Page 65 of Loving Wild

“Boo, not a Carnage song. It’s gotta be something from Young & Wild, that’s our cousin’s band,” Dani says while dancing around us.

Lauren jerks her head back as though she’s been slapped, and her eyes widen.

“Your cousin’s in Young & Wild? Wait, wait, wait. Callum Wild is your cousin?”

I nod, enjoying watching the disbelief wash over her. Then she screws up her nose, curls her lip and shrugs. “I still prefer Marley Layton, so I still want a Carnage song. You can sing one from the other lot later.”

Lauren slides her arse to the floor and leans back against the coffee table in front of me. I sit forward and strum at the guitar a few times, adjusting the strings as I do.

Someone quietens the music playing over the sound system.

“Any requests, old man, it’s your birthday after all,” I call across to my dad, who’s sitting at the far end of the U-shaped sofa watching us all with a smile.

I know the song he’ll choose. It’s the song he used to sing to our mum when we were kids and he got on the guitar around the fire pit when we went camping.

I practice the E, then the three notes of the f#m a couple of times and watch the smile on my dad’s face widen as he gives me a chin lift and a wink.

Jackie went to bed earlier, claiming a headache after my dad declared for the tenth time that Lauren’s sausage rolls were the best he’d ever tasted next to my mum’s and that her Bombay potatoes should be sold commercially.

I’d still be playing the song, even if she was still up, but at least this way, she’s not here to crack the shits at the old man.

Eyes to the guitar strings, I pull the lyrics from somewhere inside my beer and bourbon drunk mind and sing and play, Bread’s, ‘I Wanna Make It With You.’

The room falls silent, and when I’m happy with my playing and that I’ve memorised the order of the lyrics, I look up and return my dad’s smile and wink. I don’t leave my gaze on him for too long because, like he does every time he hears this song, I know he’ll soon be crying.

The alcohol, being together with the people I love most in the world, the fact that my daughter is no longer a little girl, it all has me feeling a certain way, and when my eyes hit Lauren’s, through the words of the song, I want her to know that although we’re still very new, I already know that she’s it for me, and we’re going to make it work.

Despite the smile on her face, tears track down her cheeks, which she makes no attempt to wipe away.

Thankfully, it’s a short song, and when it comes to an end, I get a cheer from everyone, even the kids who had all been shouting and laughing around the pool table when I started, had grown quiet and were now clapping and whistling.

I watch as Dani nudges Lauren with her shoulder and says something that makes them both throw their heads back and laugh. Lauren finally wipes her tears away, looks up at me and smiles.

“You’re too fucking perfect,” I hear her call out above the noise of my family shouting out song suggestions.

“I’m really fucking not,” I tell her with a smile and a headshake. Loving the fact that despite having spent the day with the bullshit of my past in her face, she still thinks that.

“Yeah, you are. That was fucking hot. I’m gonna let you do really bad things to me later,” she tells me while wiggling her brows.

I run my tongue along my bottom lip before mouthing, “You gonna let me fuck your arse?”

Shocking the shit out of me, because it’s always been a dead set ‘No’ whenever I’ve suggested it in the past, tonight, she shrugs, tilts her head to the side, and shouts over the noise, “Maybe.”

“Wanna go to bed now?” I suggest.

“Nah, that’d be rude. I want you to sing some more. I’ll let you know when I can’t keep my hands off you and we need to leave.”

I don’t have an answer to that, so I just grin and shake my head.

* * *

“Spread.”I give the order but don’t wait for Lauren to react before moving my knee between her open legs and pushing them further apart.

Pressing my front to her back, I move my hand around to her throat, apply just a little pressure, and rest it there.

“Climb up onto the bed, put your face down, your arse in the air, stay up on your knees but keep your legs this far apart,” I order.

There’s no hesitation, and I like the fact that it’s probably one of the first times I’ve ever known Lauren not to give me shit when I’ve given her a direct order.