by Jess Bryant
Lydia gaped, “What? Like… a date?”
“No, it’s not… it’s just running.” She shrugged.
“You have no idea how major this is, do you?”
“Um…”
“Shane flirts with you and you two go running together. Wow. Okay. It’s going to take me a second to wrap my head around this. You and Shane?”
“No, of course not. It’s not like that. We’re friends.”
“Since when?” Lydia scoffed.
“Since always.” Lemon frowned, “He’s a family friend. We’ve known each other since we were kids. He’s Seth’s older brother.”
“Yeah, he’s Seth’s older brother that you had a major crush on if I remember correctly.”
“So?”
“So, you need to be careful with him Lemon.”
“He’s a grown man, Lydia.” She shot back, more than a little perturbed by the turn in this conversation.
She was an adult. Shane was an adult. She didn’t think either of them was willing to push their obviously mutual attraction but if they did, that was between them. Nobody else. And she couldn’t deny that some tiny part of her, some rebel without a cause part leftover from the teenage girl she’d been, wanted him more now that she was being warned away. He’d always been off-limits but she’d never wanted him like this. It had been an innocent crush that she thought was long dead until she’d seen him yesterday. Now she knew it definitely wasn’t dead and she didn’t think it was innocent either.
“He’s a family friend, like you said, and you need to be careful. He has kids to think about. There’s a reason he doesn’t date, Lemon.”
“I know he has kids, Lydia.” She snapped as that now mostly familiar pain sliced through her chest, “I care about Georgie and Sophie and Rosie. I’d never do anything to hurt them.” She bit her lip, “Or him.”
“Then just be careful because his life is here and yours isn’t. Okay?”
Lemon frowned and took a moment to down the rest of her wine. She knew Lydia was right. Her sister was being her normal, responsible self. She was only putting words to what Lemon already knew. Getting involved with Shane was a bad idea. It was irresponsible. And while she might be exactly that, Shane was the complete opposite of irresponsible. He was a father and a cop and he was responsible enough for the both of them.
Probably.
“Nothing’s going to happen.”
“Really?”
“Really.” She answered her still skeptical sister, “It’s just a little flirtation. Harmless fun. Nobody’s going to get hurt.”
“I hope not.” Lydia was still frowning but she nodded, “And I don’t want you to get hurt either just for the record.”
“Thanks sis but my hearts fairly indestructible at this point.”
“No, honey. It’s not.” Lydia leaned in and kissed her on top of the head, “You just haven’t met the man that’s going to open it back up yet.”
“You’re such a sap.”
“I’m a romantic.” Her sister preened. “I…”
A loud shriek and crying came from just inside the house followed by shouts from someone wanting their mommy. Lemon’s supposedly indestructible heart squeezed painfully in her chest. Lydia sighed and went to stand up.
“Sounds like I’m needed inside. Are you coming?”
“I’ll be there in a minute.”
“Okay.” Her sister paused, “But think about what I said, and not just the Shane stuff. You’re not alone, sis. We love you and we’ll be here for you whenever you’re ready to talk about what’s wrong, however long it takes.”
“Thanks Lydie.”
The door opened and shut behind her and Lemon breathed out evenly once she was alone again. It had been a long day. She should probably head to bed soon anyway since she had to be up early if she was meeting Shane for another run.
She glanced across the street but the curtains were closed so all she could see was dim light coming from inside. She smiled to herself as she pushed up to her feet. Twice today she’d seen Shane and twice he’d managed to make her smile and forget about her problems. It might be stupid and dangerous to see him again, just like Lydia said, but she knew she wasn’t going to miss the chance to go running with him again.
Somehow a ten mile run had become the highlight of her day.
Chapter Six
Shane was going to kill her. Dead. Just kill her and call it a day. He’d never been a violent man but he was at his wit’s end.
