Not that I’d done much fighting tonight.

He stepped forward so fast I couldn’t do anything. I was trapped again between his body and the counter. His hands cupped my face, but instead of kissing me all he did was look at me. So hard I couldn’t look away.

I was pinned by his gaze.

“That’s all I’ve ever wanted,” he breathed.

13

CLAYTON

I’ve wanted two things in my life.

Veronica would call that a lie. And she wouldn’t be wrong. I want the world and everything in it.

But specifically there’d been two things.

A bicycle.

And Veronica.

“What did you do?” Dale asked. The words staggered out of his mouth, slow and impaired, like drunks. He was sitting across the chessboard from me on the porch of the old house. It was January and too cold to sit outside, but Dale insisted.

The sky was bitter and dark, making him look a little the worse for wear. His silver-white hair was too long and fluttered in the breeze.

“I didn’t tell her,” I said.

Dale made a sound in his throat, something disapproving.

“It’s too soon,” I told him and moved my pawn, knowing he was going to take it with his rook. But he’d leave his knight open and I had my eye on that knight.

“It’s been most… of your… damn life,” he said, the words plodding and careful out of his mouth. Not that he remembered. He only knew because I told him I’d been in love with Veronica since I was sixteen, working the mail room at King Industries. “The world… isn’t waiting around… to give you more chances.”

“Is that some AA wisdom?” The jab didn’t make contact. He didn’t remember his years in AA and I was the asshole for bringing it up.

He took the pawn, pushing the rook forward with the clenched fist of his right hand. He knocked over my rook and I set it back up.

“Sorry,” he said, the word long and slurred.

“It’s okay.”

“Smells.” The old man lifted his head and closed his eyes like an old hound scenting something on the wind. “Like rain.”

I leaned out so I could see around the porch post we were sitting behind. There were big black clouds rolling in from the north. “Storm coming in,” I said.

He nodded with a crooked, pleased smile on his face, like he’d gotten the question right.

I took the knight he’d left open. His rook took my bishop.

Those things I wanted, in the end I’d gotten both of them. The bike and the girl. I broke one of them.

My dad broke the bike. Ran over it with his truck.

“Your…move,” the old man said.

“Hold on,” I said and stood up from my stool, tucking my trench coat and my tie to my chest. I took a tissue out of the pack Maggie gave me when I came in an hour ago and pressed it to a corner of the old man’s lips, where there was drool pooling.

“Dammit,” he said and reached with his trembling, rigid hand for the tissue. The old guy had his pride—not that it did him any good these days.

“I got it,” I said and tucked the tissue in my pocket.

Dale’s face was red with embarrassment and I tried to understand how hard this must be. To be locked in his uncooperative body. His fragmented mind.

There were times I wanted to push. Push as hard as I could just to see what might happen.

But I stopped myself.

“Your move…kid,” Dale said.

My father had been a cowboy. A hired gun every spring and fall when ranchers needed to move herds. Apparently, he was a really good cowboy. His bosses used to say that to me when I was a boy, coming to their ranches to collect his pay.

“He’s a hell of a horseman, your daddy,” they’d say. “It’s just too bad he can’t stay sober.”

“Yes,” I would say, polite, like my mother taught me, my eyes fixed somewhere over the rich rancher’s ear. “Too bad.”

And they’d hand me the check or the envelope of cash and I was grateful to my daddy. Sometimes so grateful I lost sight of my anger. Sometimes so grateful I convinced myself that things weren’t so bad.

Because my father was a drunk. And he could be cruel. But he did one thing right. He made sure I could pay the rent on whatever apartment or house we were renting at the moment. He made sure I could put groceries in the fridge.

It was, as they said, the very least he could do.

“Is she…pretty?” Dale asked. “Your girl?”

It was embarrassing how pleased I was by the words “your girl.”

How satisfying that was to me on a basic level. But that’s where I have always felt my connection to Veronica. Down in some primal place.

“She is,” I said and left it at that. Because I didn’t have words for how beautiful she was now. The dewy, charming promise of her early twenties had turned into a sharp-eyed reality. I’d hurt her and that had put a layer of armor over her, I couldn’t deny that. But even that was attractive to me. And I was well aware it made me an asshole to admire the scars I’d put on her.

Tags: Molly O'Keefe Billionaire Romance
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