So it wasn’t really a surprise that I had an aversion to the military.
I’d seen a whole lot of people struggle just like my dad had struggled.
Though, my father hadn’t seen all the times that my mother had cried in the hallway outside of his room. Or in the car on the way home as we left him at the hospital.
My mother had it hard.
She’d weathered the storm, but it had cost her.
“But, honey,” he continued. “I had something to live for.”
I blinked.
“What?” I asked in surprise.
“I had something to live for,” he continued. “I almost died, yes. But when I did almost die, I knew that you and your mom were there waiting for me. I knew that I had to live because y’all would be sad if I was gone.”
I felt tears bottleneck at the back of my throat, and all of a sudden, I was finding it hard to breathe.
“Did you know when your mother came to visit me that first time, I asked her to leave me?” he asked, pulling on my hand so that I tumbled into his chest.
“Yes.” I paused. “But only because I heard her cursing you.”
He grinned wickedly and dropped a kiss onto my forehead.
I tucked my head into his chest and stared at his prosthesis.
“Do you know what she said?” He laughed.
“No,” I replied softly now. “What did she say?”
“She said that she liked the idea of being able to use handicap spots at every store we went to.” He chuckled.
I snickered.
My mom would so say that.
“Let me ask you something, darlin’,” Dad rumbled softly.
“Okay,” I replied.
“Do you like him?”
There was no denying it.
I liked Banner a lot.
Enough that I brought him to my home and introduced him to my parents in the first place.
“Yes,” I replied. “I do.”
“Do you think your mother ever wished that she hadn’t stayed with me when she found out that I was in the military?” he asked.
An immediate denial sprung from my throat. “No!”
“He’s in love with you,” he said softly. “You should’ve seen him when you were hurt. I’ve seen fear like that on another person’s face before. You want to know who?”
I nodded.
“Your mother. When she visited me in the hospital,” he said. “I saw that same fuckin’ fear on her face that I saw on Banner’s after you were hurt. He loves you, kid. He loves you a lot.”
I closed my eyes. “I love him, too.”
“Then don’t be stupid,” he told me bluntly.
I swallowed hard.
“Dad, it’s a year and a half at least. Maybe even two. This isn’t something that I can just say, ‘hey, let’s do this.’ What if in that time he changes his mind?” I asked.
“What if he doesn’t?”
With that parting comment, he got up off the couch. “I’m headed to bed. I have an early shift tomorrow.” He looked at me then. “Will you run to Walmart and get me some stuff? I know you’re restless now, and retail therapy makes you happy.”
I snorted. “You’re nuts.”
He winked. “Where do you think you get it from?” He laughed. “And I can afford retail therapy at Walmart. I can’t when you go to Dillard’s.”
I rolled my eyes hard. “Whatever, Dad.”
Chapter 26
Cancel my subscriptions. I’m done with your issues.
-Banner’s secret thoughts
Banner
I didn’t bother knocking.
Instead, I climbed up to her bedroom window and climbed inside.
Luckily, the damn thing was still unlocked from the last time I’d done it.
Unluckily, Dawson was sitting on the bed waiting for me.
He looked at me like I was a pain in the ass kid that was trying his patience.
“When Perry was four,” he said, looking at me. “She told me that her heart fell in love with me the first time that she saw me.”
My heart tugged at his words.
“Perry falls fast and hard,” he said.
I nodded.
“She loves hard. She holds on until the last dying breath.” He laughed. “She got a puppy when she was eight. A black basset hound mutt dog that was elderly. She had it a year before the dog started to go downhill. Heart problems here. Breathing problems there. Walking problems next. Incontinence. But she held onto that dog. Cared for it like it was her only lot in life, until it died six weeks later. And she didn’t even wake me up. I found her an hour past dawn burying him in the back yard. She’d dug him a hole with a fuckin’ garden trowel. Buried him. Even made him a grave marker.”
I felt my heart ache for her eight-year-old self.
“I’m not going to leave her. I’m not going to change my mind when it comes to her,” I promised.
Dawson grinned at me. “She’s getting me a couple of groceries from Walmart.”
I grinned back. “I’ll go.”
When I headed to the window, he said, “Take the stairs, kid. Ask my girl for a key. I don’t want you sneaking into my house anymore. And for God’s sake, don’t leave your car at the church anymore. There’s been a lot of break-ins lately, and I’d hate for that pretty car of yours to get stolen or trashed when you could just park it in our driveway.” He paused. “And I’m putting the window sensor back on tomorrow. If you open it without deactivating the alarm first, it’ll go off.”
With that parting comment, he got up and walked out, leaving me alone in his daughter’s bedroom.
The drive to Walmart took less than five minutes.
The funny thing was, it took longer to go down the stairs and out the front door since I had to wait for him to unlock it and deactivate the alarm than it would have had he just allowed me to go out the window.
It was only after I was driving that I realized how he’d known.
