Page 14 of Playing With Forever (Hollow Point #4)

CHAPTER EIGHT

Water heater repaired.

Cleanup done.

Pizza consumed.

And somehow throughout this, I’d been able to keep my hands to myself, even though Josie had changed into a pair of cutoff jean shorts that most twenty-year-olds couldn’t pull off.

That was to say, they did the impossible and made her long legs look longer and even more spectacular.

They were also short, frayed at the bottom, and faded.

Now, however, we were relaxing on her couch, and she was telling me about her boys. The way she talked about Kane and DJ was downright gorgeous. But with her calves draped over my thighs and my hands resting on her bare skin, it was becoming increasingly difficult to concentrate.

“I think DJ and Carrie are talking about starting a family,” she told me with a smile.

For some reason, my gaze dropped to her toned and tanned legs as I asked, “Yeah? You ready to be a grandma?”

“That was cruel,” she muttered. “I think maybe I’ll have my grandkids call me MiMi, or one of those other hip new names that women who don’t want to feel old use.”

There was nothing about Josie that hinted at her being old.

“I think Hot Grandma suits you best.”

My gaze shot to Josie’s face when an unexpected burst of laughter filled the room.

Damn. Top to toe, Josie Lark was utter perfection. But when her face lit up, she was downright unadulteratedly beautiful.

“Yes, well, I’m not sure how DJ will feel about having his children call me Hot Grandma. When he was twelve, he punched a kid for calling me sexy.”

“Good man,” I mumbled.

“He was suspended for two days,” she informed me.

“As I said, good man.”

Josie’s eyes narrowed. “Violence doesn’t solve problems.”

I had nothing to say to that, mainly because I could feel the ground getting shaky, and my response would likely cause a full-blown quake.

“You think violence solves problems?” she pushed.

Fuck.

“I think violence should be used as a last resort—unless your life is in danger, then it’s the first. But I also think there’s a time and place for a boy?—”

“If you say for a boy to be a boy, I might scream.”

“Then prep those vocal cords, baby,” I warned.

“For a boy to figure out what kind of man he’s going to be, there are going to be bumps in the road.

Your boy at twelve heard his mother being disrespected.

He didn’t like the way that made him feel.

Undoubtedly, he loves his momma. At twelve, he doesn’t have the self-control or fully developed reasoning skills to resolve the conflict the way, say, a sixteen-year-old does, or an adult.

In the moment, he did what his twelve-year-old mind told him to do—protect his momma.

Now it was up to the adults in his life to explain to him when punching someone in the face is appropriate and when it’s not. ”

“There are times when punching someone in the face is appropriate?”

Oh, yeah, the ground was beginning to quake.

“Let me ask you this; say, Lindy’s out with a group of friends and some guy grabs her. She tries to pull her arm away and asks him to let her go and he starts dragging her away from her friends. Should she punch him in the face?”

“Absolutely.”

“Right. So say we were out and a man grabbed you in a way you didn’t like, I told him to let you go, and he didn’t. Would you be pissed if I put my hands on him?”

She worried her bottom lip but didn’t say anything.

“There’s a time and place for violence. You don’t have to like it, but there is, and to say there isn’t is not only na?ve, it’s dangerous.

It tells our daughters it’s not okay to beat the absolute hell out of anyone who touches them in a way they didn’t consent to.

It teaches our sons not to step up and protect those who cannot protect themselves.

“Straight up, Josie, I’m not lying when I tell you if a man put his hands on you, he would not be walking the next day. If a man was disrespecting you verbally and I couldn’t remove you from the situation or get him to stop, he’d be eating his teeth.”

“That’s assault,” she muttered.

“And?”

“You’re a cop.”

“Yeah, and I became a cop for a reason. Protect and serve. The protect part of that coming first. So, think about this, if I go to work to protect and serve a bunch of strangers, how do you think I’m going to be with those I care about?”

She closed her eyes and very quietly told me, “I see the repercussions of violence every day at the center.”

