I erupted into a deep belly laugh. My dad was a good two inches shorter and thirty pounds lighter than I was, twenty years older, had just had a quadruple bypass, and he thought he’d whip me like I was five. The threat was humorous, but when I caught his eyes, the laughter died on my lips.
“I’ll go ask, Dad. Calm down.”
It took me about two minutes to find a nurse and subsequently the bag of my dad’s things. They’d been tucked under his bed and out of sight. I pulled it out and handed it to him. He riffled through the plastic until he got to his work pants and tugged them out.
“You want some help?”
“I may be in a hospital, but I’m not in the grave.”
I took that as a no and sat down on the loveseat to watch. He put his hand in one pocket and came out with nothing, and then with the other, he produced a set of keys that he tossed to me without warning.
“What are these?”
“Keys.”
I clenched my jaw and tried again after I counted to ten. “What would you like me to do with them?”
“Go to my house. There’s a wooden box on the dresser.”
“I’ve seen it. You want me to bring it to you?”
“Would you stop talking and listen? Damn, son. Kids today are so impatient.”
“Sorry.” I wasn’t, but if it got him to a point, then I’d play along.
“I want you to have what’s in it.”
“Okay, Dad. Masyn and I will stop by tonight after we leave here.”
He grunted like he was in pain and let out what sounded like a groan. “You need to go alone. Masyn will be fine here with me.”
“I’m not leaving her here. Forget it.”
“Lee, do what you’re told.”
“You realize I’m a grown man, don’t you?”
“It won’t matter how old you get, you’ll still be my kid. Now go.”
“Can’t this wait?”
He gave me the look that scared the shit out of me as a child. The one that told me I was dancing right up to the edge of trouble, and I could either back away slowly, or he’d knock me into next week. Even now, I respected the warning.
“Fine. Can I at least wait until she gets back so I can tell her where I went?”
“You want to be able to sit when you leave here?”
I couldn’t help the grin I knew would tick him off. He hadn’t threatened to spank me in years, yet he’d managed to get it in twice today. “I’ll be back. Don’t run her off, okay?”
“She got any way to leave?”
“I didn’t mean it literally.”
“Why are you still standing here?”
“When did you become so impatient?”
He’d always been that way. That was a Southern man for you—he expected his kid to do as he was told when he was told to do it. Unfortunately, I’d never been very good at that.
“Which key is it?”
“Gold one.”
I had to put his address into the GPS on my phone. His house was easy to get to from Harden, but I didn’t have a clue where I was in relation to it from the hospital. I sighed when I saw that an eight-mile drive was estimated to take over an hour with the current traffic. By the time I got back, he’d have Masyn taking a vow of celibacy and entering a convent to maintain her purity to keep her from allowing me to ruin her good name.
There was probably nothing in the damn box. Knowing my old man, it wouldn’t surprise me if he’d sent me on a wild-goose chase to give him time for a fatherly talk with a girl who wasn’t his daughter. I thought about texting her to warn her, but Masyn loved my dad, and she’d blow me off anyhow, so I didn’t bother. At the very least, my dad would tell her he’d sent me to run an errand and reassure her I’d be back.
My phone started ringing when the GPS gave me my next turn, making it impossible to hear, and I nearly missed the ramp to get onto the interstate.
“Hello?”
“Where are you?” Beau sounded better than he had last night.
“On my way to my dad’s house. How was work?”
“Well…we agreed that Draxton Heifler Enterprises and I weren’t a fit.”
“You quit?” Beating my head on the steering wheel wasn’t an option in rush hour traffic.
“Not exactly. I was up most of the night thinking about what you said. So when I went in this morning, I went to Barnie’s office—that’s the guy who got me the job—to talk to him.”
“And?” The stoplight at the bottom of the exit ramp threw me for a loop. Thankfully, it turned green as I reached it or I would have blown past it without thought.
“He already knew about the wedding. Guess he’d talked to my dad. So, he wasn’t real surprised by anything I told him.”
“I’m growing old here, Beau.”
“I don’t know what I want to do. I just know I don’t want to be in Atlanta. The company makes a huge investment in training new employees, and I didn’t think it was fair to have them waste that on me when I knew I didn’t want to stay for the long haul.”
“So, you quit?”
“No, I’m going to do some work for him, but more as an assistant while I figure things out. There won’t be set hours, and I can work from home doing research and creating spreadsheets. It’s not full-time, but it will give me some experience and a paycheck.”
“Do you think being in that house alone day in and day out is going to help you determine what you want to do?” I didn’t want to come out and say I thought he’d end up wallowing in self-pity and be halfway through a fifth every day before noon.
“His son is a real estate broker. That’s why I called you.”
“To tell me his kid sells houses?”
“No jackass, to tell you I probably won’t make it to the hospital before visiting hours are over. I’m meeting Brandt to list the property.”
I slammed on the brakes to keep from hitting the car in front of me who’d decided to stop on the highway since he wasn’t able to merge. “Fuck!” I hated driving in the city. I’d take backroads with tractors over this shit any day.
“I thought you’d be happy.”
