2. River #2
“If I had a nickel for every time someone has made that comparison. That or Lindsay Lohan’s character from Mean Girls.” She laughs. “But yes, essentially.”
“Are you planning to follow in your parents’ footsteps?”
“No. I’ve gotten enough wildlife exposure to last me a lifetime. I want to be a journalist. I haven’t decided exactly what area, but I like the idea of entertainment or lifestyle. Hell, maybe even sports. What about you? What do you do? I assume you aren’t in college.”
“Are you saying I look old?” I joke.
“Older than me? For sure.”
“I’m a high school biology teacher and the school’s football coach.”
Her eyes widen, and her mouth drops open in shock. “Wait… you’re a teacher? Oh my God, does any girl in your class pay attention? If you were my teacher, I can safely say I’d never get anything done.”
I chuckle and maybe inwardly preen at her words.
But I am overly aware of the girls’ consensus on the “hot biology teacher” or “daddy bio,” as they call me.
They had a short-lived run with calling me “bio daddy,” but I think they realized that could be construed as talking about their actual fathers, so that ended very quickly.
I am very careful about how I interact with any of the girls at my school and make it a habit to never be alone with them because the last thing I want or need is for someone to read a situation differently than how I meant it.
The crushes and flirting are obvious, but I am very firm with my boundaries, and for the most part, they all respect them.
“If they don’t, then they fail… so, that’s their choice.” I shrug. “I don’t allow retakes except for literal emergencies, and I don’t offer extra credit.”
She crosses her arms over her chest. “Damn. You’re strict.”
“My class isn’t hard, and I’m not that tough. If you’re genuinely struggling, that’s one thing, but if you’re goofing off and just think you can roll your skirt up and bat your eyelashes at me for an A, then you fucked up.”
She leans over the counter and slowly drags her gaze up my arms, over my tattoos, and to my eyes before staring at me with hooded lids. “What if it were me? You did say you loved my eyes?” She smiles again, showing her teeth before running her tongue over her bottom lip.
I clear my throat and shift in my seat to relieve the slight ache in my dick brought on by seeing her shiny, wet lips. “Let’s just say, thank God you’re not in my class.”
Sloane received a call shortly after and left the bar with a smile and a wave, so I had accepted the fact that I’d never see her again until I walked up to my gate and saw her staring down at her phone, reminding me that she said she was going to Maryland.
She happens to look up as soon as I see her and narrows her eyes into confused slits before crooking her index finger toward her.
I move across the terminal, sliding into the seat next to her, and I’m reminded of her spicy, citrusy scent.
I take a deep inhale, and a carnal thought floats through my brain, wondering if she’d taste the same.
“Are you stalking me?”
“Of course not.”
“Then why are you here?” I can tell she’s not annoyed, though probably a bit confused by the coincidence, given that I never told her where I was going.
“Bold of you to think you’re the only person on this flight.”
She gives me a glare that’s more sexy than scolding while she tries to hide her smile. “Well, I told you where I was going, you could have said “me too” or “same " or something?” She lectures with a hint of amusement.
“I don’t make it a habit of telling strangers my business. You may want to start doing the same,” I tell her. I hadn’t meant to come off like I was telling her what to do, but she should probably practice being safer when traveling alone.
Not that it’s my business.
“Clearly, since you’re stalking me.”
I snort. “I’m from Maryland, and I’m going home. You want to see my license?” I ask, repeating her question back to her.
“Actually, I do,” she says matter-of-factly and holds out her hand.
I roll my eyes and pull my wallet out of my pocket, slide out my ID, and hand it to her. “If you show up at my house, I’m calling the cops,” I tell her, hoping my eyes say I’m mostly kidding.
“Yeah, right,” she grumbles before taking the ID out of my hand and staring at it.
“River Kincaid.” She looks up at me with those fucking eyes again.
“That’s a hot name. Your parents did you well.
Good name, good genes. Your girlfriend must have her work cut out for her.
” Her eyes cast downward to my left hand.
“I don’t see a ring, so I assume you’re not married. ”
I snort. “Is that your way of fishing to find out if I have a girlfriend? Kind of predictable, Sloane. Would it bother you if I did?”
“No, but it might bother your girlfriend that her boyfriend is flirting with me and can’t stop looking at my tits.” She scrapes her teeth over her bottom lip, and I want nothing more than to drag my teeth along the same path.
