Page 44 of Cuffed (Everyday Heroes 1)
I look up to find him walking up my driveway. I was so lost in thought I didn’t even notice when he pulled up across the street.
“I figured you might need help kicking your brothers out. They were quite the pair earlier.” He steps
closer, and his silver hair looks pale yellow under the porch light.
“I heard mom wasn’t too thrilled with them.”
He shrugs, as if to say boys will be boys. “You know your mom. She’ll take any excuse to get Luke alone for a few hours so she can spoil him rotten.”
“Thank God for him because that means she lays off me.”
“True,” he muses before taking a seat beside me on the steps. “What’s troubling you, Grant?”
I glance over at him, and even though his face is etched with perpetual lines of worry every retired cop seems to have, he still has the impenetrable stare. A proud and defiant angle to his chin and jaw. “Who says something is wrong?”
He raises his eyebrows, as if to ask me if he’s misinterpreted my demeanor, which prompts me to blow out a sigh, lean my head against the railing behind me, and close my eyes. He gives me a few minutes to gather my thoughts without pressing me.
“I saw Emerson the other night.” It isn’t much, but it’s a start.
“So I heard.” He nods but doesn’t look my way. Damn nosy people already talking. “What seems to be the problem? Did you have a bad time?”
I chuckle. “Just the opposite, actually.” His silence tells me he isn’t following me. “It’s complicated.”
“Most things are. If they were easy, they wouldn’t be worth figuring out.”
Father logic is not what I need right now, and yet, I find myself needing to talk through everything.
“She kissed me.”
It’s his turn to chuckle. “And that’s a problem, why?”
I push up from the step and walk back and forth on the sidewalk before shoving a hand through my hair. “Because . . . because I don’t know how to handle it.”
“You’ve never had trouble handling a woman kissing you before if I recall correctly.”
“But this is different.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s her, and it’s . . . everything she’s been through and . . .”
“How do you know what she’s been through? Has she told you? Has she talked about it with you?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know?”
“Because I was the one who told Mrs. Gellar, Dad. I’m the one who turned her life upside down.”
“You mean that you’re the one who saved her.” His voice is even but serious, and it stops me in my tracks. I stare at him with hands at my side and every part of me confused about one goddamn kiss amidst a million other kisses I’ve had.
“She saved herself, Dad.”
“Good. I’m glad you know that. Because you’re right. She did. But let me ask you this, son, if she hasn’t said a word to you about what happened before, why does it bug you? How do you know it bugs her?”
“How can it not?” I raise my voice without meaning to. It’s just that this is like talking to a brick wall instead of talking to the one person who should be able to give me insight on how to handle this.
“If you met her on the street, you would have no idea about what she’s been through. So, if she doesn’t tell you, then that’s how you have to treat her.”
