Chapter 9
WILDER
The throbbing in my hand woke me up, and it took a while of blinking at the ceiling for my brain to come up with the memories that gave the answer to why the hell I hurt.
When it did—you nailed yourself to the porch, you dick—I groaned and lifted my hand to inspect it.
I couldn’t see much, but there was a faint rusty stain on the bandage to suggest that it had bled a little overnight.
And yeah, I could remember that too.
I’d been dreaming about kissing, real high school hot and heavy stuff.
The fuzzy, vague sort of dreams I’d had before my experience, or porn, had filled in the blanks.
Which was dumb, because I knew what tits and ass looked like these days—even if I wasn’t getting any of it myself, I worked with girls who shook both in my face regularly. So why had last night’s dream been so—
Avery.
I’d been dreaming about kissing Avery, and my brain had breezed over the details I didn’t know.
Like what another guy’s dick felt like in general, and Avery’s dick specifically.
So I’d been dreaming about making out with Avery, and my hand had done what it naturally did in a situation like that, and the second I’d tried to jerk myself off I’d been ripped out of the dream by the sudden white flash of pain.
I stared at the ceiling for a while longer, but it still didn’t make any sense. So I got up, went to the bathroom to piss, and then peeled off the bandage on my hand to see how bad it was.
For how much it hurt, the hole in my hand was kind of underwhelming.
I flexed my hand carefully and yeah, I was gonna have to be careful with it for a few days, but honestly, I’d done worse.
Hell, I’d done worse stripping. Pro tip—if a customer tells you that pole they installed themselves is secure, don’t believe them.
The first aid kit was still sitting on the counter, so I slathered my hand in antiseptic cream and grabbed a dressing. Then I realized I couldn’t wrap my own hand, so I went looking for some help.
The first guy I found didn’t even live here, although he might as well have. It was Miller, and he was making a coffee in the kitchen.
“Hey,” he said. “How are you feeling?”
“Not too bad.” I held up the bandage. “Can you help me with this?”
I liked Miller a lot. He and Danny had been dating since last summer and he was a good guy, but more importantly he was head over heels for Danny.
And I was happy for Danny, because he’d hooked up with a lot of assholes before he’d met Miller.
Not like he was in some self-destructive pattern or anything like that.
Just that it was a numbers game, and there were a lot of assholes out there.
Danny was my brother, and I wanted the best for him.
Miller applied the bandage carefully. “This doesn’t look as bad as I thought. The way Chase was telling the story last night, I thought you’d given yourself stigmata.”
I flexed my hand. “Yeah, I’ll be good for work tomorrow, if there is any.”
“You’re still working for Steve, right?” Miller said.
“Yeah. But he lost a big job, so I don’t know if he’ll need me this week.”
I hoped he did. I wasn’t quite panicking about work, but I got an uneasy feeling low in my gut when I thought about the way Gracie’s toes were getting real close to the end of her sandals and how she’d need some new clothes soon, now that summer was on its way out.
And yeah, I made good money stripping, but it all depended on whether I got any bookings and how generous people were with their tips.
The wage I got from roofing was steady income—or it had been, up until now.
“You know if you’re short I’m happy to—”
“Don’t even go there,” I said. “Danny still gets cranky when you buy groceries.”
Miller rolled his eyes. “Fair. But seriously, if you need anything for Gracie, you have my number. Where is she anyway?”
“She’s with Cassidy’s folks. We decided we could get around the whole church thing by sending her on a Friday night and collecting her Sunday morning.”
“Smart thinking,” Miller said. “They dropping her off?”
“Hell, no.” I didn’t need Cassidy’s parents poking around my living situation.
I could only imagine what they’d have to say about their precious granddaughter sharing a run-down house that had one bathroom with four—sometimes five—grown men.
I was grateful as hell to Danny and his grandma for taking me in, but I wasn’t blind.
I knew the situation wasn’t ideal. But Cassidy and I had agreed that it was best for Gracie to live with at least one of her parents.
“Well, I dunno what time you’re meant to pick her up, but it’s almost ten,” Miller said.
Pickup was meant to be at nine thirty. Shit.
I grabbed my keys off the counter and bolted for the door.
I pulled into the driveway at the Moores’ at seven minutes to ten. Service didn’t start until ten and it was a three-minute drive, so I took a minute to catch my breath before walking up the path.
