Page 18 of My Big Fat Daddy Issues

I didn’t expect a big bear hug, but I guess the little girl in me didn’t expect the severity I see in his black eyes.

Jackson Cartright. My mother’s second husband. My step-father.

He read at least a hundred of The Babysitter’s Club books to me. He taught me how to swim. How to make the world’s best pancakes.

He taught me that good men are still a thing. My little girl crush on my mother’s brooding, sexy husband started the day I met him and secret of secrets, has never ended.

I stand too fast, the motion making me dizzy. I nearly topple over when I hoist my bag from the ground. My duffel strap cuts into my shoulder. I clutch it like it can keep me upright, but it might be doing the opposite.

He moves closer, close enough that I catch the scent of the spicy pine scented soap he always used. The smell hits something behind my ribs. I can’t breathe right.

“Come on,” he says through clenched teeth, the muscle in his jaw turning to stone.

It’s been a year since I saw him. A year since my mother blocked his number on my phone and told me if I reached out to him, tried to communicate with him in any way, I was dead to her.

What she didn’t know is I had a secret file of his photos hidden on my phone. I don’t even like to admit to myself how many times I touched myself looking at them. And I never forgot his phone number. Even though my mother made sure it wasdeleted from my phone, I kept it in my head where she could never touch it.

Jackson takes the bag from my shoulder, one-handed, and turns toward the truck. He doesn’t even look back to make sure I’m coming. But, he knows I am.

Seeing him walk away is enough to make my stomach clench.

The cold nips at my skin when I step outside, but my blood feels hot. The rain plasters my shirt to my chest. When he opens the passenger door, the interior light spills over him, catching on the sharpness of his jaw, softening on his mouth.

I want to look away. I can’t.

My thighs brush the seat when I climb in, the leather cool against the backs of my legs. I pull my skirt down and tell myself not to feel this nervous, not to feel anything.

He tosses the duffel into the crew-cab seats, then shuts the door without a word or one of the hugs I remember from the years before I turned into an adolescent brat.

He rounds the hood, rain making him shine reminding me of Robert Pattinson in that stupid Twilight scene.

Every step he takes loaded and unhurried. When he slides into the driver’s seat, the truck dips and my whole body does too. The cab fills with his presence, like the air bends around him.

We don’t move.

His hands rest on the wheel. They’re huge, wet and his fingers are entrancing. I imagine them under my chin, running down my sides. Then, I realize I’m staring and shift my gaze to my lap.

“Seatbelt,” he says, gruff and yet concerned.

I fumble for it with clumsy fingers. When it clicks, I flinch and say, “Sorry.”

His jaw tightens. “Don’t apologize. Not unless you’ve broken a rule of mine.”

I press my lips together swallowing around the lump in my throat.

A rule of his? He used to give me rules when I was little. Small ones that were practical. Most of them were about my safety.

But, when I hit thirteen and my mother started staying out later, being gone more, and yelling at Jackson for the stupidest things, something in me changed.

Maybe it was fear, that’s what the school counselor said. I was acting out because I didn’t feel safe somehow. But, it wasn’t Jackson that made me feel unsafe but he was the one I took out my fear or frustration on every time, pushing against the restrictions he put in place that got more and more firm.

Conflict punched at my belly when my mother finally kicked him out for, shocker, telling her if he ever found out she was behind the wheel after drinking again, he would call the cops on her himself.

He pulls onto the street, his headlights cutting through the sheets of water. The world outside becomes a blur of neon smeared by the rain. Inside the truck, it’s too warm. We’re too close.

I can feel him without looking, and I have to fight the urge to squirm under his gaze. The weight of him beside me on the bench, the heat coming off his leg, and the rhythm of his breathing that somehow pulls mine into sync makes me dizzy.

“Hallie.”