Chapter Eighteen – So Many Summers
Chapter Eighteen
Parker
SO MANY SUMMERS
Performed by Brad Paisley
NINE YEARS AGO
HER: Is kissing supposed to feel like someone put wet worms on your lips?
HIM: Who the hell are you kissing, Ducky?
HER: Just answer the question.
HIM: Don’t make me call your dad.
HER: Fine. I’ll ask someone else.
HIM: If some dumbass teenager kissed you, and it felt like worms, you need to run away now. Run as fast as you can, and do not look back.
PRESENT DAY
Get a grip, dipshit.
The taunt sounded like my old lieutenant at the Academy.
Or maybe it was my dad’s voice and Rafe’s and mine all combined as I had to adjust myself discreetly under the water.
If Theo hadn’t called out, who knew what I would have done to those pretty pink lips taunting me. Wet and warm and ready for the taking.
How many times had she made it clear they could be mine? That all of her could be mine?
I cooled my jets by counting to thirty and reminding myself of all the reasons it wasn’t a good idea to tangle our bodies together.
I’d spent years protecting her and often failed .
Rafe would be furious if I messed with his daughter.
My dad would be disappointed.
And the coup de grace , I had a SEAL team waiting for me to figure my shit out so I could return to base and start training again.
When I looked back at the dock, Fallon was holding Theo after catching him with ease as he dove into her arms. She said something to him that made him giggle, and for a moment, the joy radiating around them made an idea flit around the periphery of my mind.
A way of keeping them both. A way to make us whole.
But the idea was so shocking and fleeting that it disappeared before I could fully hang on to it.
But it left a new and unexpected craving in its wake.
Family. Home.
Fucking things a SEAL knew better than to make a reality because the mission was your life. The team was your family. The job was your focus. Not people. Not someone waiting at home, worried you wouldn’t come back.
I’d sworn to my dying grandfather I’d continue his legacy.
I didn’t have a chance to dwell on the fading vision or how it opposed everything I’d believed I wanted as two bodies launched themselves at me.
Fallon and Theo pushed and splashed and tried to sink me.
I fought back, careful with Theo so as not to hurt him, even more cautious with Fallon as I attempted to keep my hands off those tantalizing places on her body that had made me lose my head while tickling her.
For the next thirty minutes, we splashed and played. Fallon and I took turns throwing Theo softly into the air, his life vest keeping him from sinking fully as he landed with a joyous chortle in the lake.
When goosebumps broke out along his arms, I called a halt. As the two of them climbed back onto the dock, I dove down below, scouring the lake for our lost glasses. It took me several long minutes, breath growing tight, before I finally found them and came up victorious.
I pulled myself up on the dock and made a dramatic bow as I presented Fallon with hers. “Your prize, princess.”
She rolled her eyes and snatched them away, but any retort was cut off by Theo exclaiming, “I’m hungry! ”
His eyes were fixed, hopefully, on the snack bar.
“You’re always hungry,” I teased, rubbing him down with a towel. “It’s like you have an empty hole inside you instead of a stomach. Let me check.” I blew raspberries above his belly button, and he went off into chortles again.
When I pulled back, Fallon was watching us, sunglasses over her eyes so I couldn’t read her thoughts, but her face had turned serious once more.
I raised a brow, looking purposefully at the towel she’d dried off with.
Instead of wrapping it around her body, she tossed me a defiant look and threw it into the used towel bin.
Then, she shoved her feet into the shoes she’d pulled from the waterproof bag and sauntered across the pebbled beach toward the snack bar.
I barely got Theo to put his shoes on before he raced after her. I grabbed the rest of our belongings and the three life vests, following behind them.
“Snag a table. I’ll be right back,” Fallon said with a wave at some of the open spots.
She didn’t stop at the register to order.
Instead, she opened a side door of the hut and disappeared.
Through the window, I saw her talking to the cook and the girl behind the counter.
They both laughed at whatever she’d said.
That was the Fallon I’d grown up with. She could talk to anyone and put them at ease, but if you crossed her or someone she cared about, heaven have mercy on your soul.
Theo and I sat at one of the tables shaded by a blue-and-yellow striped umbrella. He looked exhausted, and I hoped it meant that, for once, he wouldn’t wake up in the middle of the night.