He’d dealt with violent offenders and drunks on the job. He’d dealt with bullies and smartasses. He’d even dealt with whiny women that thought they could con him into seeing their side of things with some well maneuvered smiles or tears. He’d handled all of them and always come out the victor.
But a tiny, little, sixteen year old girl was getting the best of him.
He’d just been ending a really long Saturday shift full of clocking speeders on the highway outside of town and trying not to think about a certain blonde that had invaded his every waking moment when his ex-wife had called. Holly had sounded on the verge of tears when she asked him to come to the house immediately. The call had managed to do what nothing else today had and snapped him back into reality. He’d known something was wrong and he’d headed straight to Holly’s to find out what was going on.
He might not be in love with the woman anymore but she’d been his best friend for almost his entire life. They’d grown apart. They’d certainly had their problems. But they had three beautiful daughters together so they would always be connected and he couldn’t tolerate the idea of a crying Holly any more now than he could when he’d been her husband.
On the drive over, he’d been plotting ways to put her boyfriend in his place. If Brad had hurt her in any way, he would have had to pay. But when he’d arrived to find that their oldest daughter was the reason for the hysterics that was when he’d truly started to consider murder.
Grounding her did him no good, she simply snuck out. Taking away her cell phone was useless, she could still tweet, like and pin from her laptop, which he couldn’t take away because the whole point of buying it had been for school. Threating that she was never, ever going to get her own car if she didn’t straighten up and act right only made her shrug and remind him plenty of her friends could drive her around.
She’d always been a good girl. She was kind to animals and old people. She did her homework and got straight A’s. She was smart, funny and beautiful, a classic triple threat. She’d handled the divorce like an adult, helping to explain things to her little sisters and watch after them when need be without so much as a complaint.
But looking at the girl sitting on the couch with her arms crossed defiantly over her chest, he couldn’t help but wonder just where his little girl had gone and who the moody, rebellious teen that had taken her spot was.
She didn’t even look like his daughter at the moment. She was wearing makeup, an atrocity Holly had let start far too early in his opinion. The black around her eyes made her big eyes bigger. The bubblegum pink lip gloss was designed to purposefully draw attention to her lips. Instead of a sweet little baby-doll dress she was wearing an oversized flannel shirt that he knew from his own teenage years most likely belonged to a boy over a skimpy tank-top cut to show off her belly-button. There were also denim cut-offs and combat boots to add to the rebel without a cause look she had going for her. He hated it from top to bottom on principle alone.
She was barely sixteen! She’d only just had her birthday and even if she hadn’t she was still his little girl. She shouldn’t be wearing cut-off shorts or belly baring tops. She shouldn’t be wearing a boy’s shirt. Because it made him rethink that whole murder scenario and put the boy in question dangerously close to an unmarked grave.
“Georgia Marie Lowry, start talking right this instant or you’re going to be grounded until you’re fifty!” Holly crossed her arms over her chest in a similar look of defiance.
He glanced between the two of t
hem and frowned. Sometimes his daughter looked so much like her mother it scared him. He could still remember Holly at this age, just blossoming into womanhood. He also remembered the things they’d been doing at this age, things that had led to them having a baby when they were just kids themselves.
Panic made his throat feel tight. Was his daughter having sex? God no, please God no. Not yet. Not ever if he had a say in it but he was reasonable enough to understand he couldn’t lock a chastity belt around her waist no matter how much he wanted to. He’d been certain he had at least a few more years before he’d have to face these fears that had sprouted the moment she came into the world.
Fears about letting her grow up. Fears like watching her make her own mistakes. Fears that she would make the same mistakes he had.
Not that he believed Georgie was a mistake.
He’d told Lemon the truth when she’d asked yesterday. He didn’t think of his daughter as a mistake. He and Holly had been head over heels in love and they’d made a beautiful baby together. They’d done the reasonable, responsible thing and gotten married. That had always been the plan anyways, they’d just started their family a little earlier than they’d expected. They’d built a life together and it had been a good life, was a good life, even if they’d fallen out of love with each other, because they’d gotten three gorgeous daughters out of it.