The alarm.
It had to be deactivated each time that someone went in and out, and I knew that Perry had her own code.
There was no way in hell he wouldn’t have noticed all those deactivation and reactivation messages.
I’d seen the alert on his phone as he deactivated it, making me feel like a fool.
I was fucking grinning when I walked into Walmart.
I wasn’t grinning when I circled the store twice without finding her, even though I’d gone out into the parking lot upon my second sweep to make sure her mom’s car was still there.
I knew she was there somewhere.
I just didn’t know where.
I turned to survey the employees.
It was late and there wasn’t anyone there but one chick manning the self-checkouts, and one older gentleman manning the ten items or less checkout across the entire store.
I pulled out my phone and called her for it to go straight to voicemail for the fifteenth time in the last hour.
I growled and texted her, hoping to hear it somewhere beyond where I was standing, but again, no luck.
I narrowed my eyes and once again looked at the woman at the self-checkout.
Then I made an ass out of myself.
I started screaming ‘MARCO!’ at the top of my lungs.
The employee whipped her head around and glared, along with an elderly woman that was having the woman check her out, which totally defeated the point of a self-checkout.
Without an immediate answer, I bellowed again.
“MARCO!”
Nothing.
I moved slightly to a more centrally located spot and then did it all over again.
“MARCO!”
There was no way in hell she didn’t hear me.
“Sir,” the employee closest to me scolded. “You’re going to have to stop or we’re going to have to ask you to leave.”
I cupped my hands around my mouth a
nd yelled another time.
And another.
And another.
Until I heard an angry set of flip-flops slapping against feet.
Hiding my grin, I turned to see Perry flip-flopping her way toward me with a ferocious scowl on her face.
It didn’t take her long to get to me.
In fact, she rounded the corner and glared at me so hard that I couldn’t contain the laughter.
“You are not funny, Banner Spurlock!” she growled. “Stop it right now.”
I pointed at myself. “I miss you.”
“We’ve been apart for like, twelve minutes,” she grumbled, her face softening slightly.
“Actually, it’s been more like three hours and fourteen minutes, but who’s counting?” I shrugged, grinning at her sheepishly.
She looked away and that was when I saw the shine of tears in her eyes.
“This isn’t funny,” she whispered.
I sobered and reached for her hand. “I never said that it was.”
Her chin trembled and I pulled her into my arms.
“It’ll be okay,” I promised.
“I can’t go with you,” she cried, tears streaming down her face. “What am I supposed to do without you?”
“Perry…”
“Why did you make me love you, Banner?” she moaned between tears. “Why would you do a thing like that to me?”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
I wanted her to love me.
Even more, I was excited that she did.
“You still love me?” I asked, feeling my voice crack halfway through the question.
This wasn’t her first time to say it to me, and hopefully wouldn’t be the last, but hearing her say it now left my heart feeling so full that I couldn’t help but pull her into my arms.
She’d been mad at me.
Very, very mad.
So mad, in fact, that I could only hope that she got over this aversion to the military and decided to stay with me.
“It won’t be forever,” I said softly. “We still have three months until I have to leave. And only six weeks after that before you can see me all over again. I’m not sure what the next year and a half will hold for me placement-wise. I know that I’ll be in either Coronado, but I don’t see any reason at all that we can’t find you a school to go to close to there…”
She laughed. “Hopefully they take volleyball scholarships.”
I squeezed her into my arms and dropped my mouth to the top of her head.
“I’ll pay for your damn school if they don’t. It’s my fucking fault you’ll be out there anyway,” I told her.
She sighed and pushed farther into my arms.
“I left all my dad’s stuff at the back of the store,” she mumbled.
I couldn’t help but ask, “Where were you hiding?”
“I wasn’t,” she said. “I was in the book section reading the epilogue of a recently released book. I saw you walk by twice, but since you saw the short shelf, you assumed that I would be able to be seen over the shelves.”
I couldn’t keep the chuckle in as I said, “You’re bad.”
She shrugged. “I’m yours.”
Chapter 27
My new diet consists of looking at pictures of Symphony until I lose my appetite.
-Perry to Banner
Perry
October
I felt the ball hit my fingers and I screamed for Blue to get it.
She did, setting the ball toward our outside hitter who promptly slammed it into the opposing outside hitter’s face.
The ball went wild and flew into the stands, and I found myself jumping up and down with excitement as the referee blew her whistle.
It was official, we were district champs.
The crowd around us went wild, and I couldn’t help jumping into Blue’s arms as I screamed at her how beautiful she was for getting the ball.
Blue laughed right along with me and twirled us around.
Soon the entire team was surrounding us with excitement.
District champs.
Again.
It was fucking awesome.
“Here we come playoffs!” Blue screamed.
I hugged her tighter.
