by Lexi Scott
“It’s not like that, sweetie,” he protests. “You know I couldn’t do this without you.”
I stare at him. “Do this?” I gesture around our hovel. “You know what? I’m done. With all of this. With watching you mainline booze. With paying your cell phone bill. With cooking your meals. With leaving an amazing night with someone who is so important to me to make sure you haven’t drowned yourself in a pool of your own filth.”
I slam my palm down on the counter for emphasis. Dad doesn’t flinch.
Wow. This isn’t exactly how I planned this talk in my head. Not at all. My stomach is twisting, and I just want this to be over with, fixed, poof.
But that’s ridiculous. Nothing this complicated can have an easy fix.
“Maren, I’m sorry. I know it’s rough—”
“Do you, Dad? Do you really? Because I sort of feel like if you knew how hard these last couple of years have been for me, you might do something to change the way things are. Unless you just don’t care,” I say, my voice cracking a little.
I want to believe he cares about me the way he used to. That it’s me and him together against the world. But tonight, I’m starting to see that my father is so sunk into his own pain and addiction, there’s no room for me. God, that hurts. It tears me apart.
“I care. Pumpkin pie, I care.” His brows pull together, and his face contorts with guilt. “You’ve just got to give me some more time. I just need a little more time, is all.”
“Dad. I love you, I really honestly do. That’s why I’ve done this crazy thing for years. That’s why I cook your meals and pay your bills. I do it because I love you so damn much, and just want you to feel better. And lately I do it for the guy I remember from years ago. The guy who taught me how to read music and helped me make forts in the house. Remember that guy? I used to get off the bus with Rowan, and when I saw you waiting for us in the yard, telling us to forget homework for a while and play kickball with you, it was like I knew you were happy to see me. Like you’d been waiting for me to come home. Do you know how much it meant to me to have you always cheering me on? So much,” I say around a sob. It’s hard to let this all out when I’ve been holding it in for such a long time.
“I want that guy back, Dad. I thought I’d move in and help you get back on your feet, and you’d look out for me, like you used to when I was a kid. I thought if I stuck around to help you, you’d get inspired to build a really good life for yourself, and then you’d be there for me, to give me advice and spend time together like we did when I was a kid. Those are some of the best memories of my life, and I guess I thought we’d have so many more good ones. But you just aren’t doing anything to make that happen. At all. Every day I see you like this, I lose a little piece of that guy I love so much, Dad, and it’s tearing me apart. And I… I really don’t think I can do this anymore. I don’t think I’m helping you…or me.” I let the last two words slip out in a whisper.
I’m shaking, breathing hard, shocked at myself, proud of myself, and so sad. Impossibly sad.
Dad nods slowly. He looks small, ugly, foreign. Who is this imposter? Where is my handsome, strong, silly Daddy?
I pity this man.
I really, really don’t want to pity my own father.
“I understand, kiddo. Just give me six more months and I’ll get it together. With your help, I can get a job. You said you’d look into the warehouse thing, right? Could you do that for your old man?”
“Dad.” I pause to pull in a breath and work up my nerve. “I think you need more help than I can give you. Like, professional help.”
As soon as I mention getting anyone else involved, a dark cloud descends over the conversation, and my father’s mood flips.
“I’m not talking about this with my daughter. You’re a child, Maren. You don’t understand things—”
“How can you say that? What do you think I do all day? What do you think I worry about all day? You! I take care of you. I worry about you, Dad. I understand plenty. I understand that it’s not okay for me to be raising my father.” I grab my keys off the edge of the counter.
“Where are you going? You’re gonna say all that and just leave?”
“I can’t do this right now, when you’re so drunk you’re not even listening to me.”
“Fine,” Dad says. He throws his hands up. “You want to put on your big superior attitude and run away like your mom, great.”
But I’m not running away this time.
I’m running to something.
Someone.
Chapter Twenty-One
Cohen
I’m just falling into that perfect state where you’re half asleep, half awake and can hear everything going on around you, but you’re so relaxed it’s like you’re paralyzed, and you don’t even care. My head is swimming with thoughts of Maren moving on top of me, her expression so intense and gorgeous.
But, dammit, there’s a knock at the door. Without moving, I shift my eyes to the clock on the nightstand. It’s almost four in the morning.
My immediate thought is it’s Kensley.
She used to pull shit like this when we were together. Going out with her friends, downing way more alcohol than her hundred and fifteen pound frame could handle, and then having her friends drop her off at my place, slurring her words, and horny as hell. There’s no way she is pulling that shit with me tonight. But it’d be just like her, to come and fuck with the most incredible night I’ve ever had with any woman—even her.
I lay still in my bed, until I can’t shake the thought that even if it is her, she’s out there alone and at least needs a damn ride home. I pull a V-neck T-shirt over my head and make my way to the door, planning what I’m going to say to get her to leave without a big scene.
But it isn’t Kensley.
“Maren, baby, what are you doing out here?” I barely get the door open the entire way before I’m pulling her through it, out of the wind.
“It just…my dad…fuck!” she says, her voice shaking hard. “Everything is so wrong.”
