Page 11 of Cockpit
If I weren’t already agitated, I would be. Use my kid to get to me? Tempt him with prizes? I grit my teeth and try to rem
ain stern. I grab Luke’s shoulders and turn him to face me. “Did you hear what I said?”
His brown eyes look up to meet mine, and I immediately regret letting my irritation with Sidney get the better of me. “I’m sorry, Dad. I just wanted to get my bike so I could ride in the back, and she said you are going to win, and one of the prizes is a trip. A trip! We’ve never been on a trip . . . and I shouldn’t have talked to strangers.”
Guilt. The one constant of parenthood weighs heavily on me as I pull Luke into my arms and hold tight to him. “You’re my everything, bud. I just want you to be safe.” I nuzzle my nose in that spot beneath his neck where he smells like little boy and sweat and makes every regrettable decision I’ve ever made seem just perfect because they all led to having him.
He indulges me with the bear hug a little longer than normal because he knows he’s in trouble, but even then, eight-year-old boys only let hugs last so long before they wiggle out of them. When he does, his eyes look up to mine and widen.
“You’re a finalist in a contest, Dad!” His excitement lights up his face. “How cool is that?”
“I didn’t enter any contest, though.”
“But Miss Sidney said that you did, and out of hundreds of people, you are one of the top twenty. How cool is that?”
I attempt to ignore the twinge of annoyance over Luke knowing her name. I try to pretend that I’m not mad she just used my son to get to me. But the best I can do is keep it out of my expression.
“And she said she knew you in high school. Is it true? She’s awfully pretty. Like, wife pretty. Maybe you should ask her out on a date—”
“Whoa, tiger!” I put my hands up in surrender and laugh despite his desire for a mother breaking my heart in two.
Again . . . guilt.
“Is it true?”
“Is what true?”
“Did you know her in high school?”
I think back to our brief interaction back then. To how I was definitely not a part of her crowd, nor did I want to be after how I watched them treat people.
“Vaguely.”
“What does vaguely mean?”
“It means I barely knew her.”
“Oh.”
“Is the other part true?”
“Which part is that?” I ask as I turn back to his Star Wars lunch box and reevaluate what I’ve put in there so far for the trashcan ratio—what he will actually eat and what he will throw away so I will think he ate it.
“The pretty part.”
I clear my throat. I can’t deny those high-school angles she had have developed into grown-woman curves. “She’s pretty.” Gorgeous.
“So, should we ask her out on a date?”
“We?” I laugh and turn around, grab him, and flip him upside down. Anything to clear the thoughts I can already see him forming in his head. No way, no how will Sidney Thorton and I become an item.
She’s too much like his mother.
The thought stumbles into my mind and sticks there knowing I’d never take the risk of him being hurt again. “No. I’m not asking her out. I don’t even know why she was here since she doesn’t live in Sunnyville anymore.”
“I told you why she was here, and she is living here,” he says as I set him on his feet, only for him to flop onto his back in the middle of the kitchen floor so he can look up at me. “You are going to win a contest. You were—”
“Son of a bitch.” I smack the counter as realization dawns on me. Within seconds, I have my cell to my ear and am calling my brother.
