Page 36 of More, Daddy (Bluebell Bruisers #3)

CHAPTER

TWENTY-FOUR

“He thinks that we shouldn’t be together because of my age,” I tell her, sifting through the assortment of plastic-wrapped greeting cards. “He’s in his mid-thirties.”

I snicker. “As if the worst thing on planet Earth is having a dad with gray hair when you graduate.”

She smiles. “I know, right?” She swipes her hand down her thigh, smearing pink and red paint along her worse-for-wear sundress. Dropping her brush into a worn metal cup, she stretches out her hand to me. “I’m Dolly Gray. What’s your name?”

I smile. “I’m Briar Matthews. I’m a junior cheer coach at Bluebell High. I work as a teaching assistant right now. And now I do some subbing.” I pluck the perfect card from the bin and dig around in my purse for my cash.

Dolly bags my card and puts her feet up on a stool, rubbing her swollen belly. “Good card choice.”

I smile, counting out dimes and pennies to find the correct amount. “I’m sorry I totally just emotionally purged all over you.”

Dolly twirls a piece of honey hair around her finger with a smile. “I begged for it. I mean, how would we have known which card you needed without those details?”

I look around at the other booths at the market. “Can I ask you something?”

She rubs her belly as a little boy and an even smaller little girl run in, then out of her booth. She hollers after them, saying, “Make sure Honey has her sandals on, Bear!” Dolly refocuses on me. “What’s up, hon?”

“How’d he finally get over the whole age thing?” I ask.

“Truth is, the age thing is symbolic of fear.”

“Fear of what?”

She shrugs. “Everything. Being left. Being judged by others. Getting their heart broken. Changing their routine. Not being able to satisfy us. Not being able to keep us.” She shrugs again as if it’s so obvious, and plain to see. “Everything. ”

I lick my lips, and finger the stack of sale cards. “So how’d he get over his fears?”

Dolly’s eyes find mine over the racks of cards, and her lips curl into a seductive and teasing smile. “Sex. Lots and lots of kinky, hot, freaky, passionate sex.”

I laugh, because she’s joking… right? “Seriously?”

Dolly sits up, plucking her paintbrush from her cup.

Refocusing on her canvas, she lets out a heavy breath.

“This baby is right on my bladder. It takes me a day to paint one card with how many breaks I need, I swear.” She adds detail to a melted sunset on her canvas, then faces me.

“Oh, and I’m serious.” She pats her belly.

“This is my third in less than three years. My husband has absolutely zero worries these days.” She winks, and a cluster of women approach her booth, asking for specific cards, handing her homemade baby gifts.

I don’t talk to Dolly again, but I walk away from her booth with new resolve.

West is my man. I’m in love with him and I have the utmost faith and belief that he is also in love with me. He’s just stuck on all his fears.

He’s been ignoring me all week since the last time I saw him. He said we were over. He can consider last week a break. Come Monday, he’s going to be aware that we aren’t over.

We’ve barely fucking begun.

What a lot of people don’t know about Austin Reeves is that he’s a real goody-two-shoes.

I mean, he once admitted to me that at parties, he dumps beers out in the bathroom sink and refills the cans with water so it looks like he’s drinking without actually having to drink.

He told me his mom asked him not to drink until he was twenty-one, and he didn’t want to lie to her.

Sweet, right?

But not the kind of sweet that makes you want to fuck.

Luckily, Austin and I never made it that far.

We got tripped up long before he made it to home base.

Our relationship had devolved into something a lot like friendship around the one year mark, but our mutual desire to not be alone won out, and we stayed together for all of our senior year.

I don’t think we even kissed or held hands the last year we dated.

He stayed at my house a few times when my dad failed to call or come home—his parents trusted us to be alone together, and we never gave them a reason not to trust us.

He laid on my floor, or slept in my bed next to me with our backs pressed together as we talked until we couldn’t hold our eyes open one moment longer.

Today, though, Austin is all I have eyes for.

Oh, also today? Football and cheer homecoming meeting, with everyone on the minutes, including the principal Leah Mitchell and the athletic director and trainer, West Dupont.

I tip my head onto Austin’s shoulder, and stroke my fingernails up the inside of his bicep, blinking up at him.

“I’m so tired today, Aus. I was out way too much this weekend.

” I stick my lip out in a pout and use that whiny, youthful voice that West likes his babygirl to use.

Last time I used it, it got me bent over his couch.

Austin sticks his lip out, too. “Ahh, babe,” he says, using the term lovingly but without affection, which of course I’m aware of.

He calls everyone babe, even Dallas, but judging by the look simmering on West’s face as he crosses and uncrosses his legs on the other side of the table, he doesn’t know it’s commonplace for Austin to use token terms of affection in a trivial way.

West refuses to look at me, but the corner of his jaw twitches as he struggles to maintain his faux calm composure.

I drop my pencil, and dive between Austin’s chair and mine to retrieve it, giving the illusion that I’m draped over his legs as I bob down. Beneath the table, I find West’s boot tapping the ground with impatience. I can’t help but enjoy a private smile.

It’s working.

I don’t listen to much of what Leah says, or Cadence, or Riley. Truth be told, I don’t do much in that meeting but tease and play with Austin, all to piss off West.

I trace the lines on his palm, pretending to whisper his “sexy fortune” into his ear.

At one point, I ask him to make sure my bra strap isn’t twisted, and he looks down the back of my shirt, which earns me an audible throat clear from West. Toward the end of the meeting, when I know I’m catching side-eye from other women for being a shameless, flirtatious hussy, I stand up and stretch, making sure to push my breasts out toward Austin as much as I can.

Poor kid has no clue why he’s been chosen as the lucky one today. I can’t even do him the courtesy of letting him in on it, because then I’d have to tell him about West. And I’m pretty sure, with how adamant West thinks he is about us not being together, he’d be very angry if I told someone.

