Page 8 of Playing With Forever (Hollow Point #4)

CHAPTER FOUR

“Not cool, asshole,” I grunted as I caught the ball before it could hit me in the face.

“Don’t know where your head's at, but it’s not on the game,” Echo returned from half court.

He wasn’t wrong.

My head was totally fucked.

“Josie’s at my house.”

“Come again?”

I dribbled the ball and passed it back to him.

“Lindy invited her over to show her a painting she’s working on.”

Echo smacked the ball away and let it roll to the sidelines.

Well, fuck, so much for a game of basketball to keep myself occupied while the woman I was fucking—no, I wasn’t fucking her; I’d fucked her, and she’d rolled out of my bed—was right then visiting with my beloved daughter.

“Lindy invited her over to show her a painting she’s working on?” he repeated.

I understood his shock. Echo and I had been partners for five years, before that, we were friends.

He knew Lindy didn’t show anyone—including me—what she was working on.

She also rarely left her studio once she started a new piece—unless, of course, there was a once-in-a-lifetime concert she couldn’t miss.

What Lindy had never done, not even when she was a child, was allow anyone to see her creative process.

Lindy had also told Josie she heard colors, which was something my daughter guarded like a state secret—afraid that if people knew, they’d think she was weird.

I didn’t tell Echo that because that was something Echo didn’t know, since Lindy had never shared that with him, or to my knowledge, anyone but me.

And now Josie.

“Yep. Lindy went to the Hope Center yesterday and invited her.”

Echo’s face registered surprise, then it morphed into suspicion, and finally landed on what could only be described as what the fuck.

Instead of playing twenty questions, I gave Echo the abbreviated truth while walking to the bench to grab my water.

“I was out to dinner with Lindy, we saw Josie, and Lindy invited her to sit with us. And you know Lindy she can talk to a wall?—”

“Actually, I don’t know Lindy. You hide that girl from everyone you work with.”

I didn’t hide her.

“I protect her,” I corrected.

“From me?”

At his accusation, I paused with the bottle halfway to my mouth. “What?”

He didn’t answer, not until he made his way to the bench and grabbed his own bottle of water.

“I never pushed.” Not the greatest way to start.

“I met you when Lindy was, what, twelve?” That sounded right, but Echo didn’t let me confirm before he went on.

“But if memory serves, I didn’t even know you had a daughter until a few months after we were partnered, and you had to cut out early one day because it was her fifteenth birthday. ”

I didn’t remember that, but obviously Echo did. And I always left work early on Lindy’s birthdays so I’d be home with a cake when she got there.

“Okay.”

“You don’t see that as fucked?” he asked.

“I’m a single father to a girl who doesn’t have a mother. I never miss a?—”

“No, jackass, not leaving. That I’d known you three years before you mentioned your daughter.

That in the years since then, you’ve never invited me over to celebrate any of those birthdays with her.

We’re tight, yet I’ve only met your daughter a handful of times.

You’ve been my partner for five years, and I’ve never had dinner with Lindy.

Five years, and you’ve never brought her to a family get-together.

She’s never come to a station softball game, you’ve never brought her to watch us play basketball, she’d never been to TC.

For five years, you’ve hidden her from me—from all of us.

I never pushed or said anything, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t wondered why the fuck you don’t want your kid around us. ”

Women.

Too many women for Lindy to get close to.

“She’s my only vulnerability,” I told him. “With the work we do, I try to keep her existence to a minimum.”

Echo narrowed his eyes, not buying my excuse.

“So you think Phoenix should hide Griffin from you, from Dalton, from the guys at TC?”

Dalton was Phoenix’s partner.

And Griff wasn’t Lindy.

“It’s not the same.”

“You’re right, it’s not,” Echo tossed back. “Griff not only has Phoenix’s protection and mine and yours and Dalton’s, he has the full weight of every person who works at TC. Not that Lindy doesn’t have that same protection from all of us, it’s just that no one knows who they’re protecting.”

I clenched my jaw, not wanting to have this conversation. My decision to keep my daughter away from the people I worked with was a conscious choice. One I made when she was a child and followed through with, and would continue to do so.

“Lindy’s been hurt enough?—”

“What the fuck?” Echo spat. “You think any of us would hurt her?”

“You? Absolutely not. The guys, no. But she doesn’t need to get attached then lose someone when their life gets too busy for her.”

Unwanted visions of my daughter sobbing when her mother canceled plans or later when she simply stopped showing up for her scheduled visits filled my head.

My girl asking me why her mom didn’t love her.

Me holding Lindy while she cried herself to sleep after a day spent wondering why she wasn’t enough for her mom.

Echo’s attention became acute. I knew the moment the smart bastard puzzled the pieces I didn’t want him to see together.

“You’re shitting me,” he chided. “Honest to God, Evan, at no point did you think to maybe talk to me about this—the man whose mother left me. But more, she left my brothers and my sister . The siblings I raised, the sister who was once a young girl dealing with the loss of her mother the same as Lindy. At no point in the years I’ve known you did you even hint that you were struggling with this or that she was. ”

Those old demons were rearing their ugly heads faster than I could tamp down the fury they brought with them.

“How I raise my kid isn’t your business.”

I swiped my wallet and keys off the bench. I needed to get the fuck away from my friend before I said something I couldn’t walk back.