When Fallon came out of the snack bar, she had a tray loaded with nachos, warm pretzel bites, and three frozen lemonades. It was a smorgasbord of junk food I’d done my best not to serve Theo after that first desperate week when he’d come to live with me.
“You keep feeding Theo stuff like this, and he’s going to want to live with you forever. Aren’t you, bud?”
His eyes twinkled as he nodded, grabbing the cup of pretzel bites and clutching it to his chest as if he were afraid I’d rip it away.
My lips twitched, and I dug into the plate of nachos covered in smoked carne asada, real cheese, and a homemade salsa that made my mouth water.
I had access to plenty of top-notch Mexican food in San Diego, but this carne asada was one of the best I’d ever had.
“You guys even do junk food the five-star way,” I commented between bites.
Fallon scooped some up, pleasure coating her face as she chewed. It made my insides tighten all over again, and I was thankful the table hid my body’s reaction to her.
“At first, Francois was appalled at the idea of serving any so-called junk food,” she told me.
“He said he was a Michelin-starred chef and had his standards. But then, Dad threatened to hire a second chef who’d have equal space in his kitchen, and he caved like a sandcastle under a wave.
Now, Francois sets the menu, but he makes one of the sous chefs, Ren, do any cooking he doesn’t deem worthy of his time. ”
“My hats off to Chef Ren for doing it right.” I watched as Theo stuffed another pretzel bite into his mouth. “But I fear this snack is coming so late in the day that I’ll never get this guy to eat anything healthy for dinner.”
“Hel-fy stinks. Vega-tubles stink,” Theo said with a sad shake of his head.
“I bet I can make you like them,” Fallon told him, and I groaned, knowing Theo was going to eat her alive. The kid really abhorred vegetables—red, green, orange, or otherwise.
“A bet?” Looking at him, I could see Theo’s little mind whirling with all the bets I’d already made with him and lost on this same topic. “If I win, I get a prize?”
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” I warned Fallon, and she just shot me a grin.
“What do you want if you win?”
“A puppy!” He shoved his hand in the air and then looked at the empty space where his stuffed animal normally was tucked. He’d nearly disintegrated into tears at the thought of leaving Dog at the house, and it had taken all of Fallon’s and my cajoling to get him to come on the adventure without it.
Fallon’s face turned all soft and gooey, and my gut clenched in a moment of panic. “No dogs, Fallon.”
They both shot me a glare that said I was a party pooper. I’d eventually lose this battle. Theo was going to get his damn puppy, but I had to figure out how I’d take care of him and a dog when I was deployed before I agreed.
“How about, if you win, I let you name the foal that’s going to be born any day now?” she offered.
“Foal?” Theo’s brows furrowed.
“A baby horse,” I said.
His face lit up. “Would it be mine?”
Her smile widened. “You’d have to eat a lot of vegetables to win an entire horse. But you could visit it anytime you’re here. And once it’s grown up and we’ve trained it, you can ride it.”
Theo’s face was one big grin as he said, “I’m going to win. I hate veg-utables.”
“What does Fallon get if she wins?” I asked Theo.
He turned thoughtful. “I can draw her a picture. Daddy always said I was a real good drawer.”
Before I could say I didn’t think that was an even bet, Fallon stuck her hand out, and they were shaking on it.
And four hours later, after we’d eaten dinner in the hotel’s dining room, and Theo had tasted a little pastry he’d fallen in love with and had been appalled to find out was full of vegetables, he did his part and drew her a picture.
He sat at the coffee table in her house with his little eyes drooping as he did it, and when he finished, he crawled onto the couch between Fallon and me, shoving the paper at her.
She took it gently, scrutinizing it carefully. Her face made all kinds of weird expressions as she fought off a wave of emotions. Her voice was rough as she said, “This is the best picture anyone has ever given me.”
Theo beamed and then looked at me with a yawn. “I want to go to bed.”
Shock reverberated through me. Not once in the month he’d been with me had the kid offered to go to bed on his own.
“Okay, then, say goodnight to Fallon, and I’ll tuck you in.”
He hugged Fallon, clutched his stuffed animal to his chest, and headed down the hall to Lauren’s room. By the time we’d returned from the lake, someone had changed the sheets and put up a cot, even though I’d told them not to bother .
“Cot or bed?” I asked Theo.
He eyed the cot as if it was a strange toy and then just climbed into the king-sized bed.