Crazy Hot Love (Dirty Dicks 2)

“Are you sure?”

She nods. “Yeah, you’ve got enough on your plate. Go do what you need to do.”

“Thank you.”

I walk up the sidewalk to the porch.

“I thought I might be seeing you,” Mom says, holding the door open so I can walk in.

I wave to Mo, letting her know it’s okay to leave. I don’t have a car here, but that’s okay. Sometimes a girl just needs her mother, and we’re long overdue for a sleepover. It’s a good thing Phil sleeps in a hospital bed in his own room or it would get a little awkward because I have every intention of sleeping in Daddy’s spot tonight.

Mom shuts the door, turns around, and opens her arms. I walk straight into them the way I’ve always done—the way I should’ve done tonight at the Allens’. Maybe if I’d given her the chance to talk to me then, I could’ve avoided all this bullshit tonight.

“Oh, baby.” Mom holds me while I cry. She strokes my hair the same way she did when I was a little girl and skinned my knee, whispering in my ear that everything is going to be okay. Minutes pass, maybe hours, but eventually my crying stops, and Mom leads me to the living room and pushes me onto the couch.

Tucking my feet under my butt, I reach for the tattered old afghan on the back of the couch and pull it over my legs. Daddy used to love this afghan. My grandma made it for him when he graduated from the fire academy.

Closing my eyes, I pull the soft material to my face and inhale. The blanket has been washed more times than I can count, but I can still smell him. Cuddling with me on the couch at the end of a long day, he would tell me about all of the crazy calls he’d gone out on, and I would tell him about school while Mom whipped up a pitcher of warm tea or hot chocolate. And then she would join us. The warmth of the blanket makes it feel like his strong arms are wrapped around me again.

We were a small family of three, but what we lacked in size, we made up for in love.

“Your daddy loved this afghan,” Mom says softly, curling up on the couch next to me. I hand her a corner of the blanket, and she tugs it up over her legs.

Shifting on the couch, I rest my head on her shoulder. She pats my leg and sighs. “There’s nothing he loved more than curling up on the couch after a long shift with his little girl and this blanket,” she says as if she were reading my mind.

I smile to myself. “I was just thinking about that, about all the laughs we had.”

“And tears,” she adds. “Lots of tears.”

I laugh. “And a few fights.”

Tilting my head, I look up to find Mom smiling wistfully. “He loved you so much, Claire. You were his pride and joy. He boasted about you to anyone and everyone who would listen. He’d rave about how well you were doing in gymnastics and in your advanced classes. He didn’t care what he was talking about, as long as it had to do with you.”

When I was younger, I thought it was annoying to stand there and listen to Dad go on and on about whatever was going on in my life, but now I’d give anything to relive those days.

“I miss him.”

Mom presses her lips to the top of my head and takes a deep breath. She pauses a moment before blowing it out. “Me too, baby. Me too.”

“Do you think about him a lot?”

“Every day.”

Over the years I’ve avoided talking about Daddy too much. Whether it was to protect myself or Mom from an onslaught of memories, I don’t know. But I’m ready now.

“What do you miss most about him?” I ask.

“Everything,” she whispers. “I miss his arms wrapped around me at night. I miss the way he’d kiss me every morning. I miss the hugs and the way his eyes would dilate every time he told me he loved me. And the way he’d try to cook but would end up ordering takeout because he couldn’t follow a recipe to save his life. I miss his smile and laughter, and the stupid jokes he used to tell.”

I laugh, wiping the wetness from my eyes. “His jokes were so stupid.”

She laughs, but it breaks into a sob, and when I look up she’s brushing a tear from her cheek. “I miss the way he’d call every night after you were in bed and ask about my day. Sometimes we would sit and talk for hours about anything and nothing. It was nice having that connection with him when he spent so much time away from home. But most of all, I miss the small things, the things I didn’t realize he did until he wasn’t here to do them anymore.”

I wait for her to continue, and when she doesn’t, I urge her on. “Like what? What things?”

“I miss his hand on the small of my back when we’d enter a room, and the way he’d always act as if I was the only woman around—the only woman worth his attention. His eyes never strayed. I miss the feel of his hand in mine while walking down the sidewalk, and the way he used to walk beside me rather than in front of me, and how he used to open a door for me. Any door. The front door, the car door, a door to the department store or movie theater. He always opened the door and never walked in before me. Men these days don’t do those sorts of things for women.”

Trevor does, I think to myself.