“Don’t remind me. Get over here.”
I blinked. “Do you do this for all the single parents on the team?”
He smiled weakly, but more than likely it was just exhaustion. “Only the ones who feed me. Come on before we both fall asleep.”
I wanted to fight with him, but I really didn’t have it in me. Before I knew it, my butt was on the towel between his feet and my shoulders were wedged between his knees. Soft pressure on the back of my head had me hunching forward.
“I’m going to start in the back and work my way to the front,” he let me know in a soft, sleepy voice. “If I stop moving, give me a nudge, okay?”
I giggled, so tired it sounded more like a groan. “If I fall on my face, feel free to leave me there.”
His laugh flowed over my shoulders at the same time I felt what could only be his fingers parting my hair in the back, flipping most of it over. “What time did you wake up today?”
I felt something brush over the nape of my neck. “Six. You?”
“Five thirty.”
“Ouch.” I yawned.
The sides of his fingers brushed against my ears as he continued combing. “I’ve been through worse in the military.”
“Mm-hmm.” I leaned forward to prop my head on my hand, elbow on my knee. “You were really in the navy for twenty-one years?”
“Yes.”
“How old were you when you enlisted?”
“Eighteen. I shipped out right after I graduated high school,” he explained.
“Whoa.” I couldn’t remember what the hell I’d been doing at eighteen. Nothing important, obviously. I hadn’t gone into beauty school until I was nineteen, once I’d decided going to college wasn’t for me and made my mom cry a couple of times. “Why the navy?”
“My dad was in it. My grandfather was too during World War II.” He made a low noise in his throat as he parted another section of my hair. “I always knew I’d enlist.”
“Did your mom freak out?”
“No. She knew. We lived in a small town in central Texas. There was nothing for me there. Even before I turned eighteen, she was going with me to talk to recruiters. She was excited and proud of me.” There was a pause, and then he said, “It was Jackson that lost it. He’s never forgiven me for leaving.”
“I thought you said you’d had some neighbors or family members that were there for you afterward?”
“They were there. For me. Jack…. They used to take me fishing, camping… my neighbor would take me to work with him for a long time to keep me out of trouble. He did tiling. That’s how I learned to do handyman things around the house. Jackson was never interested in going or doing any of those things. Me leaving was a betrayal.”
“You couldn’t have taken him with you.”
“I know.” Then why did he sound so sad admitting that?
“Does he try to use you as an excuse for why he got into drugs and all that?” I asked, still looking at the floor.
There was a slight pause and then, “Basically.”
“I don’t mean to call your brother a little shit—”
Dallas’s chuckle was really light. “He’s older than you are.”
“—but what a little shit. I understand why you help him out so much, I really do, but don’t let him make you feel guilty. You were a kid when your dad died. He wasn’t the only one who lost his dad, and look at you, you’re one of the nicest men I’ve ever met.” I shrugged beneath him. “And I don’t know of anyone who hasn’t made a stupid fucking decision at some point in their life. You just have to own up to it. He can’t blame you for anything.”
Dallas made a sharp noise before chuckling. “I used to tell him the same thing: if you fucked up, admit it, learn from it, and move on.”
“Exactly. It’s embarrassing and it sucks, but it would be worse than being an idiot twice.”
He agreed and went on combing through my hair. I could hear both of us breathing deeper, the urge to sleep getting worse and worse until I started taking deep breaths to stay awake.
“I’m falling asleep,” I warned him. “So, why did you leave the navy?”
“It’s tough moving every few years for half your life.” His finger brushed the shell of my ear and I felt a zing go up my spine. “I was ready to settle down. My retirement isn’t bad, and I like working with my hands. I always did. It isn’t fancy, but I like doing physical labor. It helps me sleep at night and pays the bills. I couldn’t handle working in an office. It would drive me nuts. I’m done with uniforms and small spaces.”
He likes working with his hands. I wasn’t going to make that statement into something more. Nope. No way. I also wasn’t going to imagine him in that cute white hat and collared uniform I’d seen men in the navy wear. So I changed the subject. “And you came to Austin because you have family here?”
“Yeah.”
“Miss Pearl?”
He hummed his yes. “We’ve always been close, and it worked out that the house I’m in now went on sale about six years ago, and I got it for a dime.”
“I had no idea you were related.”
“Forty-one years,” he murmured, sounding amused and sleepy. “I never thanked you for cutting her hair and helping her with her water heater a while back.”
“You don’t have to thank me. It wasn’t a big deal.” I yawned. “Do you see her often?”
“I’m over there all the time. We have dinner together almost every night.”
Shit.
“We watch some TV, I do things for her around the house, play some poker, and I go home at nine most every night we don’t have baseball,” he explained. “Once a month, I meet up with this guy I work with sometimes at Mayhem, and I go visit my family back home a couple of times a year for the weekend, but that’s my exciting life. I like it.”
He did things for his grandma around the house, played poker, and watched TV with her. Fuck. My. Life. In. Half. I had to squeeze my eyes closed because I didn’t want to watch myself lose my shit on the floor of my dining room.
