Page 11 of Playing With Forever (Hollow Point #4)

CHAPTER SIX

Last night when I got back inside after walking Josie to her car, Lindy had disappeared out to her studio. I debated taking a walk across the yard and talking to my daughter about the game she was playing, which became more and more obvious as the night wore on.

At one point, Lindy was laying it on so thick that she made me sound like I could walk on water while simultaneously curing world hunger.

But I decided to wait, and now she was at the island with a bowl of cereal, and it wasn’t the right time to have a discussion that could lead to something deeper than her simply trying to set me and Josie up when I had to get to work.

And tonight I had a date, my first one in thirteen years—or twenty-eight if I wanted to go back to the last first date I’d gone on.

What the fuck am I doing?

“Morning, Dad,” Lindy mumbled.

“Morning. Did you sleep or paint?”

Her startled eyes lifted to check me out.

I understood her mumbling and her reaction to my question.

She’d come inside before I left for work, which happened but rarely, to check the temperature of my anger.

She knew, I knew, she’d pulled a fast one last night asking Josie to stay, and she thought I was mad at her.

To let her off the hook, I dropped a kiss on the top of her head on my way to the coffee pot.

“I painted, but only for a little while, then I went to bed.”

That was what I liked to hear. When Lindy was younger, there were rules about how many hours she could paint and a set time when she needed to go to bed.

But that changed after she graduated high school.

It would’ve been plain weird for a dad to tell his adult daughter what time she needed to go to sleep, but also Lindy needed to learn to self-regulate.

That didn’t always happen, but she was never moody, depressed, or reckless, so I kept quiet about the hours she kept.

But also because, as she’d explained, and I’d seen firsthand, when she was in front of an easel with a brush in her hand, she was utterly lost to her art. So, I let her be.

“I won’t be home for dinner tonight,” I told her as I poured coffee into a travel mug.

“Overtime?” she asked.

But really, it was more of a statement than a question.

In the last few years, overtime or the time I spent at the center volunteering were the only things that kept me out late on weekdays.

Before she graduated, it was extremely rare for me to work late, and I only did it when I couldn’t get out of it.

“I have a date.”

I heard the clatter of metal clanking against glass. “A date?” she shrieked. “With Josie?”

I ignored the screeched excitement and the way my chest tightened at the reminder I’d screwed up raising Lindy and answered, “Yeah, with Josie.”

I braced for whatever response Lindy would have.

However, I hadn’t been prepared for her to jump off the stool, do a dance that was reminiscent of her toddler years when she’d dance around in a series of uncoordinated moves, which were an early indication she’d inherited her mother’s hopeless rhythm while her fist punched the air.

“I knew it.”

I didn’t want to ask, but I had to. And I did so, praying she hadn’t seen Josie sneaking out of the house or, alternately, her bra tangled in my sheets.

“That she was perfect for you.”

Thank fuck.

“About that?—”

“I know.” She held her hands out in front of her. “It was sneaky and underhanded, but Dad, something had to be done.”

We were inching toward dangerous territory.

“Done about what?”

“You, living your life like a monk. Never dating and rarely going out. I get it, when I was a kid, I was your responsibility. But I’m an adult, and you still live like a monk, which is crazy.

Isadora’s mom thinks you’re hot. You’re also a really good guy, and you’re single—no dates, no lady friends, no friends with?—”

“Please don’t finish that.”

My daughter gave me a sassy smile I wished I’d never seen because if that was the smile she shot at the boys who were interested in her, I was fucked.

“You do remember I’m an adult, right?”

How the hell could I forget? My baby had transformed right in front of my eyes all too quickly. And twenty-one was right around the corner.

“I do, but that still doesn’t mean I want to, nor will I ever discuss having lady friends or anything of the sort with you.”

She rolled her eyes to the ceiling, and when they refocused on me, she frowned.

“As if I want to hear the details, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want you to have a private life.

You know, one outside of being a cop and my father.

I want you to date. I want you out all hours of the night with your lady friends doing whatever it is old people do.

