Page 5 of More, Daddy (Bluebell Bruisers #3)

CHAPTER

THREE

“You know what you need for that? A reciprocating saw. Those things eat through anything. They’re the goat of tools,” Hudson says, lowering his empty pint glass to the bar top.

Someone has something that needs sawing through? Cutting down? Destruction? Fuck if I know. My leg has been bouncing beneath the bar for the last ten minutes, and I’m showing restraint by sitting.

The urge to pace is great.

“Do you mean that as in “that’s the G.O.A.T.,” or do you mean that as in it’s comparable to the animal the goat, because those fuckers eat through anything?” Dean asks, adjusting his Cattleman which he has balancing on his knee.

I swipe a hand through my hair and stifle the scream of boredom that pings in my throat.

I like my friends, but knowing that DaddysGirl is at home and likely online, it’s really hard to sit here and talk about home repair projects and fucking power tools with three married or basically married dudes.

Hudson looks contemplatively across the bar as if needing a moment to consider the question. Need I remind you the question is dumb, and this whole conversation is an unkinky snooze.

“Same shit, man. He’s saying the tool is gonna get the job done. Who cares what metaphor he used. Get the saw,” I rumble, pulling my pint glass to my lips to finish off number three.

Jake, who has been engrossed in the football game playing on the TV above the bar, finally joins the conversation. He narrows his gaze, poking me with it, as if I’m a bee hive and answers are about to spill out of me in angry droves.

“Sorry,” I mutter, indefensible against his powerful now tell dad what’s wrong gaze. “Just… grouchy.”

“Still not sleeping well?” Dean muses with concern, bringing his eyebrows together, a few grooves of worry etched into his forehead right below the permanent red mark left by his cowboy hat.

Fuck. I forgot I lied to him about not sleeping well a few nights ago when the team was away and instead, I stayed home to talk to a girl online.

God, it sounds pathetic when I reframe it that way. Note to self: do not reframe it that way ever again.

Quickly, I think of a way to lie to my friends but also not lie to them. A half truth. I’ll give them a single fleck of honesty, but roll it in so many crumb coats of bullshit so I’m thoroughly insulated from the vulnerability of the truth.

I peer up at the screen for a moment before casting my eyes back to Dean.

“I rejoined the online hunt for love,” I admit, because they already know about the tale of West Dupont and his “swipes for love” (their stupid words, not mine).

They don’t need to know that I joined a kinky, anonymous online hookup app meant to fap out my dirtiest desires while taking a brief respite from the soulmate hunt.

That will be my little secret.

Still, I did join a new dating app. That’s the true part of it. Half truth accomplished.

I scratch the back of my head and force a yawn that turns real part way through.

“It always makes me nervous when I join those things.” There, another truth.

I did have a lot of anxiety joining online apps because one of my greatest fears was somehow being matched with my ex-wife—falling in love with someone only to meet them in person and find out it’s the one person who already knows me and rejected me because of what she knows.

Or worse, that I fall in love with someone I already know and do not have sexual feelings for in real life.

Too many scary possibilities, and the anxiety that comes with dating apps is indeed real.

I just don’t have any with Veiled , because DaddysGirl is Daddy’s fucking dream .

Again, that’s for me to know.

Dean bobs his head in knowing consolation. “I’d be the same. Talking to strangers has to be weird—at first, at least.”

Hudson waves down the bartender and indicates he’d like another, sliding his pint glass down the wavey, worn grain of the bar top. “I went on a set up thing once,” he says, his brow dipping into a flat line when he needlessly adds, “you know, right before me and Dolly.”

Dolly Gray. The holy grail of wives.

She’s fucking hot, which I know I shouldn’t say because Hudson Gray is my friend, and a good friend, too.

But you know what? She is fuck hot. She’s got a killer rack, she’s always barefoot with her dress hanging off one shoulder—her entire energy gives off a sexual, sensual vibe.

Like no matter what time of day he catches her, she’s always got something sultry waiting for him on her lips, always makes room for him between her legs, and is never without a few erotic words to whisper in his ear.

It’s hot.

Whether I admit it or not doesn’t stop it from being true. And another thing hot as fuck about her? She’s always pregnant. Hell, I don’t even know how many kids Hudson has at this point.

I cast him a little envious glare, which he interprets as me wanting to hear more of his story.

