Chapter 5
WILDER
Cash got home from his double shift just before midnight. We were all still up except for Gracie. Cash stood in the doorway of the living room, looked at us, looked back the way he’d come, then looked at us again.
“Yeah,” Chase said. “He moved in last night. I’ve only seen one guy.”
Cash thought about that for a moment and then shrugged and made a beeline for the recliner.
Cash didn’t talk much. He could, but he didn’t. Chase, his twin, did all his talking for him. Probably why he didn’t talk much. He didn’t have to. It worked for them.
Danny drained the last of his beer. “A whole house for one guy?”
“Maybe the rest of his family’s coming later,” Chase said. “The fuck are we, anyway? Neighborhood watch?”
“It’s just him,” I said.
Mr. Smith wasn’t married and he didn’t have a partner. I’d tried not to know that, but throw a young male teacher at a bunch of kindergarten moms? Even I couldn’t avoid hearing the gossip.
“How do you know that?” Danny asked.
“It’s Gracie’s kindergarten teacher,” I said. “Saw him pulling in earlier when we got back from Walmart.”
Danny laughed. “Why the hell didn’t you say anything when Chase was speculating?”
“Was not,” Chase lied. “I don’t give a fuck.”
“You said nothing ever happens in Goose Run, and maybe the new neighbors would be cool.”
“That’s not speculating,” Chase said. “That’s stating a fact.”
“Oh hey, and he’s cute too,” Danny said, grinning. “I’ve met him.”
That caught Chase’s interest. “Cute by regular standards or cute by Goose Run standards? Like, here it’s kind of like closing time at a bar, right? You take what you can get.”
“Regular cute,” I said, and where the heck had that come from?
“Stop telling yourself you’re straight,” Chase said.
It was an old joke, but it didn’t hit the same as usual, and I wasn’t sure why.
Probably because while I’d always been able to admit some guys were cute or hot—totally objectively, of course, because everyone knew what society as a whole agreed were attractive qualities—I’d never actually given a lap dance to any guy I’d thought was cute before.
And as much as Avery and I had agreed we were never talking about it again, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
“Is he, though?” Danny said.
“What?” I’d lost the thread of the conversation somehow.
Danny shoved my shoulder. “Is Mr. Smith straight?”
I shrugged. “He was wearing a rainbow lanyard on the first day of school.”
“There’s a lot of crossover between gay and kindergarten when it comes to rainbows, though,” Danny said.
Chase grinned. “Now we’re speculating!”
From the recliner where he was tucked under his blanket, Cash snorted.
Danny got a gleam in his eye. “I dunno, I think Wilder’s holding out on us. He hasn’t even mentioned that he gave the guy a lap dance.”
Cash gave a loud gasp.
“Aw, come on,” I said to Danny. “You’re meant to have my back, asshole. Now I gotta deal with the evil twins here knowing.”
I wasn’t really angry, and we all knew it. I was just giving him shit for it because I could.
Danny shrugged. “Should have given me the details when I asked.”
“Only one of us is allowed to be an evil twin,” Chase said. “And I already called it.”
I looked between him and Cash. “I dunno. That fuzzy blanket Cash is rocking could be a clever disguise. That might not even be Cash. Who knows with you assholes?”
Cash flipped me the bird, which didn’t actually prove he wasn’t Chase. That was a total Chase move.
“Anyway, tell us about stripping for Hottie McTeach next door,” Chase said, “and don’t skip any details.”
I knew from the way he was sitting forward with his elbows on his knees, grinning like he’d just discovered buried treasure, that he wasn’t gonna let this go.
“Fine,” I said. “When I worked the club last Friday night, he was there. One of the other teachers slipped me a twenty to give him a lap dance. I gave him a lap dance. The end.”
“That gets a fucking D minus for storytelling,” Chase said. Cash shot him a look and Chase nodded. “Right? Wilder, you missed all the good bits. Like did he pick you out of a lineup and say, ‘I want that hot daddy to dance for me’?”
Cash snorted into his blanket.
“Jesus,” I said. “How do you think stripping works? It’s not a fucking buffet.
It wasn’t like a private dance or anything.
For that song I pull someone up on stage, is all, and his friend paid so that I’d pick him, and neither of us recognized each other until I was facing him and practically riding his dick.
It was awkward and embarrassing, and I’m so happy I’m reliving it again. ”
“I’m glad you are too,” Chase said and gave me a shit-eating grin. “It’s super entertaining. But it also means he’s probably gay, right?”