Christ, she not only believed that, but she felt that deeply.

“No, Josie, what you see is the repercussions of the cycle. Men and women who raise their hand to a child in anger and harm them are either broken due to generational abuse or they didn’t have good, strong adults around them to teach them healthy ways to deal with anger.

I cannot imagine you didn’t speak to DJ after he hit that boy and explain to him how to better deal with his feelings.

Do not mistake protection for abuse. A man slapping his wife around because he's too weak and broken to control himself is not the same as me raising my fist to a man in protection of someone I care about.”

“You’re right, they’re not the same. And you’re also right, I did speak to DJ, and he was punished for what he did.”

I nodded, even though if I had a son, I would’ve spent time and a lot of it teaching him when to use his fists and when not to, but I wouldn’t have punished him for sticking up for his mother. That was if his mother was Josie.

“You don’t think I should’ve punished him,” she muttered, reading my mind.

“I think you did a damn fine job raising your boys into men.”

She smirked but shook her head. “You can’t know that, you’ve never met them.”

“I don’t need to meet them to know. There’s no way you’d beam with pride the way you do when you speak about them if they were not exceptional men.”

That earned me a bright smile, which made what I had to do next suck more than it normally would.

“You up for talking about your ex?” I asked.

“He’s a supreme ass. The end.”

Right. I’d save that for date number two.

“Is DJ short for something?”

Josie shifted her legs, and as she did, my palms glided over her soft skin.

Christ, she was killing me. The last thing I needed was a hard-on while we were discussing her son.

“Dameon Junior.” Her tone stated plain she wasn’t a fan of the junior part.

“I take it you didn’t want to name him after your ex?”

“No. I wanted to name him Bradley, but Dameon wanted a junior, and what Dameon wanted, he got. He was a spoiled child who turned into a spoiled man who eventually became prideful and mean.”

Just from that, her ex sounded like a dick.

She looked like she had more to say, so I gave her time to collect her thoughts. But I did it gently, grazing my thumb over the inside of her calf.

“I should’ve known, but I blame youth and inexperience.

Dameon was a force—he walked into a room, and people naturally gravitated toward him.

There was a time when I felt lucky he picked me.

I was nineteen, away from home for the first time, testing out what it was like to be part of the cool kid crowd.

Dameon was twenty-two, a senior, and at the time, I was caught up in the allure of an older boy who paid me attention.

And before you ask, no, my dad wasn’t around much.

Yes, I know with age and wisdom why I fell for Dameon. ”

Josie shifted again, this time uncomfortably, and blew out a breath.

“I got pregnant. His parents demanded we get married. My mom was disappointed, but she wanted what I wanted. The problem was, I was scared, so I agreed to marry him. We stumbled our way through the first few years. I dropped out of school and worked in a school as an aide. Four years later, we had Kane. Dameon had a good job, he made great money, but I wanted to go back to school. Dameon’s mom watched the boys, when DJ started school, she kept Kane.

By the time I graduated, DJ was ten and Kane was six, and I started teaching second grade at their school.

” She paused and shook her head. “Are you sure you want to hear all of this?”

I gave her leg a reassuring squeeze and told her, “I want to hear whatever you’re willing to share.”

“Things were never great,” she started. “I thought I loved him.

He was a good provider, he loved the boys, and he was involved, but with us, our marriage, there was no spark, no passion, no great love story.

We were two people who shared a life, and it was better than average, so I thought that was it, that was just how marriage works when the kids are young and schedules are busy.

“The first time I caught him cheating, DJ was fifteen, Kane was eleven, and I was devastated. But I scrambled to fix our marriage. I didn’t want the boys to go through a divorce. I forgave him, and it went back to business as usual.”

She paused again, but this time there was pain, not anger, in her expression. I took one of my hands off her leg and reached out.

“Hand, baby.”

She immediately complied and went on with her story.