“Mare, everything is not wrong. Earlier? That was definitely not wrong at all,” I say. I help her out of her sweater and scoop her into my arms.
“Cohen, what are you doing?” she asks, pawing at my chest like she’s protesting, but she’s not actually pushing away.
“Taking you back to bed. It’s late.”
“I know, but I didn’t come back for… I mean, earlier was nice. So, so nice, but that’s not why I’m here.” I carry her up the small flight of stairs back to my room.
I shake my head and wonder what went down at her father’s. She’s shaken up for sure. It’s my job to make her feel better, and I take that seriously.
“I’m not about to strip you down, if that’s what you think. I didn’t want you to leave earlier. I get why you said you had to, but I was bummed watching you go into the house,” I admit. “But now you’re back, and it’s late, and you look stressed as hell.” I set her on the edge of my bed, our bed if she wants it to be. “Take off those jeans and top and put this on.”
I pull my T-shirt over my head and toss it to her. She holds the blue shirt in her hands for a minute before shimmying out of her curve-hugging pants and slowly undoing each of the buttons of her shirt. I sort of regret handing her a replacement, because Maren topless is a thing of intense beauty.
She needs me, and I have to repeat that mantra in my head over and over as I watch her let the shirt slide off her shoulders and think of how good it would feel to press my lips to her stomach again.
She needs me. And I’ll be there for her.
“Come to bed,” I say, patting the space next to me.
She crawls up the length of the bed, perfect ass in the air, and snuggles into my chest, her dark hair spilled in soft waves over my skin.
“Thank you,” she says.
“For what?” I reach over and flip the nightstand light off, then pull her in even closer, letting the coconut smell of her hair envelope me.
“Not asking,” she says, and pauses to give this adorable little kitten yawn. She wraps her arms around me. “Just, you know, being here.”
“No thanks needed,” I say, kissing the top of her head. “You’ve got me.” And she does. “Maybe you’ll feel like talking in the morning. Right now, I’m just so damn glad you’re back.”
And, damn, I am. This girl belongs here. It’s clear. I don’t believe in love at first sight. I think it’s horseshit. But love at first phone call, I’d buy. Because from the moment I heard that sweet, sexy voice say my name a year ago, I’ve thought about what it would be like to have her in my life in a bigger way. Maybe not like this, but somewhere in me I think I hoped it’d be more than it was.
And now? It is.
I kiss her forehead and let her weight sink into me, and it feels so right. This girl owns me to the fucking depths of my soul.
If I want to keep her in my life, I need to set some things right. I need to go see her father in the morning.
…
I stand outside the apartment and hesitate before I knock. Part of me wonders if I’m overstepping just at the point where I should be backing off a little. I just gained her trust, and now I’m pushing boundaries she made clear the other day. The thing that keeps me moving forward is the fact that I truly believe this is a conversation that needs to be conducted man to man.
Maren tried to talk sense to her father last night, and she got nowhere. I have a feeling she went a little easy on him. She truly loves him, no matter what fresh hell he puts her through.
I’m still in mild shock over the fact that she told me everything that happened when she went back to her place last night. I didn’t pry, because I recognized she needed space. So I was pretty happy when, after a long night of holy fucking amazing sex, she snuggled in my arms and spilled her guts.
Told me all about her mom and sister and what made them ditch her dad.
About how she decided, when she was just in high school, to stand by his side. How it had been sad at first, but okay. How they needed to lean on each other, and that worked.
Then she explained how things went downhill. How every day seemed to get a tiny bit harder, just one more pebble of angst and difficulty thrown on her shoulders day after day, until she was being crushed under a metric ton of stress.
I mopped her face up when she cried and crushed her to me when she told me how badass she had been when she was facing down her father.
But the first thing she did before heading to work was arrange for a neighbor to check in on him.
I realize I could probably convince her to move in with me, but she’d always be giving so much mental and emotional energy to her father. And that seems crazy.
Maren isn’t used to being taken care of. But I’m used to taking care of people, and I want to do this for her. Even if I’m not positive she’ll be all that happy.
I have to knock for a while before I hear any noise from the apartment. The bolt trips on the door, and it opens slowly, revealing one bloodshot eye in a waxy, pale face with a giant gray beard.
“Mr. Walshe? Can I come in for a minute?”
The eye kind of rolls back and forth, I guess trying to check the hallway through the sliver of open door that the chain lock allows him to peek through.
“My daughter deals with the bills. If we’re late on something, I’m sure you can take it up with her.”
Ah. He doesn’t recognize me from the drive home at all. Okay, fair enough. He was pretty wasted.
I was planning on using my best respectable-guy manners. I really was. But I’m feeling pretty pissed about the fact that her dad just pretty much threw her under the bus and left her at the mercy of a hypothetical bill collector he’s too scared-as-shit to open the door for.
Enough is enough.
“Mr. Walshe, I’m not a bill collector. My name is Cohen Rodriguez. I’m your daughter’s boyfriend.” I say it without a pause, like I’m sure of myself and what I’m declaring.