Echo waited until I was a few feet away before he hit me with the truth.

“I see I struck a chord. So while you’re nursing your anger, think on this, how the fuck would you feel if I was keeping my family away from you? If I was struggling and kept that shit from you because I didn’t trust you enough to land it at your feet?”

It had nothing to do with trust.

It had to do with a lot of shit, and some of it was pride, but mostly it had to do with me keeping my daughter safe—at all costs, including not sharing her pain.

I didn’t inform Echo of this as I walked out of the gym.

By the time I pulled into my driveway, I hadn’t unclenched my jaw, but when I saw Josie’s sporty white Audi at the curb, that clenching turned into grinding my molars.

Fucking hell, I couldn’t catch a break. I should’ve gone somewhere else and called first to make sure the coast was clear before I came home. Though, if I’d done that, Lindy would sniff out my play, and the inquisition would start.

I might’ve sheltered my daughter from the people in my life, but I hadn’t raised an unaware young woman.

She was far from dumb, from the moment she laid eyes on Josie and my reaction to her, Lindy knew something was up.

Hence, the invite to join us for dinner.

Then it went downhill from there, and now Lindy was playing a game, not understanding the disastrous ramifications.

I certainly don’t want to disappoint her.

Her being Lindy.

And why the fuck couldn’t I stop thinking about how offended Josie sounded when I’d repeated her declaration and she’d taken that as me questioning her sincerity.

Hell, the bigger question was, why couldn’t I put Josie out of my mind—period.

Why hadn’t I been able to get her smile out of my head, or the way her hips swayed when she walked, or the way she looked at Lindy like she was hanging on her every word.

I shut down my truck, vowed not to look into the backyard at Lindy’s studio on my way through the kitchen to my bedroom, and promised myself I wouldn’t wander outside to check on the women and make sure my daughter was okay.

Or more to the point, that my daughter wasn’t drowning in the attention of a beautiful, smart woman who had the power to crush my girl.

Unfortunately, my plans were shot to shit the moment I walked into my house.

“You think so?” Lindy was asking excitedly.

“No question about it,” Josie returned with a healthy dose of animation in her tone.

I’d never heard Josie so vibrant. I had no idea what they were talking about whatever it was had my daughter excited and happy.

Fear immediately hit my chest.

“Hey Dad, you’re home.”

“Hey sweetheart, good day?” I asked, stopping in the kitchen to take in the two females sitting at the island, looking at something on Lindy’s laptop.

“The best!”

That fear turned into terror.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Josie had a great idea. I’m going to start an art program at the center. Just one day a week until I get the hang of it, then if there’s enough interest, I’ll open up more days. I was thinking I could do three days a week. But Josie said only if it doesn’t interfere with my schedule.”

Lindy didn’t have a schedule.

I glanced at Josie to find her staring at me with trepidation before she looked back at Lindy.

“ Your art comes first,” Josie quietly told her.

Lindy nodded. “Dad’s always telling me I need to spend more time out of my studio.”

I had mentioned that a time or five hundred. Though, her spending that time in close proximity to Josie and the women who ran Womens Inc was not exactly what I had in mind. And the thought of her doing so had my gut churning. My intention had been to get her to spend more time with her friends.

“Anyway,” Lindy went on. “I’ve wanted to volunteer at the center for ages. So this is perfect.”

Fuck.

Lindy’s gaze cut to me, and I saw it—fuck, but I couldn’t miss it—everything I’d always known but yet actively worked against her having it—stark need for female interaction on a deep level.

The very thing I didn’t want her to have.

The very thing that scared the fuck out of me because it was the very thing that had torn her heart out, and I’d been powerless to save her from.

“I should get going,” Josie said.

“You should stay for dinner,” Lindy contradicted. “Dad’s grilling chicken and making his famous potatoes au gratin.”

“Lindy—”

“We always have a ton of leftovers when Dad cooks,” my daughter went on, ignoring my warning.

To Josie’s credit, she didn’t look startled by Lindy’s overzealous attempt to get her to stay. Which meant, in the hours she’d spent with Lindy, she hadn’t missed my daughter’s need for attention.

And fuck me.

“I’ll stay on two conditions,” Josie started. “If your dad doesn’t mind an extra mouth to feed and I get to help.”

Josie in my kitchen, helping me and my kid cook—good Christ, I was living in the seventh circle of hell. And not because I didn’t want Josie there, but because I did—and later I wanted her in my bed.

“You two are on dessert,” I said.

“Do we have anything to make for dessert?”

“No clue.”

I watched my daughter smile, then caught Josie’s lips tip up, but it wasn’t until my girl giggled and Josie followed that my heart shriveled.

For years I’d known I’d fucked up, it was just that I couldn’t find my way past the fear of my kid getting hurt again. I couldn’t unhear her cries or unsee the tears or unfeel the pain.

My eyes met Josie’s, and the attraction that hummed whenever she was close sparked. But it was the understanding in those blue eyes that freaked me the fuck out.

It was then Echo’s accusation hit me.

I hadn’t been protecting Lindy.

I’d been hiding her.

Not just from the women in my life, but from everyone.

Anyone who could cause her the slightest upset if they left.

Clearly, Lindy wasn’t the only one with abandonment issues. And quite possibly mine were worse than hers.