Chapter 5 #2
“The original toaster broke. Someone bumped into it, and it fell on the floor, cracked in half, but I replaced it,” he explained. I pinched the bridge of my nose. Had I really been working so much that my teenage nephew had been able to get away with renting my place out for over a year?
“And the money?” Not that it mattered to me. I sure as fuck didn’t need it.
“It’s in an account.” He sighed. “I was going to use it to help pay for college because I knew if Mom was already overwhelmed with me living at home, I knew she would work even harder to pay for it. And she still has Layne and Briana to worry about.”
My heart cracked inside my chest. Jesus Christ, I couldn’t even be upset when the kid was just looking out for his mom, my sister.
“Buddy,” my voice softened. “I am paying for your college. I talked to your mom about it when you started high school. Hell, I would have paid for your truck and her car if…” If I’d pulled my head out of my ass and realized my stubborn older sister wouldn’t ask for a fucking dime.
Not when she was as hardheaded as I was.
“I didn’t…” He cleared his throat. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry, Uncle Ash.”
“Don’t worry about it.” I glanced at Ember, whose attention was solely focused on me, and damn if I didn’t really like how it felt. “Look, I’ll call you later.”
“Miss Thomas rented the cabin for a week,” he blurted out. “If the blizzard warning had come out earlier, I would have already returned her money right away, Uncle Ash. I would have never let someone head into any kind of danger.”
“I know you wouldn’t have, buddy.
“But now this storm is a blizzard.” He sighed, “You could stay with us. I mean… maybe not tell Mom about this, though… yet. Just because I have a ski trip coming up with some friends, and I worked really hard to save up for that.”
“Right. Let me call you back,” I muttered
“I am sorry, Uncle Ash.”
“Kid, you… you have nothing to be sorry about. You were doing what you thought was right, and honestly, from a business standpoint, it was smart.” Fucking genius, really, but I wasn’t going to tell him that.
Not yet at least. “Love you. Call you in a little bit, ‘kay?” He agreed, and with that, the call ended.
I slipped my phone in my pocket. Ember had taken a couple steps forward, and the metal poker was now back in its stand.
“I don’t know if you picked up on all that.”
“Nephews, huh?” she said with a soft smile.
“Yeah.” I nodded with a tight one. “I am very sorry about scaring you. That wasn’t my intention. When I saw the car and lights inside, I figured my nephew had let the cat out of the bag and my sister was going to try and surprise me instead.”
“So, you’re from Sugarloaf?”
“Born and raised. You?” I asked. Ember shook her head, making her blonde, almost white tresses dance side to side.
“No. I’m a Moonlit Pines girl.”
“We played them in high school,” I blurted, surprising the two of us with the random fact.
“Yeah.” She grinned. “I think I remember those games.”
Semi-local girl. Fuck. I wasn’t sure if that made me happy or sad. Moonlit Pines was only an hour away. And an over eight-hour drive from LA, depending on the traffic. Why does the fact feel like a shot to the heart?
“Moonlit Pines is nice.” I needed to fill the silence with small talk while I got my thoughts together. “I heard the ski resort is reopened.”
“It is.” She chewed on her bottom lip. “One of my best friends is an event planner there,” she said. “It’s… nice. The new owners have done a lot to it.”
“That’s… that’s good.” I nodded. “I should figure out what to do.” I scratched the back of my neck. “Again, I am sorry for interrupting your getaway and time here.”
“Hey, you couldn’t have known your nephew… rented out your place?”
“Yep. Who would have thought?”
“How long has it been since you’ve been home?”
“Home.” Shit, the word made me want to rub my chest. “I broke ground on this place five years ago,” I shared. “Right before my mom…” My voice drifted to nothing.
There was a reason I hadn’t returned in a while.
It had been hard to come back when every corner of this small town felt like it owned some kind of memory to my mom.
And staying away? Shit, it had been easier to deal with the hurt and mourning.
Thinking about it now, it had also been selfish of me.
I’d left my single mom sister to deal with more than her share of shit.
“I’m sorry for your loss. It’s never easy losing a parent,” she said softly.
“Have you?”
“My dad.” She blinked away tears. “And sometimes, I think… coming from small towns like ours, it feels like there is some kind of memory every turn you make.” I wanted nothing more than to rush toward her and wipe the errant tear off her beautiful face.
It was so tempting, I shoved my hands into the front pockets of my slacks.
“I’m sorry. I’m a sap.” She shook her head and crossed her arms over her chest, making those pretty tits of hers rise a little higher.
“You’re not. It… it’s true. Do you mind if—“ I pointed at the couch, and she shook her head. I sat down, and she walked a little closer and stopped.
“Do you mind if I go change really quick? I didn’t really dress for, umm, company.” Her pretty, milky skin brightened to a flushed pink. “If you want, you can put those in the fridge, so nothing goes bad.”
“Shit.” I looked at the bags on the ground. “Thanks. Are you sure?”
“Yeah… talking… I don’t know. This is nice. I mean, unless you need to leave.”
“I actually need to figure out where to stay for the next couple of days.” I shook my head. “I’ll look at the hotel in town.”
“Oh! It’s booked,” she shared. My eyes widened, and she chewed on her lip. “I kinda looked it up after I booked this place.”
“Why?”
“For my friends. In case they wanted to come to Sugarloaf.”
“You didn’t wanna share the space?”
“If it was just with my girls, I wouldn’t have minded. But two of them recently started relationships.”
“Oh.”
“I figured they might want their… privacy.”
“Right.”
“I’ll be right back, okay? Don’t… don’t go anywhere, yeah?” That made the blood in my body warm up and start to travel down as my cock started to slowly thicken.
“Promise,” I said and meant it.
Fuck me! I wasn’t sure what I’d ever done to have the princess-looking woman in front of me asking me to stay, but I wasn’t going to mess it up. Not when every damn molecule in my body from head to toe was yelling at me that she was mine. My sweet princess.
A princess who was bringing out a side of me I hadn’t known existed. A protective, needy asshole who wanted to do nothing but make her smile as he greedily basked in her attention. A daddy.