding out of the bathroom with a soft click.
She kissed my girl.
“Alright, forget about flirting with her,” Cruz says into my ear. I forgot he was still on the line, so I jump against the phone. “We just need to get you talking to her again because listening to that was painful. Stop acting like some flower boy, and start acting like the best fucking winger in the NHL with a massive cock.”
He’s right.
Dammit, he’s right.
Not about the cock thing, but everything else. I’m big, but I don’t think I’m that big. Then again, I’m not really measuring myself up against other guys’ dicks in the locker room.
I’m still acting like a flustered teenager around her because it’s too easy to get stuck in the old versions of yourself when someone’s known you as a kid.
I call it revertigo— reverting back to the person you’ve always been around people who’ve known you forever. I like that I’m a gentleman around Dakota, but I can be so much more than her friend.
I can be the man she needs.
The man she craves.
“Yeah, you know what?” I grit out, clenching the phone. “Enough’s enough. She’s gonna be mine by the end of the summer.”
“There he is!” Cruz whoops. “Now, that’s my boy.”