Filling a plate with dinner, I wound out front, stopping at the soda machine to grab a Coke. Laughter rang out behind me, and I swiveled to peek at one of the few tables still occupied in the diner.
It was filled by four boys.
Boys who were getting close to being men.
Aaron was at the window, his brown hair buzzed, so handsome that achy spot inside me flared.
I startled when I heard the giggle behind me. Janel was shaking her head as if she felt sorry for me. “Oh, Rynna, don’t do that to yourself. You know he’s so far out of your league. That crush you’ve had for all these years just makes you look pathetic.”
Discomfort climbed my throat, a sticky hurt that slicked my skin. I wanted to tell her to shut her stupid mouth. That I was so tired of her mind games. Of her manipulating every situation.
It wasn’t the first time I’d covered for Janel.
Not by far.
But I didn’t say anything. I just dropped my head and walked to the other side of the diner and sat down in the booth I always shared with my grandmother.
24
Rex
“Daddy!” Frankie came barreling out my mom’s door, brown hair a disaster and flying all around her. The kid was sporting that smile that melted me into a puddle of goo. Nothing but sticky sap right at her feet.
She had on a tank top and shorts. Since it was Frankie Leigh, she wasn’t about to stop there. She was also wearing an old pair of suspenders, which she’d gotten God knows where, and sky-high heels she’d pilfered from my mom’s closet that were ten sizes too big.
And surprise, surprise, that damned hot pink tutu.
Couldn’t help but grin.
Guess I really was a sucker for all that Frankie flare.
“There’s my girl.” The second she reached me, I swooped her into my arms and tossed her into the air. Exactly the way I knew she liked. My heart gave an extra boom at the sound of her laughter that rang through the morning. That sound alone had to be my single greatest joy.
I caught her, hugging her to my chest, pushing my nose into her hair, breathing in my little girl.
“I missed you,” I whispered into the mess of hair on her head. I held her to me a little closer, and Frankie wrapped those tiny arms around my neck, the force of her smile touching me even when I couldn’t see her face.
“I misses you, too, Daddy! But mes and Grammy had so much fun. She lets me do my very own skupture, right, Grammy?” She wiggled out of my tight hold, shifting in my arms to look back at my mom, who was standing at her usual place in the threshold and grinning back at us.
“A sculpture?” I clarified as I carried Frankie up the sidewalk.
“Uh-huh.”
“And what did you sculpt?” I asked.
Those brown eyes widened like I was clueless. “A puppy, silly. I told you I wants a puppy so, so bad. Oh, Daddy, can I? Can I have a puppy? I’ll be the best puppy mommy ever!”
A pang hit me hard.
Cutting me deep.
I fought against it, the memories threatening just at the cusp of my consciousness. Since Rynna had come into my life, it felt like everything was right there, trembling beneath my nose, begging to be exposed.
The thought of Missy still killed me, finding my girl dead at the side of the road on the same damned day my wife had left me. I’d had that dog since before I’d lost Sydney, and she’d been my solace, a reason to live when I hadn’t wanted to go on.
But life was brutal that way.
Threatening to take everything in one fell swoop.
If what happened with Sydney hadn’t been enough to make me ridiculously overprotective of Frankie, desperate to keep her safe, the cruelty of that day had solidified it.
I shoved the thoughts down and softened my voice. “Still don’t think that’s the best idea right now, Frankie.”
“When’s a good time?”
“Now we’re sculpting?” I asked when I got within a couple feet of my mom, praying it’d distract Frankie from demanding an answer to that question.
“We dabble in all the art forms, don’t we, Sweet Pea Frankie Leigh? Call us multitalented. Just like your daddy.” Mom ruffled her fingers through my daughter’s hair. There was so much affection in her gaze when she looked at us both, I couldn’t help the surge of love that went crashing through my senses. It was like something inside me had been unlocked, and every sort of emotion I’d tried to keep repressed billowed out without my permission.
The love.
The longing.
The fear.
The regret.
Rynna’s face glided through my consciousness, her touch a faint whisper across my skin, breathing all that beauty and life.
Stirrings of hope shook through me like tremors of warning. Like quivers that staked deeper, demanding more. The ground shifted between the two extremes. Tossing me back and forth with no idea which was going to send me stumbling straight into a free fall.