“No. Huh? I am. The douchebag in front of me about caused a twelve-car pileup going ninety miles per hour. So, you’ve decided you don’t want to be in Atlanta, and you want to sell your house. And you have a part-time gig for the time being.”
“And I wanted to ask you if you were serious about your offer last night?”
My silence triggered his clarification.
“About the extra room at your house.”
“Of course. You never have to ask.”
“I thought I’d go back when you and Masyn do, if that’s okay with you? Brandt will get the house listed, and I don’t need to be here for him to show it. Actually, it will probably be easier for him to sell if I get all the boxes out of it.”
“I don’t know when I’m going back. But yeah, definitely.”
“How’s your dad, any improvement?”
I hadn’t talked to him all day and hadn’t bothered to send him a text message since he was at a new job…and I hadn’t thought about it. “They took the breathing tube out early this morning. He was awake when we got there. Masyn wooed him, and he was his ornery self with me.”
“Glad to hear it. About him getting better, not the ornery part.”
“Yeah. He moved out of ICU this afternoon, so he’s in a regular room. I guess all that’s good. The accommodations are a hell of a lot more comfortable, and he can have more than one visitor at a time.”
“You going to miss the hag on the ICU floor?” He laughed, knowing just how much I wouldn’t.
“Hardly.” The traffic came to a grinding halt again. “Damn it.”
“You on eighty-five?”
“It’s the interstate from hell. God, I hate this place.”
“You and me both. I’ll let you go so you can concentrate on the road. You guys are staying here as long as you’re in town, right?”
“Unless yo
u kick us out.”
“As long as I don’t hear anything you’re doing, you’re welcome to stay.”
“Thanks. I’ll talk to you later.”
I was going to pull my hair out by the time I reached my dad’s house. I couldn’t wait to get back to Harden where life moved at a slower pace and traffic only backed up behind a cow or a John Deere.
When I parked the truck at my dad’s, I felt like an intruder approaching the front door. If anyone saw me, I looked sketchy as hell searching the key ring for the one to unlock the house. It was the only gold one in the set, and the door opened with ease once I turned it in the deadbolt. The air was stuffy inside and smelled like spoiled milk—likely from the cereal that sat in the sink since Friday morning. I poured it out and ran the disposal, trying to get rid of the stench.
It was odd that my dad managed to move from Harden to Atlanta and everything in his place looked like it had my whole life. This being a different house did nothing for the décor or the knickknacks he littered the place with. The time warp my mom had left him in still existed; it was just three hours down the road instead of hibernating in my house.
Picking apart my dad’s living space wasn’t why I was here. There was nothing wrong with the place. It was tidy—other than the milk thing—and taken care of. It just didn’t have any life in it, and that had nothing to do with it being empty. I shook off the vibes it left me with and walked down the hall.
The box was where it had been since he moved here four years ago. It had been my moms, and he claimed she loved it. I took his word for it because I couldn’t say she did or didn’t. I just remembered it always being on his dresser.
Tossing the keys aside, I picked up the wooden box and ran my fingers over the scrollwork in the top. It might have been handmade, but I couldn’t testify to that, although I could admit it was pretty. The lid didn’t have a hinge, and it had likely warped with age since it was difficult to shimmy off. I stuck my fingernail in the crack to get it started, and when it released, I stared at the contents.
Two gold bands and a diamond engagement ring.
My tongue swiped at my lips, and I found myself chewing on them, unable to take my eyes off the jewelry. My parents hadn’t had a lot of money when they got married, so all they’d bought were the gold bands to use in the ceremony. The details of how he scraped up the cash for the diamond weren’t fresh on my mind, but I knew he’d worked hard to keep his side jobs a secret from her so he could surprise her on their first anniversary.
The stone wasn’t huge, not that I could begin to identify the size or the value. But when I dared to lift it out of the box, the sunlight caught it, causing it to shine like there was light inside it. It wasn’t fancy, just one man’s commitment to the only woman he’d ever love. It was hard to swallow past the lump in my throat or to see beyond the tears stinging my eyes.
I nestled my mom’s rings on my pinky and held my dad’s up to the light to read the inscription.
And only…
The words didn’t make any sense to me when I slipped it over my knuckle. The fit was perfect, and so was the fact that it was aged and weathered. The gold was scratched and didn’t have that shiny, new finish I’d get at a jewelry store, but I wasn’t a shiny kind of guy. My dad had worked for a living like I did, and every mark on the metal was there because he’d used his hands to make his way in the world.
I took it off and put it in my pocket with the other two. It wasn’t the best place to keep something with so much sentimental value; I just didn’t have any other options at the moment. Once I got back to Beau’s house, I could hide them in my bag until I was ready for them. With nothing left for me here, I returned the box to the dresser and then locked the front door behind me.
The entire ride back to the hospital—which didn’t take anywhere near as long as getting here—they burned a hole in my pocket and my heart. There was no way I’d be able to hold onto them for any length of time without Masyn knowing. I sucked at keeping shit from her—other than loving her, which she’d completely missed even though the rest of the world saw it clearly—and this was huge.