He wanted Georgie to have a good life. He wanted her to fall in love. He wanted her to experience that warm, consuming rightness of being in love with someone and he never, ever wanted her to lose it the way he had.
But he didn’t want her to experience it at sixteen years old. He didn’t even want her to find it at eighteen or twenty-one. Maybe when she was thirty she’d be old enough to handle it, old enough for him to handle it. Hell, who was he kidding? She was his daughter. He was never going to be able to handle her falling in love calmly or rationally.
“Holly, calm down.” He forced the words out and tried to remain as rational as he could, “You’re jumping to conclusions.”
“Jumping to conclusions?” His ex-wife narrowed her eyes at him, “I found a condom in her backpack! A condom!”
“And I told you it isn’t mine!” Georgie whined.
“What? You’re holding it for a friend?” Holly hissed. “Where have I heard that before? Oh wait, I know, from you, when we found those cigarettes hidden in your room a month ago!”
“God! I knew you weren’t going to believe me!”
Shane held up a hand when Holly started to yell at their daughter again, “Honey, we believe you. If you say it isn’t yours, then we believe you.”
Holly glared at him. Georgie smirked at her mother as if she’d won. He settled onto the coffee table directly in front of his daughter and reminded himself that she wasn’t a criminal. He wasn’t going to interrogate her. He wasn’t going to demand to know things that he didn’t honestly want to know the answers to either. He was just going to talk to her.
“Thanks Dad.”
“But I need to know why you have it.”
Georgie blushed and she looked away, “Dad! It’s not mine! I’m not having sex. Can’t you just let it go?”
“No. Sorry. We have to talk about this no matter how awkward it is.”
“Mom already gave me the birds and the bees speech. I get it. Sex is a big deal.”
“And you’re not having sex?”
“No! Jeez!”
“Then why do you have it?”
Georgie harrumphed, “Shouldn’t you just be happy that if I was thinking about having sex that I was going to be safe about it?”
He shook his head and felt his jaw tense uncontrollably, “What do you think?”
“God!” His daughter screeched, “Why are you making such a big deal out of this? It’s a condom! One! Condom!”
“Yes, Georgie. It’s a condom. And you’re sixteen years old. And we’re your parents. We want to know what our teenage daughter is doing with a condom if she’s not having sex.”
He thought he’d sounded completely calm and rational but his daughter’s face turned bright red even as she leveled him with a hurt look, “You don’t believe me either, do you?”
“Did you get it from a boy? Is that boyfriend of yours pressuring you to have sex, Georgie?”
“God! Dad!” She whined, shooting to her feet with a yelp of outrage, “No! Rob isn’t pressure me to have sex. We’re waiting. I’m not ready to take that step and he understands because he loves me. We’re not having sex!”
Rob. He was going to kill that kid or at the very least throw some cuffs on him and put the fear of God in him. He hadn’t wanted Georgie dating anyway. He’d thought she was too young but Holly had reminded him that telling a teenage girl she couldn’t see a boy was like waving a red flag in front of a bull. Telling her she couldn’t see the boy was bound to send her running straight for him so he’d relented.
But this was the first he’d heard of her loving the boy and he didn’t like that. Not at all. From the look on Holly’s face, this was the first time she’d heard of it as well. She looked from their daughter to him and back again as if he could make the problem go away but he couldn’t. He only wished he could.
“Sit down.” Shane forced himself to focus only on what he could handle at the moment as his daughter threw herself back onto the couch, “So if you and Rob aren’t using them, where did you get the condom, Georgie?”
His beloved daughter glared at him. Her cheeks were pink and her lips were pursed. She looked about ready to scream, or cry, or both. He wanted to tug her onto his lap and hold her, just hold her like he had when she was a little girl and he could promise that everything was going to be okay.