When I knocked the door flew open and Mrs. Moore said, “You’re late,” through clenched teeth.
“Sorry,” I said. “Slept in.”
“Daddy!” Gracie came bouncing out the door. She was wearing new shoes and a purple dress with frills on the sleeves that I’d never seen before. “Grandma took me shopping! I got lots of new stuff!”
“That’s great, sweet pea. Did you make sure and thank Grandma?”
Gracie nodded, and I swallowed down the sour taste in my throat. The Moores going shopping with Gracie shouldn’t have stung the way it did. Grandparents did it all the time. Except coming from them, the new clothes felt like an accusation.
But I’d been raised right—at least for the first seventeen years of my life—so I said, “I appreciate you doing that for Gracie.”
I sounded about as sincere as I felt.
We stood there awkwardly for a second before I scooped Gracie up and beat a hasty retreat to my truck. I buckled her into her car seat, stashed her bag, and we got the hell out of there.
Gracie was quiet on the drive home, which was unlike her.
“You okay, chicken?”
She nodded silently, but the way she was biting at her bottom lip told me something was bothering her. It was a trait she shared with her mom. And just like her mom, there was no point pushing. She’d tell me when she was ready.
And hey, she was five. How big a deal could it be?
Pretty fucking big, as I found out when I pulled up to the house. I lifted her out of the car and she took one look at the front porch, saw the half-finished repair job I’d done on the steps, and burst into tears. Like, real end-of-the world crying, big ugly sobs like her heart was breaking.
I scooped her back up and held her close, my heart beating out of my chest. “Gracie! What is it? Did something happen at Grandma’s?”
“Why do we live somewhere so ugly?” The words burst out of her, and she sobbed harder. “I hate it here!” Her breath hitched, and it just about covered the sound of my heart shattering.
Because she wasn’t wrong, if you cared about shit like how many bathrooms there were, or if the place had seen a new coat of paint in the last forty years, or whether the backyard had a gazebo like the Moores’ place. But this was my home, and the guys were the best family I’d ever had.
I kept my tone calm when I said, “I thought you liked living here.”
She’d been enthusiastically on board with the idea when Cassidy and I had explained it to her. Hadn’t even had any wobbles the first night, when maybe it would have struck her that the house she lived in and the one she occasionally slept over at had flipped places.
And she’d stayed over at the Moores’ before with no problem, so I didn’t know what the hell had happened.
The mean-spirited part of me wanted to blame them for maybe whispering in her ear, but I knew better than that.
They were uptight, judgmental assholes, but they played fair when it came to Gracie.
Cassidy must have threatened them before she left for college because they’d never said a word out of place when Grace was around.
As she clung to my neck and cried, I ran a soothing hand down her back and wondered what the hell I was meant to do now. Instead of calming down, she was getting louder, and—
“Hey, Gracie.”
Avery’s voice was soft, but Gracie stilled, then perked up immediately and gave him a wobbly smile. “Mr. Smith?”
I swore she thought seeing him outside of school was some sort of miracle—like seeing a unicorn, maybe, if a unicorn was wearing worn denim shorts, flip-flops and a faded tee.
“I was just coming over to see how your dad is,” he said. “Did he tell you he hurt his hand yesterday?”
Gracie sniffled. “What?”
“Uh, yeah,” I said. “But Mr. Smith put a bandage on it.”
Avery smiled at me, and I felt a bit like I’d seen a unicorn as well. Sparkles and rainbows included. I immediately thought of last night’s dream, and then my mind helpfully filled in another blank for me: we’d kissed for real.
And after dropping that bomb, my brain then jettisoned itself from my body, leaving nothing behind but white noise.
I’d kissed Avery.
And I was pretty sure he’d kissed me back. Well, that answered the rainbow question once and for all, I guessed.
Gracie scrambled out of my hold. “What happened?” She took my hand and inspected the bandage. “Are you okay, Daddy?”
“Right as rain,” I said.
“Are you okay, Gracie?” Avery asked. “You sounded like you were having some big feelings.”
Her bottom lip wobbled. “Grandma’s house has nice things. This one doesn’t.”
That hurt.
Avery hummed. “Like your pretty new dress, huh? Well, I think this house might not have as many pretty new dresses, but it has nice things like Daddy, and Chase, and Cash, and Uncle Danny.”
Did I imagine his eye twitching when he said Chase? And how did he even know Cash?
Gracie nodded solemnly.