Guess I wasn’t being as sly as I thought. “I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“Not even Ellie? Who evidently lectures you?” she says while giving me a slight side-eye.
“Were you listening to my private conversation?”
“You weren’t exactly quiet,” she counters, and I realize she’s probably not going to let this go.
“Well, not that it’s your business, but Ellie is my brother’s fiancée, who, yes, finds a way to lecture me most days. Mostly about settling down and why I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“Hmm.” Sloane’s eyes flit back to my license in her hand, then widen a little, look up into the air, and then back to it.
She looks at me and then back at my license.
“I’m sorry, math is really not my strong suit, and I did take two weed gummies to help me relax on the flight that may have just kicked in, but does this say you’re thirty-eight?
” She blinks up at me, dumbfounded, and then back to the ID. “And thirty-nine like… in a few weeks?”
I take my license back from her and slide it back into my wallet and into my pocket. “No, it's a fake.”
“You’re almost forty?” she whispers, and her face looks as if this is the most shocking news she’s ever heard.
“Not for a year and some change. And you’ll get there too one day, thank you.” I huff.
“No, I… I just didn’t think you looked that age.
” Her cheeks pinken, and I realize she’s actually embarrassed.
“I was thinking late twenties or thirty at most. You’re really in shape, and when you said you were a football coach, I just assumed you were younger, and…
you have really good skin. Do you do face masks?
” She says all that in one breath, and I’m reminded of Jordan’s similar commentary.
Damn, Margot’s masks are doing a hell of a job.
“Sometimes with my niece, and that is not to be repeated.”
She giggles. “You also don’t talk like most forty—”
“I am not forty.” I interrupt her, trying to keep the exasperation out of my voice and give her a pointed glare.
“Right. I just meant my uncle is your age, and he’s so… old in comparison.”
“Maybe it’s because of my job. Being around teenagers all the time keeps me young, I guess. I also have two nieces and a nephew.”
“How old are they?”
I open my phone and hold it out for her so I can show her the picture of the four of us that was taken at one of SJ’s soccer games. “Margot is about to be seventeen,” I say, pointing at her. “That’s Isla, she’s seven, and Sawyer or SJ, he just turned eleven.”
“I love that they’re your lock screen. That’s really cute.” She beams before I set it to sleep.
“Isla actually made me do that, but…” I shrug.
“I love those kids. My brother and their mom divorced a while back, and then two years ago, their mom died, so they’ve been through a lot.
Until Ellie came around, they really only had their dad, so I tried to help as much as I could, and that has made me a very involved uncle,” I explain, doing my best not to bore her with the details of how my brother fell for his nanny and everything that came before.
“Wow. I’m sorry they went through that. That must have been really tough.”
“It was, but they’re okay. They all have their moments, but therapy has really worked for all of them.”
“Do you have kids?” she asks, and I shake my head.
“Do you?” I ask, and she blinks several times.
“Hell no. I can barely take care of myself.”
Remembering what it was like to be twenty-one and overly prepared with what felt like a lifetime supply of condoms on me at all times because the idea of children was my worst nightmare, I chuckle. “Some days, I feel the same.”
“Do you want them?”
I lean back in my chair. “Yeah. But I often wonder if it’s too late, you know?”
“It’s not too late. Men can have kids well into their like… eighties.” She scrunches her nose.
I give her a look of derision. “You know what I mean. Obviously, I can. I just mean, if I have a child when I’m actually forty, then by the time they graduate, I’ll be almost sixty?
I’m in great shape now, but they say things change in your forties, you know?
What if he or she wants to play catch or something active, and I can’t keep up because I feel too old?
” I lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees, suddenly frustrated because I hadn’t meant to get into this headspace with a stranger, and now, I’m thinking about the very thing I didn’t want to talk to Ellie about.
“And this all could be a moot point because I’d like to meet the right woman first, and I haven’t done that. ”
I’ve just realized how long I’ve been rambling, and I almost don’t want to turn around and look at the twenty-one-year-old with the gorgeous blue eyes that probably haven’t seen much in her short life and can’t relate to anything I just said when I notice her hand moving toward me in my periphery.
When I look down, I see a piece of wrapped candy in her hand.
“Is that what I think it is?”