“They gave them out in sex ed! Jeez! Are you happy? I got the condom in sex ed class. They made all of us take them. There! You have your stupid answer!”
He physically sucked in a relieved breath and saw Holly do the same. Sex Education class. She hadn’t bought condoms. She hadn’t gotten them from a boy. She wasn’t having sex. Still, he didn’t understand why she couldn’t have told them that from the start. All of the secretive, I can’t talk to you because you’re my parents crap was killing him. They’d always been able to talk about anything.
Georgie wasn’t done though because she turned to her mother with a snarl, “You think I want to be teen mom 2.0? You think I want to be anything like you? I’m not that stupid!”
“Georgia!” He reprimanded immediately, coming to his feet as well. “You don’t talk to your mother that way.”
“You had me when you were eighteen, Dad. I can do the math. You knocked Mom up when you two were still in high school so you got married and look what that got you.” She burst into tears, “Not exactly happily ever after was it?”
Holly gaped, her eyes widening at the insults. Georgie stormed from the room in a stream of tears. He watched her go, completely blown away and unsure of what to even say to that. He knew he couldn’t let her get away with it, that this was just the tip of the iceberg to a much bigger conversation they were going to need to have.
“Georgie! Georgie, come back here.”
“Let her go.” Holly shook her head, stopping him in his tracks, “She needs a few minutes to cool off and honestly, I think I do too.”
Shane put his face in his hands and groaned. He needed more than a few minutes. He needed a time-out from this conversation, from this situation, from his life. He didn’t want to be the dad that didn’t understand his daughter, that talked down to her or lied to her. He didn’t want to look her in the eyes and tell her that everything she’d said was right either though so he simply shook his head and let her go for now.
“Shit. That went badly.”
“Understatement of the year.” Holly swiped a hand through her hair and sighed, “You want something to drink Shane? I need a margarita but I’ll settle for some sweet tea.”
“Yeah. Tea.”
He followed Holly through the home they’d shared for years on autopi
lot. She’d made changes since the divorce, updates the place had always needed but he’d never gotten around to despite her nagging. Her boyfriend was a handyman and it showed in the new hardwood floors and cabinets in the kitchen. He made a mental note to compliment Brad on the work he’d done the next time he saw him.
He didn’t feel even a small stab of jealousy that Holly had moved on. He liked Brad. But more than that, he liked that Brad made Holly happy.
“She’s had an attitude ever since we let her start seeing that boy.” Holly muttered.
Shane collapsed onto a barstool, “Yeah, and now apparently she’s in love with him.”
“She’s been in love with Robbie West since she was like eight years old, Shane.”
“She’s not in love. She’s sixteen.”
“We were in love at sixteen.” Holly shrugged and pulled a pitcher of tea out of the fridge.
Yeah, and look how that had turned out. His daughter’s words were true and haunting. He’d been head over heels in love with Holly at sixteen and by thirty they were divorced. Young love didn’t last, not by his estimation.
“That kid is bad news.” Holly continued when he didn’t speak.
“He’s a sixteen year old boy that our daughter thinks she’s in love with, of course he’s bad news.”
“No. I mean it. You know things with Rocky and Jenny were messed up. That boy has issues I don’t think we’ve even begun to crack and his relationship with our daughter worries me.”
Shane groaned, “Then why the fuck did you let her go out with him, Hol?”
“Language.” She gave him a pointed look, “And we’ve been over this. What was I supposed to do? Tell her no? If I tell her he’s bad for her and will almost undoubtedly break her heart she’ll just want him more. You know that.”
“Yeah, I know.”
He swiped a hand over his face again and sighed. Rob West was really Robbie Wiley. He knew the boy’s parents. He’d gone to school with Rocky Wiley and Jenny Wright. They’d gotten married right after graduation, same as he and Holly. Their marriage had ended badly, very, very badly. If he worried that his kids were going to have issues after he and Holly got divorced then he was certain Jenny’s two sons were carrying some baggage as well.