Didn’t he know he wasn’t supposed to be this damn… perfect?
I wanted to cry at how unfair the world was. But I already knew that and I didn’t have any business being surprised by it.
“Your brother doesn’t go over there with you?” I asked him, fully aware he’d already mentioned to me in the past that his nana had had enough of his shit, and how he was the only one left who Jackson still had.
“No. About ten years ago, he got in trouble with some motorcycle club in San Antonio and he…” Dallas blew out a breath like he didn’t want to tell me, but he did anyway. “He stole some of Nana’s jewelry. She’s never forgiven him since.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah. Fuck.”
No one had a perfect family, but that was something else. All right. I needed to change the topic. “Where does your mom live?” I paused. “I’m so nosey, I’m sorry. I’m falling asleep and just trying to get you to keep talking to me so I don’t keel over.”
His laugh was soft behind me, more warm air over my neck. “You’re keeping us both awake. I don’t have secrets. My mom moved to Mexico a couple of years ago. She met this man old enough to be my Pawpaw. They got married and moved there. I see her once every couple of years. More now than when I was in the service.”
Something about that made me snicker. “As long as she’s happy….”
“She’s happy. Believe me. She busted her ass for us. I’m glad she’s found somebody. Old as fuck, or not.”
“He’s really that old?”
“Yeah. His name’s Larry. He has a grandson Jackson’s age. My ma asks for grandkids from time to time, and I have to remind her she already has a few,” he said, amused.
“You don’t want to have kids?” I asked before I could stop, immediately wanting to slap myself in the face.
His fingers brushed the shell of my ear again, and I had to fight the urge to scratch my scalp. “I want a few. I like ‘em. Can’t have them
by myself though.”
“Your wife didn’t want any?” I blurted out.
It was that question that had him clearing his throat. Except for the time in the restroom, neither one of us had ever brought up his marriage, but fuck it. He was combing things out of my hair. We were pretty much BFFs by this point. “She already had one when we met.”
I waited. I already knew this information courtesy of Trip.
“Her ex had been in the navy, too. I didn’t know that when we started seeing each other. She didn’t like to talk about him much, but I figured they’d gotten off on bad terms. It turned out he was on the same base as I was.” He sighed, moving more of my hair.
Something close to anger flared up in my belly, and I fought the urge to glance at him over my shoulder, but I asked anyway, in practically a whisper, “She cheated on you?”
There was a hesitation. A hum. “No. Not then. We’d met through a mutual navy friend. She worked at the PX on base, and I liked her—”
I would die before I ever admitted to getting jealous that he’d liked the woman he eventually married. But I did.
Oblivious, he kept going. “She was nice. We… fooled around for a while. I was being deployed. About a month before I was set to leave, she told me had found a lump in her breast and that she was worried. She didn’t have insurance, her aunt had had breast cancer…. She was scared.”
Why did my stomach start hurting all of a sudden when it wasn’t jealousy-related?
“I really did like her, and I felt bad for her. I remember what it was like for my dad when he was sick, and nobody needs to go through that alone. I had already been thinking about retiring when my time was up in a year and a half. One night, I told her we could get married and we did. She’d have insurance, and I liked the idea of having someone at home waiting for me. I thought it was fine. I thought we could make it work.”
I felt like throwing up. “What happened?”
“She waited about two months before she went to the doctor because she was worried about the insurance not covering her, and it was benign. She was fine.”
“And then what?”
“You sound awake again, hmm?” His fingertips tickled the sensitive skin south of my earlobe for one moment in time. “Thing is, Peach, you can shoot the shit with someone and have a good time, and have that be the one and only thing you have in common. That was the same thing with us. She wasn’t the great love of my life. I fucked up thinking I knew this person I’d only met a few months before we married. I didn’t miss her while I was gone, and she sure as hell didn’t miss me while I was away. I’d e-mail her and two weeks would go by before she’d reply. I’d call her phone, she wouldn’t answer.
“I found out from one of my COs that she had been all in love with her ex. I’ll never forget how he looked at me like he was surprised I hadn’t known she was hung up on him when we got together. Everyone who knew her knew that. He was the great love of her life. I was just this asshole she had used for insurance who was a fill-in for somebody else whose shoes I could never fill, no matter how hard I tried.”
His hands paused in my hair for a moment as he let out a breath. “I’ll be honest. I didn’t try that hard. Not even close. Absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder if there’s nothing there to begin with. By the time I got back, a year later, things were not close to being right. That happens a lot to people in the military when they’re deployed, you know. I moved back in to our house on base, with her and her kid, and we made it two months before I packed up and left. She told me out right one day that she didn’t love me and never would.
“The last thing I told her was she was going to waste her life away waiting for somebody who didn’t love her enough to want to be with her. It was the wrong fucking thing to say to a pissed-off woman.” He kind of chuckled almost bitterly. “And she said to me: You don’t know anything about love if you aren’t willing to wait for it. Wait for it. Like I was just killing time for her. I didn’t see her again until… a few months ago. Right after you moved in.”
Yeah, I knew what he was talking about. I’d overheard that conversation. Awkward.