“The second time was a year later. Different woman, but another assistant from his office. This time, the boys knew because they were with me when I caught him. And, yes, we caught them in the act on my living room sofa when we came home early from Savannah because Kane got sick.”

Disgust at a father and husband rolled through me. What kind of fucked-up piece of shit cheats on another woman while legally and emotionally tied to another. And to make matters worse, in the home he shared with his children, on the very piece of furniture they sat on to watch TV.

“DJ was, well, he lost his temper and had some words with his father as he was pulling his pants on. I should’ve done something to shield the boys, but I was in shock.

It was Kane getting sick that actually snapped me out of it.

When I came back into the living room, the woman was gone, and DJ was demanding I kick Dameon out. ”

Yep, he was a good man.

Protecting his momma.

“Did Dameon leave?” I asked.

“Only because the neighbor heard the shouting and called the police.”

Josie’s cellphone ringing drew her attention to the kitchen.

“Do you need to get that?”

“No. My boys have special ringtones, so I don’t have to jump to get my phone every time it rings.”

Smart.

“Am I gonna get a special ringtone?”

She went back to smiling and teased, “That’s a fifth date decision.”

Seeing that smile in stark contrast to the sadness in her eyes when she talked about her ex cheating, I now understood why—that pain wasn’t all for her, or maybe after all these years, none of it was; it was for her boys.

DJ and Kane had walked in on a scene that should never have happened, but no kids should ever witness their father’s betrayal.

It also put a new spin on why DJ had punched that boy in the face for trash-talking his momma. He might’ve already sensed his dad was a dick to Josie and felt powerless to stop it, but with the kid in the schoolyard he could.

“Just so I can count down the dates until I get my ringtone, is this date number two…”

“I don’t know what kind of floozy you take me for, Evan Sanders, but I don’t put out on the first date. Which means last weekend's entanglement was not a date.”

Floozy , shit, she could be funny. But mostly, she was buttoned up tight.

Puzzle pieces were falling into place. The Josie she showed the world and the Josie she gave those she felt comfortable with. The first was polite and pleasant but prim and standoffish. The second was open, honest, and funny. But to get to the real Josie, she had to feel safe to be those things.

“Right. It’s been a while for me as far as first dates go, how’s this one rating?”

I thought she’d laugh at my stupid question, but her smile died, and her study of me became acute.

“I think Monday night at the burger place was our first date,” she declared.

“And while you mostly acted like a bear with a thorn in his ass, Lindy was wonderful company. I also got my first glimpse of the real you. With that in mind, grilled chicken and potatoes au gratin was date number two. You gave a repeat performance of the bear with the thorn, but it didn’t last as long, and again Lindy was her wonderful self.

That would mean fixing my water heater, helping me clean up the mess, and pizza is date three.

Save getting to see you as a girl dad and how beautifully you respond to your daughter—this has been my favorite, and not just because you rescued me from that jerk Ted.

“I think some women think nice dinners and elaborately planned dates are romantic, and they can be. But they miss what’s important, and that’s sitting across the table from someone dressed up, eating a fifty-dollar steak.

It’s relaxing on a couch, spending time with the person you want to get to know better.

It’s talking about life, goals, dreams, and what ails you.

It’s about building trust, and connecting, and forming bonds.

So, as far as how this one’s rating goes, I give it a ten out of ten. ”

Fuck, but I could fall for this woman.

Fast and hard, without a safety net.

I used the hand I was holding to tug her upright, hooked her around the back of the neck to bring her mouth close to mine, then warned, “I’m gonna make out with you, Josie. And while I do that, you’re gonna climb on and sit on my lap.”

The words had barely left my lips when she scrambled to sit astride me, which meant I had to wait two seconds longer than I wanted to get my tongue in her mouth. But when I finally did, I didn’t waste any more time.

I’d already wasted too much of it.

Years, actually.

So, I did something I hadn’t done since my twenties, and sat on a beautiful woman’s couch, with her on my lap, with my dick throbbing hard, and made out with her.