Chapter 24 #2
The call ends and I place my phone on the kitchen counter before moving into Scott and putting my arms around him. I look up and meet his gaze as his hands find my ass. “We’re not having any more children. I absolutely refuse.”
Amusement flickers in his eyes. “That was a given.”
I rest my chin against his chest, still looking up at him. “We’re also not having sex for like a week. You wore me out last night.”
His hands leave my ass, and he brings one up to slide into my hair while curving his other one around my neck. “That’s not a given. I’ve got plans for you tonight.”
I arch my brows. “Oh, really?”
“Really,” he growls before his lips crash down onto mine and he kisses me as if he hasn’t kissed me in weeks. It doesn’t matter if we go days between kissing or hours, Scott always kisses me like he can’t get enough of me.
I’m breathless when he finally lets me go. Smiling at him, I say, “Okay, so maybe I’ll let you proceed with those plans tonight.”
His eyes search mine. “What’s going on with Madison and Keaton?”
I share the story about Savannah’s black eye with him and the small amount of information Keaton shared with me.
“I’ll talk to Keaton about this,” he says, looking as angry about this as his son did. If there’s one thing a Storm man can be counted on for it’s looking out for the family members of their brothers. The tension that’s filled his body tells me he wants to get to the bottom of this.
I tighten my hold on him. “No, leave it, Scott. You two will just get into an argument. He’s not going to tell us anything more.”
The tension in his body doesn’t ease, but he doesn’t try to move away from me.
Wanting to shift the conversation, I say, “What time are you going over to help Aurora?”
Our daughter moved into an apartment with two of her friends a week ago and has asked Scott to help them build some furniture and do some maintenance around the apartment.
“I told her I’d be there at eight thirty.”
I grin. “I bet the girls loved that.” None of them are known to be early risers.
He hooks a finger into my jeans and tugs me closer. Not that I can get much closer. “Tell me again why we let her move out.”
My grin shifts into a soft expression of understanding.
This man.
I don’t know many men who are harder than Scott, but he always gives me this side of him.
He allows me to see the parts of him that struggle.
And right now, he’s struggling to let our eighteen-year-old daughter go.
Scott wants nothing more than for Aurora to spread her wings and find herself while standing on her own two feet, but the transition period has been rough for him.
I grip his waist. “She’s going to be okay, Scott.”
He exhales a long breath. “Yeah.”
I pull his face down to mine so I can brush my lips across his. Then, I say, “Invite her for dinner next week.”
“You wanna start a weekly dinner tradition?”
“Do you think we’ve got any hope of her agreeing to that?” Aurora’s current mission in life is to be as independent as she can be. I can’t imagine she’ll show up weekly for dinner.
“I’ll make sure she agrees.” The gravel and raw emotion in his voice makes me think he might just succeed because it’s clear this means a lot to him.
I smile at him. “I love you, Scott Cole.”
He kisses me one last time and then says, “I should be finished by lunch. Will you be done with shopping by then?”
I give him an amused look. “Have you already forgotten that time you took Aurora shopping for her Year Ten Formal?”
Scott stepped in to take her dress shopping for that formal after I got food poisoning.
Afterwards, he told me in no uncertain terms that he was never taking her shopping for clothes again.
There was never any fear of that happening, though, because Aurora also told me to never inflict her father upon her again, that she’d rather go naked than endure another shopping trip with him.
“Fuck, that was four hours I never fuckin’ got back in my life,” he says.
“Right, so I highly doubt I’ll be done by lunchtime.”
His phone sounds with a text and he pulls it out of his back pocket to read it. He then eyes me and says, “She wants me to pick them up coffee on the way.”
I smile again. “You’ll always be her dad and she’ll always need you, Scott.”
“Yeah, well she better listen to me today when I tell her she needs better security because I’m installing cameras and an alarm whether she likes it or not.”
As I watch him leave the kitchen to take a shower, a memory of the two of them flashes through my mind.
Aurora was fifteen and had her first boyfriend.
Scott was beyond protective. To say it was a period of hell for me is an understatement.
The two of them argued their way through the month of that boyfriend.
But what always struck me was that Scott was who she went to when the boy broke her heart.
Sure, she wanted comfort from me, but her dad was who she searched for first.