I know damn well it’s wishful thinking. For now. But I also know in my gut that if Maren is willing, this is my chance. She’s my chance. And I’m not going to let some aging rocker with a Peter Pan complex fuck that up.
“What’s the trouble?” he asks, backing away from the door.
You, you washed-up bastard.
“There’s no trouble. Can I come in? I think we need to sit down and talk some stuff through. Face to face.” I advance toward the door, and he pulls back.
“You got anyone out there with you?” he asks, his eye darting around with nervous quickness.
“No one but me.” I try to keep the irritated edge out of my voice, but it isn’t easy.
The door closes and I hear him slide the chain lock before he opens it, inch by inch. He pokes his head out, swinging it left and right, then opens the door the rest of the way.
“Come on in.” He shuffles into a dingy living room with a disgustingly stained recliner taking center stage.
The furniture salesman in me wants to run his credit to get him a new chair and see if we can arrange for complementary disposal of that rotten piece of crap.
The part of me that can’t stand to see Maren shiver in the cold or drop her classes for a dead-end job has to get his rage under control.
The walls are streaked with the kind of yellow stains that only a truly devoted cigarette addiction can bring about, and there is a ring around the recliner spotted with food stains. The carpet is vacuumed, the kitchen looks dingy but scrubbed down, and there are tiny bright spots here and there—a beautiful painting of the ocean with Maren’s signature on the wall, some hand-made blankets laid over the sagging couch, a pair of bleached-out curtains hanging over a window with parking lot views.
This isn’t where Maren belongs. And I’m sure as fuck not going to let her sit and rot here.
“I came to talk about Maren,” I say.
I wasn’t sure how I’d put it all out there before I saw this filth. Now I know that I’ll say any damn thing to get his fat ass out of her life before he can do any more damage.
“You wanna drink?” he asks, looking sheepish.
Weird that his manners still force him to offer me some booze, even when he has to know from the look of disgust I’m sending his way that I’m giving serious thought to breaking the bottle over his skull.
“It’s not even ten in the morning,” I say between gritted teeth.
He shrugs. “Habit I picked up back in my days on the road. Guess I never really kicked it.” He throws back two fingers of what I think is whiskey, then immediately pours two more.
“Maren’s been worried sick about you.”
He barely lifts his feet as he drags his ass from the kitchen to the chair, bottle tucked at his side neatly.
“Sit.” He gestures to the couch, and I’m about to tell him to shut the hell up and listen, but I remember I’m here to get him out of Maren’s life. If that means kissing some old rocker’s ass, so be it.
“Thank you.” I wish I had better acting skills, because I know I’m coming off as pissed and uncomfortable.
“I love that kid.” He swishes his drink in the bottom of his cup, and his mouth goes soft and wobbly. “Love her. No one in my life has ever stuck by me the way she has. And no matter how awful things get, she doesn’t leave. That takes a certain kind of heart.”
A thousand biting, crazy things bubble up in my mind, but I stomp them back.
“I know.” I take a deep breath. “She dropped out of school.”
His nod is slow and heavy. “I guess I figured that. She kept packing her school bag up, but I could tell something was off.”
Gee, how observant of you, Pops.
“So, now that you know, what’s the plan?” I demand.
I like action. I like figuring things out, getting a pattern down.
Watching her prematurely aged, overweight father rock in his gross chair while he lets Maren collapse every opportunity in her life is driving me crazy.
“I’m not really in the position for plans right this minute.” He rubs a hand over his disgusting beard. “I told her the other night, I just need six months, and I’ll be—”
“Six months?” I interrupt. “You realize in six months, it will be mid-semester at her school. Which means she loses another full year of school. Did you know she’s maxed out two credit cards and doesn’t know how she’ll make her next car payment? She told me it might get repossessed.” Obviously, I’d never let that happen, but I like the way her father’s face sags with self-loathing.
My goal is to make him so full of guilt he picks his ratty ass up and leaves.
“What can I do?” His voice warbles.
I pick up a stack of pamphlets and toss them his way. “These are three detox programs that have open space and offer services for people who don’t have insurance. They’re pretty good.”
He rubs a hand with long, dirty fingernails over his face. “I’ve never been big on those programs. Just a bunch of assholes and their psycho babble.”
Frustration cyclones through me. No wonder Maren feels like she’s on a downward spiral. This guy is stubborn about his own demise, which is fine. If he crashes and burns, it’s on his head. I just refuse to see him take Maren down with him.
“Here’s the thing, Mr. Walshe. My sister has some ins at the local college, and she’s helping get Maren back into some of her classes. Her professors agreed to excuse her absences and give her an extension…if you go into an approved rehab and we have documents that say Maren was caring for you during the time before you came in.”
It’s a half-truth. Cece already told me that if Maren explained her situation, she’d vouch for her at the dean’s office, and she was positive it would work out. Good thing my sister tutored the dean’s sons through high school.
But why should I make it easy on Walshe? Maren deserves a shot at doing this without having to run back and forth to make sure he didn’t fall asleep with a still-burning cigarette in his fingers.
She needs peace of mind.
“They’ll let her back in if I do this?” he asks, thumbing through the brochures.