After the meeting, West and Leah have to go off campus for something.

Normally I’d be jealous of West leaving with another woman.

Riding in a car with her, stopping at Starbucks and having coffee together, walking into and out of a building making small talk—all the casual moments that I want with him.

That would make me mad and have me Googling her as quickly as possible… but it’s Leah .

When I started to fall for West last year, I quickly learned who his close friends are.

Aside from Coach McAllister and Riley Turner, West’s only other on-campus friend is Leah.

And in my research of Leah Miller, I realized that I have nothing to be worried about—Leah has been in a somewhat secret relationship for the last year and a half.

I’m not sure West even knows.

I don’t see either of them for the rest of the day, but Austin stays close.

“Can’t,” I say, fishing a box of Kraft macaroni and cheese from the cupboard.

Maven complains. “What? I thought you said you could.”

I place the empty pot in the sink basin and turn on the water, watching it slowly fill.

“Well that was when I thought I’d have money left over.

I’m broke ‘til payday, Mav. Sorry.” Except I’m not sorry, because I can’t help being poor and an ounce of sympathy would be nice, for once.

“Just go without me. You never need me anyway.”

She sighs, probably already running down a list in her mind of backups she can call. “Yeah, okay. Well, sorry you can’t come out.”

“Me, too.” Actually, the idea of going out sounds awful. I already had to pour it on thick with Austin to piss off West. I’m depleted. I place the pot on the stove and click the burner to HIGH.

Mav ends the call and I flick on the TV, standing on the linoleum floor between the kitchen and the living room, when there’s a heavy thudding at the front door.

Now would be when most people check their doorbell camera app on their cell phone to see who it is but not me.

Not me because we’re broke, because my dad is a clown who values his entertainment (read: booze ) more than his daughter’s safety and well-being.

I stomp toward the door and yank it open, ready to lay into him about being too lazy to use the house key when I stop dead in my tracks.

The screen door still between us, I hold the front door in my hand as I blink at West, standing on my porch in the afternoon sun.

His face is twisted into the most handsome of scowls, and I find myself stepping back just as he pushes inside.

The screen door thwacks closed with a bang, and his boots click as he moves toward me. All the while, I’m stepping back.

My back hits the wall, and West looms over me, cowboy hat tossing partial anonymity over his beautiful, stubbled jaw.

“You fucking slut.”

I blink up at him, nipples suddenly plucky and pressed to the soft cotton of my tank. I nod my head, my body silently whining for him and his rage. This is what I wanted. His jealousy proves everything I already knew. I just need him to see it.

“Yes, I’m a slut,” I whisper, my water gently boiling in the background.

“If that’s what it takes to get your attention, to make you see how much you want me.

I’ll whore myself out as much as I have to.

” I step away from the wall, eating up the inch between us as I crawl my fingers up his chest, gripping his collar.

I rock to my toes and press my lips to his.

He doesn’t return the kiss, but he doesn’t stop me.

“Whatever it takes to get you to realize how much you love me, Daddy.”

The use of that word pulls us down into the depths of our most carnal, fiery needs. West’s eyes flash with desire as he wraps his palm around my chin, pressing me back against the wall with a gentle thud.

The boiling water grows louder. I lick my lips. “No one is home.”

I watch his Adam’s apple curve his throat with his heavy swallow. “When is your father coming back?”

I shrug. “I never know.”

He looks around, slowly, analyzing the worn recliner in the wood paneled living room, the old linoleum and the green shag carpet in the hallway. Finally, he spots the pot of water boiling, and his dark eyes come back to mine, intense and angry. “You cook yourself dinner every night?”

I smirk. “I’m nineteen. Not nine.”

He shakes his head. “You’re too young to be taking care of yourself like this.”

I straighten my spine. “I pay the bills here, and my father contributes when he can.” I reach up and pluck West’s hat from his head, placing it on mine.

My pussy clenches and my stomach swirls at the feel of his sweat touching my forehead.

I think I would drink a gallon of his sweat if I could. “I keep telling you, I’m not a child.”

West drags a hand through his damp hair, and works his hand over his shirt buttons, freeing a few. “Is this why you like it?” he asks, releasing his grip on my chin. I tip his hat back on my head, and blink up at him.

“Maybe, yeah. And maybe I just like the idea of being taken care of, being disciplined, having someone look out for me—I don’t know.

But do I have to know? Can’t I just like slipping into a temporary world where things are hot and forbidden, secretive and dirty?

Can’t we just have fun without needing it to mean anything? ”

He blinks at me like I’ve lost my mind, but then, as we stand in heated silence a moment longer, I start to understand his expression.

“That’s what I tried to tell my wife.” His nostrils flare as a bead of sweat traverses his temple. “Ex-wife.”

I shake my head. “See? It’s like I’ve been trying to tell you. We’re meant for each other, West, you and me. I wasn’t lying when I said it was all real.”

Suddenly my throat is in his grip, and his hat is knocked off my head. He opens his mouth, but it takes him a moment to hand down a command.

“You’d do anything for me? For your daddy?”

Goosebumps break out along my arms and belly, and between my legs, the needy, wet heat intensifies. I nod my head.

“Go take a fucking shower. Daddy doesn’t want to touch his babygirl after she’s been shamelessly rubbing herself on some fucking nobody all day.” He glowers at me as his fingers press into my pulse. “You’re my fucking slut, and no one else’s, and it seems you need to remember that.”

I nod my head.

“Open your mouth.”

I open my mouth, and he fills it with a hot, thick wad of his spit.

I nearly come as I swallow it.

“Get on your knees and crawl to your shower like the dirty whore you are. When you come out, be ready to make Daddy feel good. You owe him.”