“You didn’t try to divorce her?”
“I’ve been trying. She wanted half of my shit, and I wasn’t going to agree to that. She’s been drawing it out for almost three years. When I finally saw her again recently, she asked me to sign the divorce papers, that she didn’t want anything from me anymore. I heard from a buddy still in the service that her ex had split from the woman he’d been married to, and that they were getting back together.” He let out a disbelieving noise. “I wish them the very fucking best. I hope they’re happy together after all the shit they put so many people through. If they wanted each other bad enough, they deserve it—fucked-up love and all.”
I tried to imagine all of that and couldn’t. It was unbelievable. “Your life sounds like something out a soap opera, you know that?”
Dallas laughed, loud. “Tell me about it.”
I smiled, cheek still on my hand. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Is that why you were so weird with me there for a while? You thought I was going to do the same?”
“The same? No. I’m not that fucked up. I know my ex was a special case, and if she wasn’t, I’ll pray for the son of a bitch who gets stuck with another woman just like her. I’m tired of being used, Diana. I don’t mind helping somebody out, and I never will, but I don’t want to be taken advantage of. It’s easier to do things on your terms than on someone else’s. I don’t want to give anyone the power over my life any more than I’ve already given her. I should’ve known better than to do what I did, but I learned my lesson.”
“Don’t marry someone unless you know you love them a whole lot?” I tried to joke.
He tugged on my hair a little. “Basically. Don’t marry somebody unless you’re sure they’ll push you around in a wheelchair when you’re old.”
“You should make a questionnaire with that on there for any woman you end up with in the future. Make it an essay question. How do you feel about wheelchairs? Specifically pushing them around.”
Dallas tugged again, his laugh loose. “I just don’t wanna be with a woman who doesn’t care about me.”
I ignored the weird sensation in my belly. “I’d hope not. That seems obvious.”
“Spend three years of your life married to someone who doesn’t know your birthday, and you learn real quick where you fucked up.” The knees on the side of my shoulders seemed to close in on me a little. “I’m ready to move on with my life with someone who doesn’t want to be with anyone else but me.”
I told myself I wasn’t going to be that sap who sighed all dreamy, imagining herself being that person. And I wasn’t. I wasn’t. Instead, I made sure my voice wasn’t whispered or anything like that as I told him, “You have a point. I hope you get your divorce settled soon. I’m sure you’ll find someone like that eventually.”
Saying those words killed a little part of me, but they needed to be said.
Dallas didn’t agree or disagree. His hand was gentle in my hair and on my ear as he moved one to the side. “I’m waiting until the divorce is official. I’ve never gone back on my word or my vows, even with someone who didn’t deserve it. I’d want that person I end up with to know they don’t ever have to doubt me.”
I already hated this imaginary person. With a passion. I was going to pull the plug out of her tires.
His next words didn’t make me like his imaginary next wife any more either. “I always figured I’d grow old with someone, so I need to make the next one count since it’s for keeps.”
My heart started acting weird next.
And he kept going, signing her death warrant without even knowing it. “She wouldn’t be my first, but she’d be the only one who ever mattered. I think she could wait for the time to be right. I’d make sure she never regretted it.”
There seemed to be this pause in my life and in my thoug
hts as I processed what he said and what my body was doing.
Was this a fucking joke? Was this really happening to me?
Was my heart saying, You’re perfect, you’re amazing, and I love you?
Or was it saying it was going to kill this bitch before she ever came around?
It sure as hell wasn’t saying the first, because I told my stupid heart right then as I sat on the floor with my eyes squeezed shut, Heart, I’m not playing with your shit today, tomorrow, or a year from now. Quit it.
Dallas…. Nope. Nope, nope, nope. It wasn’t happening.
It wasn’t fucking happening.
I wasn’t in love. I couldn’t be.
I also couldn’t be upset over him wanting something wonderful in his life. He deserved it. No one had ever deserved it more.
Somehow I found myself tipping my head back far enough so I could look him in the eye and smile, all wobbly and slightly on the verge of wanting to pull a tantrum even as my heart kept singing it’s stupid, delusional song. “I said it before and I’ll say it again, your wife is a fucking idiot. I hope you know that, Professor.”
Chapter Eighteen
We were all busy looking back and forth between the two huge crate-like boxes on the lawn to really say anything. We all knew what was in them.
When Louie claimed that he’d finally saved up enough money to buy a kit that would get him a quarterpipe so he could skateboard at home, I hadn’t thought much of it. His other aunt had sent him a hundred dollars for his fifth birthday—I would have given him ten if I was in her shoes—and with the cash he’d collected from everyone else, he’d almost reached his goal. I had offered to cover the last fifty bucks he needed to cover shipping.
Fifty dollars for shipping should have been our first warning of what would be showing up. Now that I was seeing it in person, I was surprised it hadn’t been more expensive.
What I hadn’t put together was that his quarterpipe would need to be built.
And who would need to build it?
“Abuelito can help,” Louie croaked almost instantly, wringing his hands from his spot a foot away from his crates.
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