She was lounging on the loveseat when I came back into the room. She and my dad were yacking it up like old friends. He saw me before she did, and the smile in his eyes told me what I needed to do.
Chapter Twenty-Three
After leaving the hospital, Masyn and I met Beau for dinner at a barbeque place down the street from his house. It was okay, but definitely not worth the price. Another reason Atlanta wasn’t for me—paying more for lesser quality wasn’t my idea of living high on the hog…it was just stupid.
“Dinner was good.” That was Masyn’s way of saying she didn’t like it when it came up an hour later right before we went to bed.
Caging her in against the dresser, I kissed her and said, “You’re a shit liar.”
Her head fell back with laughter. “Okay, it wasn’t great, and who pays that much for a pulled-pork sandwich?”
“It was probably that fancy roll it was on.”
“Yeah, they’d be better off to head to Piggy Wiggly and pick up a bag of generic hamburger buns.”
“The tea was tasty.”
“It was ungodly sweet, I don’t know how you drank it.”
“That’s how Southern boys like their tea.” I nibbled her neck, not leaving her any room to move when she wiggled. “And their women.”
“Is that so?” Her words left her mouth in a wispy breath, and she angled her neck for more exposure.
“Mmm. At least for this one.” My lips trailed down her skin as I spoke.
Stopped by the collar of her shirt, I stepped back, setting her free, and took the hem to lift it over her head. She grabbed her hair to release the fabric, and I dropped it to the floor. The black, lace bra she wore underneath was sexy as hell, and I wondered how many times she’d worn stuff like this when I was around, and I had just never gotten to see it.
“Is this new?” I asked as I pulled at the strap before releasing it to gently pop her skin.
Masyn bit her lip and then slowly pulled it back out while shaking her head. I didn’t have a clue where she’d picked up this seductress bit she had going, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to ask, but I loved every minute of it. The soft, playful side of Masyn was something no one else got to witness, and now it was mine. As much as I hated what Alex did to her in high school, I appreciated that it kept her from sharing herself with anyone other than me. It was selfish, and I didn’t give a shit.
She reached behind her back, holding my eyes with hers, and unfastened the lingerie. It hung loosely on her shoulders until I pushed it down, and she added it to the pile with her shirt. I didn’t try to stop myself from taking one of her peaks in my mouth while cupping each breast in my hands. She clawed at my shirt, pulling it from my waist and up my abdomen. She couldn’t get it over my shoulders unless I let her go, and I couldn’t help but laugh at her struggle. Masyn wanted me to shed my clothing, yet not so bad that she was willing to let me stop showing her affection.
Without releasing the hold my mouth had on her, I reached over my shoulder and brought the collar to a point I was forced to let her go and then added it to the pile accumulating at our feet. Her hands raced over my skin and down my stomach. She wanted me as much as I did her, and our pants still stood in our way. While she fumbled with my zipper, unable to look at it with my lips occupying hers, I removed hers—along with her panties—with little effort. Once at her ankles, she stepped out of them and kicked them both away. All that was keeping me from her were my jeans, and her fingers weren’t getting the job done.
“Here, let me.”
She watched with anticipation. I stepped out of one leg, but my foot got caught on the other. Just as it came free from my heel, I lost my balance and hopped around trying not to fall. And somewhere, in the course of that clumsy dance, and whipping the jeans from my heel, they came off with a snap, and then I heard the ting of metal as each ring hit the hardwoods.
Masyn laughed and tried to help me up, but her stare followed mine, landing on the one thing I wished she hadn’t seen. Not because I was afraid of her knowing I had them, but because I’d wanted to surprise her and make it special. The thing that sucks about accidents is only having a split second to decide what to do. It wasn’t romantic. I hoped to God it wasn’t a story she told our kids one day or even Beau for that matter.
I was on my knees in nothing other than boxers. And Masyn stood before me as naked as the day she was born. But instead of trying to come up with an excuse to hide them, or deal with her anticipating when I’d pop the question, I leaned over to collect them, placing the two bands on the dresser behind her.
I couldn’t say for certain, although I’d bet money I was right, but Masyn hadn’t taken a breath or blinked since I’d fallen over. And lifting my leg, so I was on one knee, did nothing to initiate her filling her lungs.
Go big or go home.
“Masyn, I never imagined when we met in kindergarten that seventeen years later you’d be my best friend. But now that I’ve had you, I never want to let you go. I know it’s fast, although not really, considering how long I’ve loved you, and—”
“Yes.” She nodded her head, and her chest began to rise and fall again as she took in air. Tears filled her eyes, and she dropped to the floor, taking my jaw in her hands. “Yes. Yes. A million times yes.” And she sealed her declaration of acceptance with her lips.
The ring was still in my hand when she broke away breathless. Her cheeks were streaked with the only tears I’d ever be happy to see her shed, and I’d never seen her smile shine so bright. Lifting her finger, I placed my mom’s engagement ring on her hand.
“I know it’s not huge, and if you want something different, I’ll get it for you.”
Masyn attempted to stop my rambling by shaking her head, but I kept talking.
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