You could, like, hang a sock on the doorknob so I know not to come into the house because you’re entertaining a lady of the night. ”

Christ.

I wasn’t hanging a sock on the door like a frat house so my kid knew I had a woman in my bed.

Fucking hell, the thought made me nauseous.

“You do know that a lady of the night is a prostitute, right?”

Lindy’s eyes rounded, her lips stretched thin as she grimaced.

“Um, yeah, no, I didn’t know that’s what that meant. I thought it was just a night-time lady friend. You know, a Saturday night fun-time girl, not the kind you took to breakfast.”

My heart shriveled a bit at the knowledge that she knew the difference. I shoved that aside right along with my lecture that she was never to lower her standards to be the fun-time girl, and always demand the respect of any guy she was with.

“Anyway, I think you being a cop, paying for sex is frowned upon.”

I was stunned speechless. I was also fighting the urge to throw up.

“Lindy—”

“Jeez, Dad, lighten up, I’m teasing. But I’m not joking about being happy you’re going out on a date. It’s about time. One day, I’ll be gone, and it would suck for you to be in this house all by yourself.”

Yep, I was feeling sick to my stomach. The last thing I wanted to talk about was my sex life with my daughter; the thing right below that was her moving out to start her life without me.

“There’s no rush for you to move out,” I reminded her.

“I know, Dad. But one day, I will. And I don’t want to do that leaving you to live in this house all by yourself. Actually, it would break my heart after everything you gave up to keep me if you ended up alone.”

A band wrapped around my heart and squeezed.

“I didn’t give up a goddamn thing, Lindy. I love you. You are not a burden or a responsibility—you’re my daughter.”

All the happiness and teasing bled from her face. All traces of the young woman she was morphed into exactly what Josie had said she was—wise beyond her years. And if her expression didn’t convey the change, her words did.

“I know I’m not a burden, but that doesn’t negate the fact that you gave up a lot to be my only parent.

To say that’s not true would be to devalue you as a father.

Every parent, at some point in the raising of their children, will have to sacrifice for them.

It’s just that you sacrificed more than most because after Celeste left, it was up to you to raise me without help.

“I know what you gave up, Dad. And part of what you did was have a private life or any life that didn’t include me being front and center.

You gave me a good life. I never wanted for anything, and that included your attention.

There are no words for how much I appreciate what you gave , but that doesn’t mean I don’t love you enough to recognize what you gave up .

“I’m twenty, not five. I suppose I will always need my dad, but I don’t need you the way I did ten years ago or even five. You not only deserve to have a life, but you need one.”

Lindy paused and scrunched her nose and if she hadn’t already shaken me to my core, she would with her next declaration.

“I want to hate her,” she started in a whisper. “For what she did to us. But I can’t because what she gave me by leaving outweighs anything she could’ve given me by staying. I just feel sorry for her. She lost us. But she gave us the life we have, and for that, I’m grateful.”

It would seem I’d fucked up in a multitude of ways with my daughter—the first being not making sure I’d inserted safe females into her life to fill a void I could never fill.

The second, and arguably more of a fuck up, I’d missed her turning into a woman who was wise and independent and no longer needed me to shelter her from the world, only to further hinder her growth.

“As long as you never question how much I love you, how proud I am to be your dad, and how grateful I am to have you.”

Back was my playful girl.

“Duh, I’m awesome. How could you not be grateful to spend time in the presence of such awesomeness?”

I gave her that play, knowing she needed to shed the heavy.

“Right. So I take it you’re good with me going out with Josie?”

“More than good. She’s amazing. I can’t wait until she comes over for dinner again, and not just because she promised to teach me how to make sunflower seed bread.”

Forty-eight hours ago, hearing Lindy tell me that she found a woman amazing would’ve sent me into a panic attack. Hell, if it was anyone but Josie she was talking about, I’d be drenched in sweat and hustling to find a way to disconnect the woman from my daughter.

Even though the panic wasn’t choking me, I still had to manage Lindy’s expectations.

“Listen, Josie and I are just feeling our way through this. It might not turn into anything?—”