When I turned my head to look for Banner, I found him grinning his cute little ass off clapping his hands right along with my dad. Though, my dad was doing it quite awkwardly thanks to his prosthetic hand holding onto his cell phone at the same time.
There was a strange man sitting next to my dad, talking to him, and I frowned.
Banner winked, showing me that it was all okay, and I shrugged and went back to my celebration.
“Whew!” Coach Beasley said as she threw her arms up in the air. “Now that that’s done, I’m going to have a baby!”
We all stopped where we were standing and stared at her.
“What?” The other Coach Beasley, the man, heard her say it and came to stand beside her.
“I’ve been having contractions all day. And my water broke during half-time.” She paused. “Somebody may want to tell the janitor that the water near the spot where I was sitting isn’t Gatorade.”
We all cheered for a different reason this time and laughed when the coaches left instead of giving us our usual pep talks.
My mother came up to me and wrapped her arms around my shoulders, pulling me in tight.
“You did good, baby,” she said to my head.
I knew I had.
But it was always great hearing it from my mother.
She meant the world to me.
“Thanks, Mom.” I squeezed her just a bit tighter. “That means that we can go get Taco Bell, right?”
“There is no way in hell I’m eating Taco Bell,” Dad said as he joined our huddle, throwing his arms around us and pulling us in tight. “I have to go to work tomorrow at five. If I eat Taco Bell, I won’t even be off the toilet by then.”
I didn’t even care that my hair had somehow gotten caught on his prosthetic hand.
I felt so freakin’ happy right then that it was a miracle.
A month ago, I wouldn’t have thought it was possible.
But when I looked up into Banner’s eyes, I knew that it was.
He blew me a kiss and I caught it with my mouth, bringing my teeth down hard in a resounding clack.
He threw his head back and laughed before turning to talk to Titus, who was busy staring at Blue.
But I noticed that he never quite took his eyes off of me.
Which was good because I never took mine off of him, either.
***
November
“Oh my God,” I said as I stared at all the bikers that were lined up at the fence. “What the hell?”
Trance was walking up from the row of bikes, as was Viddy. Behind them were about thirty other bikers.
I blinked in shock.
“Perry!” I grinned at Viddy and walked to her where she enveloped me in her arms. “Are you ready?”
“I think I’m more nervous than he is,” I admitted as I pulled back.
Before I could get too far away, Trance had me pulled into his arms, too.
“Hey, girl,” Trance said. “And you shouldn’t be nervous. My kid was born to play this game.”
I had a sad little feeling in the pit of my stomach.
“There are about fifty recruiters here,” I said. “How freakin’ funny is that? They’re not even going to make it to playoffs, unlike us, might I add. I get one recruiter, and he gets fifty. Fifty of which know that he’s going into the Navy next month.”
Trance laughed and pulled me into his arms, throwing one arm over my shoulder while throwing the other arm over his wife’s.
“Just the name of the game, unfortunately,” Trance said. “Not that your sport isn’t fun, but you don’t have the crowd pull that football does. And I think that they’re hoping that he’ll change his mind. Not th
at he can.” He paused. “I heard that you have quite a few schools offering you scholarships.”
I did.
In fact, I had thirty-two of them offering me scholarships.
I had two that I was choosing from, though.
One was a small junior college right outside of Coronado, and another was a university just a little bit further away, which was an hour away from where he would be stationed.
Luckily, I had about six months to choose where I wanted to go. Also luckily, it would give Banner enough time to see where he was being stationed.
“I got the two that I wanted,” I told him. “Now we’re just waiting to see which one I need to choose.”
Trance squeezed my shoulder, and we walked into the stadium.
Today was the last day that Banner would ever play football—at least he said.
Sadly, over the season, the Kilgore Bulldogs football team had suffered more than a few injuries. Those injuries causing the team to kind of collapse.
Sadly, Slone, Titus, and a few other key players had been among those injured. They weren’t ‘out’ forever, but they were definitely out for the season.
Banner just couldn’t do it all on his own.
Not that he didn’t try.
Which was exactly what he did.
And he won.
With a half a roster full of junior varsity players, the Kilgore Bulldogs scraped by with the district championship by the skin of their teeth.
And there were about thirty bikers that roared their approval when they did it.
“That’s…” I said. “Kind of impressive.”
Viddy turned to survey the men.
“They’re the Dixie Wardens MC,” she said. “They are impressive.”
I shook my head as I watched Banner break away from the dog pile—and the Gatorade dunking—to head to his dad.
Trance wrapped his arms around Banner and pulled him in tight, hugging the shit out of him.
Only when he was done hugging his dad did he look for his mom and me.
When he finally got to us what felt like hours later, he offered his mother a hug, then turned his attention to me.
“Hey there, pretty girl,” he said as he pulled me in by the neck of his jersey I’d had made. “You look so hot in this.”
“On that note,” Viddy said. “I’m going to find your father.”
We both laughed.
Somethin' About That Boy Page 19