“So what?” I asked.
“Well, I’m single,” Chase said, his grin growing. “And he’s new to town. And I am sorta cute.”
“Also, if he doesn’t know anyone, maybe he hasn’t been warned about your personality yet,” Danny suggested.
Chase wrinkled his nose. “Shit. I hope he hasn’t been to the gas station. I might have already ruined my chances.”
“What chances?” I asked. “You have zero chances. Avery probably has standards.”
But a tiny part of me was forced to admit that maybe Chase did have at least a small chance with Avery.
When he wasn’t being a sarcastic asshole—which was admittedly rare—Chase could pass for halfway decent, and he wasn’t terrible to look at.
And hey, I didn’t have any idea what Avery’s type was.
He might be totally into sarcastic assholes with codependent twin brothers.
My gut twisted for reasons I couldn’t quite name. “You’re not hitting on Gracie’s teacher,” I said. “It’d be creepy.”
Yeah, that was the reason. I didn’t want to make things awkward for Gracie, that was all. Totally just my parental instincts kicking in.
Danny must have sensed my weird discomfort. He slapped me on the shoulder and said, “Go grab us more beer?”
“Am I dressed like a server?” But I was grateful for the excuse to escape Chase’s curious glances.
While I was in the kitchen, I made Cash a sandwich since I knew he’d be hungry after his shift—see? Parenting instincts—and when Cash saw it, he made grabby hands from his recliner. I handed it over along with his beer, and he gave me a small, grateful smile.
“Where’s my sandwich?” Chase asked.
“Did you just pull a double?” I shot back. “Make your own.”
Cash grinned around his sandwich.
Once we’d finished our beers, I stood and said, “I’m going to bed. Get out.”
Nobody argued about being kicked out of the living room—but then, I hadn’t expected them to.
For all they could be a pain in my ass, I had to admit that the guys had been pretty great about Gracie coming to stay with us and the disruption to their lives.
They were doing their best to watch their language when she was around, and the place was a lot cleaner than it used to be.
I guessed nobody wanted a five-year-old getting tetanus from a rusty fork or something.
But more than that, none of them complained about pitching in sometimes to help look after her.
I could go out at night and shake my moneymaker knowing she was safe, which took at least some of the pressure off.
As the guys shuffled out of the living room, I stripped down to my underwear and unfolded the couch into a bed.
Danny’s boyfriend, Miller, had bought us a new couch after he broke the old one.
I still hadn’t figured out quite how he’d broken it, but since this was more comfortable than the old one, I hadn’t asked too many questions.
I worried sometimes about how this was going to work long term, but for now Gracie had a bedroom and I had somewhere comfy to sleep, so I was calling it a win.
Sure, the lack of privacy wasn’t ideal, but it wasn’t like it was cramping my style or killing my love life—mainly because it was already dead in the water.
I got plenty of offers, don’t get me wrong.
It went with the territory when you took your clothes off for a living.
Before I’d had full-time custody of Gracie, I’d considered the odd quick hookup a perk of the job.
But now, between working two jobs and being a full-time parent, I didn’t even have the energy to jerk off in the shower.
Instead I spent those few precious minutes of alone time each morning as I showered letting the running water lull my brain into something like silence and remembering how to breathe.
The glamorous life of a single dad. I wouldn’t have it any other way, but I was tired of being tired.
When Gracie got overtired, she sometimes just had a meltdown into tears.
It didn’t happen often the older she got, but man, wouldn’t it be great if adults were allowed to do that too?
Like, when everything got to be too much and the pressure built too high, you could just lose your shit like that?
Just cry until you crashed out. That sounded pretty sweet, actually.
Not that I needed a breakdown to fall asleep tonight, though.
I was gone the second I hit the pillow.
“Daddy, hurry up!” Gracie said, tugging at the hem of my shirt.
“We can’t be late! Mr. Smith will see!” She glanced toward the front door like she expected her teacher to be standing there with a stopwatch.
Maybe she did—kids had some strange ideas about what teachers did outside of school hours, so it probably made perfect sense to Gracie that Mr. Smith would come over to check we were running on time.
“Calm down, sweet pea. We have plenty of time, I promise. Besides, haven’t you forgotten something?” I looked down pointedly.
Gracie looked down as well and giggled when she saw her bare feet. A minute later she was flying down the hallway to her room, which meant I could finish packing her snacks in peace.