It's always been this way with them. They’ve been inseparable from the moment she was born. And I just know, deep in my soul, that they’ll always be this way.
I also know that Aurora is going to give him hell over that security today. I almost want to cancel on Madison so I can see how my husband makes it through this morning.
Scott’s POV
9:00 a.m.
“Dad! No. We don’t want security cameras throughout the apartment,” Aurora says, hands on her hips, fierce stubbornness covering her face. “You can put them outside, but not inside.”
“You’re getting them everywhere,” I say just as stubbornly. We’ve been arguing over this for a good half hour. What she doesn’t seem to understand is I have no intention of not installing these cameras everywhere I can put them.
Her lips flatten as she crosses her arms. “Oh my God, you are the most frustrating man alive! Does Mum know about this?”
“Of course your mother knows about this.” I reach for my drill.
“And she thinks it’s perfectly reasonable for you to install cameras everywhere, invading our privacy?”
“It’s not invading your privacy, Aurora. It’s ensuring your safety.”
She glares at me before eyeing Nash who’s helping me. “Can you please talk some sense into him? This is beyond ridiculous.”
Nash’s lips twitch. “Darlin’, I agree with your father about this. And do you really think I’d have any chance of talking him around if I didn’t?”
Aurora drags in a long breath and then exhales it loudly, arms still crossed as she gives me her attention again. “There’s no way you would have stood for this from your father when you were my age.”
“I didn’t need security, sweetheart. I could take care of myself.”
“Oh, so boys don’t need to be watched twenty-four-seven, but girls do? Tell me, when Keaton moves out, will you shove cameras all over his place too?”
“If I think there’s a threat he can’t handle, it’ll be the first thing I’ll do.”
She rolls her eyes. “We both know that you’d never think he couldn’t handle a threat.”
While I don’t think there’s any threat Keaton couldn’t handle, I wouldn’t hesitate to do the same for him that I’m doing for Aurora if I felt it necessary.
There’s not one fucking thing I wouldn’t do for my kids, including forcing my way into their homes with whatever security is required to keep them safe.
And if that includes sending my entire fucking club to watch over them, so be it.
Aurora wouldn’t have a hope in hell of stopping me.
Aurora looks like she’s settling in to keep arguing with me, but one of her flatmates steps in and says, “I don’t know, Rory, I’m okay with this. I like knowing we’ll have security.”
Nash grins at the girl and then at Aurora. “Listen to your friend here.” With that, he grabs his toolkit and looks at me. “Let’s get started, brother. Velvet needs me home by one this afternoon.”
He strides past me into the lounge room towards the boxes containing the furniture we have to build.
I eye my daughter who is still not happy about any of this. “I’m not doing this to check up on you. I just need to know you’re safe. If anything happened to you, and I hadn’t done everything I could to avoid it, I would never fuckin’ forgive myself.”
Something I say causes her to uncross her arms and soften her glare. With one last release of breath, she says, “I know, Dad, but honestly, you’re too much sometimes. None of my friends’ fathers go to these extremes.”
“Installing security cameras is not going to extremes.”
She arches her brows at me. “Yeah, but we’re not actually just talking about the installation of some cameras here, are we?
I think we both know that when you say that’s what you’re doing, what you really mean is you’re installing cameras today, sending your boys over if required tomorrow, and starting a war anytime it’s needed.
This is just the beginning of what I should expect, right? ”
Aurora is her mother’s daughter. She tries her damnedest to challenge me at times.
And just like I do with her mother, I sometimes allow the challenge.
On this, though, she’s got no chance of winning any argument.
“What you should expect is for me to ensure you make it to old age. And if anyone threatens you, they’ll wish they fuckin’ hadn’t. ”
She watches me silently for a moment before finally saying, “I love you. Thank you. But we’ve got some work to do on your overprotective tendencies.”
With that, she turns and walks out of the kitchen where we’ve been arguing.
Not for the first time in her eighteen years do I wonder how the hell I survived those years. Both my kids are as headstrong as me, but some days I think Aurora has Keaton beat in this department. My daughter can be inflexible at times, and when she’s determined, not much will get in her way.
Today, I’m thankful she’s finally seen sense. She and I have been known to get into some fuckers of arguments and I’m glad we avoided one of those.