“I had all this pressure to want it to work, because Everly had gone through the trouble of the set up. But the pressure made me like her less, and I already didn’t like her very much,” he says, tracing the rim of his glass with one fingertip.

He smiles at the surface of his beer—a total fucking simp move done by thoroughly fucked husbands around the world.

I’m happy for the guy, but equally, would love to slap that fucking pint glass across the bar and stomp on it, too.

Not healthy, I know.

“Well,” I hedge, trying my best to not be an asshole to Hudson simply because he’s got his life figured out, which bugs me, and I really don’t want to be here, but I’m trying not to fall into an obsessive hole with DaddysGirl so soon.

None of which is a reason to be a prick to my friends.

“Admitting it out loud adds a level of pressure, too. Because I’ve told the world I’m trying to meet someone again, now I really don’t want to fail. ”

Jake smiles and knocks his partially-drunk beer against mine. “I don’t care if you fail,” he says gleefully. “I’ll be your friend even if you’re single your whole life.” He finishes his beer. “Then you can’t say no to babysitting.”

I finish my beer, too. And while wiping my mouth with a damp paper napkin, the kinky husband brigade takes over. Okay , Dean isn’t married yet but the way he’s been all “aww shucks” when talking about Ms. Clara June Colt tells me all I need to know— he’s a damn goner.

“Speaking of Dolly,” Jake says, his voice dropping to that hushed I’m gonna talk about things that no one else in this bar should hear tone of his.

That tone I’ve come to know and despise, because that tone means secrets.

Good, kinky, filthy secrets. Secrets that I am privy to but can take no place in sharing or bantering because I am single.

Not that I’d ever admit my thing to them anyway.

My thing comes with shame. Jake and Hudson are fathers—they’d likely judge me for it. Their things are palatable. Easy, even.

Jake likes making leather whipping tools. He likes doling a little punishment with his pleasure. The world likes a man who knows how to inflict the right amount of pain with a healthy dose of pleasure. He’s a Christian Grey in a damn cowboy hat, so it seems.

And Hudson. If he doesn’t have stitches, a Band-Aid or a limp, I’d think something was wrong.

Hudson and Dolly aren’t set on one kinky thing—they do all of them.

I recall once last year when Hudson dislocated his shoulder from an “erotic moment gone awry.” I didn’t prod further because his pleasure is my personal reminder that I am alone, but an erotic moment gone awry that leads to a dislocated shoulder? Jesus Christ.

I am sick of being single.

Absolutely fucking over it.

“Those leather bindings she wanted—they’re done. In the truck,” Jake finishes, knocking his cowboy hat back with a closed fist. Then Hudson nods, and launches into a story about how he dipped rope into wax, hoping to create a soft barrier between the roughness of the fiber, and his own skin.

His own skin.

Dolly is tying Hudson’s ass up for some reason or another.

Is there a sinkhole full of kinksters in Bluebell that I just haven’t wandered into yet or what?

“Don’t give us that look,” Jake says, snapping me out of my jealous haze. It used to be a jealous haze. Now I’d say, since meeting DaddysGirl , it’s half envy, half impatience.

It’s not their fault I’m forcing myself to do normal things so I don’t get obsessed with the girl on the computer, but I am taking it out on them in the form of dead eyes and impatient sighs.

“What look?” I play dumb.

“The look of a guy who hasn’t found his own kinky counterpart,” Hudson winks and Dean lets out a little chuckle. I nod toward the football coach.

“Why aren’t you giving Deano a bad time, huh? He’s technically single.” I cast a glance toward my friend. “Sorry—I’m not taking the brunt of this by myself from these two old kinksters.”

Jake’s brows fall to a flat line, and he twists his lips in displeasure. “We’re the same age.”

“Two years,” I tell him. “You’re two years older than me.”

Hudson chuckles, and sips his last beer of the night. He always stops at just two. And I’m sure there’s some sexual performance related to that number of beers, but I choose to not think about that now.

“What’s your thing?” Hudson asks, unaware that his question hits the spring-loaded trap door of complexity in my personal life. My thing is what destroyed my marriage. My thing is what keeps me single. My thing is what DaddysGirl is into, too.

I lift a shoulder and let it fall. “I don’t have a thing.”

Jake laughs. Hudson smirks. Dean smiles.

“I don’t.”

I don’t know who says it, but someone says, “Everyone has a thing.”