“A mountainous swirl?”

“Yeah, lavender. Or sometimes pink. Occasionally baby blue or mint green or anything else I can dream up. But always with candy confetti and edible fairy dust.”

His face cracked right before he burst out laughing.


And when he did, Brock came through the front door.

We both looked to him as he examined the occupants of the sectional, shrugged off his leather jacket and threw it on the back of the couch.

“Something funny?” he asked, moving around the couch making a bee-line to me.

And as he moved toward me, I thought of Cob’s words.

Makes him feel however Slim feels that makes him get close to you anytime you’re even a little near, like any moment a lion’s gonna come roarin’ into the room and he’s gotta be close enough to come between you and it so he can keep you safe.

This life-altering thought was interrupted by Cob speaking.

“Tess here’s a mountainous swirl of frosting with candy sprinkles and fairy dust,” Cob told his son as Brock folded his long body next to mine on the couch, curled an arm around my shoulders, tucked me close and rested his boots on the coffee table.

“Come again?” he asked and I giggled.

“Nuthin’, Slim, you had to be there,” Cob muttered and I tipped my head back to look at Brock.

“You want a beer?”

“You, or me, gettin’ me a beer requires you, or me, gettin’ up and walkin’ across the room and it’s fuckin’ cold outside, my truck’s heat went out on the way home and you’re warm so the answer to that question is… no.”

“All right,” I mumbled at the same time I leaned forward, put my tea mug on a coaster by his boot then went back and curled closer, sliding my arm around his middle and finding that he was, indeed, cold so I gave him a squeeze.

Then I looked to Cob to see he’d watched me do this, his face was thoughtful then it turned guarded.

“Slim,” Cob started hesitantly, “I know you won’t thank me to point out the obvious but you got a little lady who bakes heavenly cakes and fries a mean beef cutlet and I’m not sure payback for that is makin’ her freeze her ass off anytime she’s in your truck.”

I felt Brock’s body get tight and it was at that moment I knew why Cob was hesitant and guarded and why he asked about where his son stood. Because his body getting tight told me Brock wanted his sons to know their Granddad, he wanted peace in his family, he didn’t like the idea of his father being sick or alone but he had by no means let him in.

“Dad –” he started in a warning tone.

Cob cut him off to say softly, “Get a new truck, Slim.”

Crackling electricity started invading the room and I got tense.

Cob felt it, he had to but he thought he was dying so his next words showed he felt he had nothing to lose.

“You need to deal with that woman,” he announced.

Brock’s body went solid. “We are not –” he started.

“No,” Cob interrupted again. “That bitch is… a… bitch. I heard her shoutin’ all the way

‘round the parkin’ lot. Tellin’ my boy to go fuck himself in front of my grandsons? ” He shook his head, clipped out, “No.” Then he sucked back beer.

“I’ll deal with it,” Brock growled.

“When, in a decade?” Cob shot back.

Uh-oh.

The voltage of the room ratcheted up to the red zone and Brock took his feet off the coffee table, leaning slightly forward, taking me with him, saying low, “Careful, Dad.”

“Look at me, son, feel what you’re feelin’ right now and look at me, the man who’s makin’ you feel it,” Cob invited, leaning toward Brock. “I spent my whole life puttin’ off tomorrow what I shoulda done today and you, ” he gestured with his bottle of beer, “felt the worst of it. Learn from me, do not make your sons feel what you’re feelin’ right now. I do not know what’s happening in that bitch’s house. What I do know is that seven years ago, I had two grandsons who felt just fine in their skin and now they look like they’re about ready any second to jump out of it. It’s either her or that man she married but it’s somethin’ and that somethin’ is not you. You’re done with that other job, you’re available, your life is steady and now you got no excuses.”

“I cannot believe you got the balls to sit on my couch and coach me on raisin’ my boys,”

Brock ground out.

To that, Cob sucked back a huge swallow of beer as he stood then he bent and slammed his bottle on the table and looked down at his son.

“No, what I got is not enough time to hope you do not fuck up like your old man and instead do right by your family.”

The air turned harsh, scratching at my skin and Cob’s eyes came to me.

“Nice dinner, Tess, beautiful cake. And honored you talked to me, sweetheart, swear that to my soul.” At these words Brock’s solid body grew rock-hard and Cob looked to him. “I’m okay with you bein’ pissed at me because I deserve it but, Slim, once you stop bein’ pissed you’ll see I’m not wrong. You don’t have to tell me, you just gotta get your shit sorted.” Then he jerked up his chin, started to the door and mumbled, “I’ll see myself out.”

Then he saw himself out.

I sat immobile and silent, still curled around an infuriated Brock and I stayed this way because I didn’t want to do anything to tip the edge on that fury.

I should have moved away.

“Honored you talked to him about what?”

I pulled away, removing my arm, tipped my head back and looked at him. “Sorry?”

“Honored you talked to him about what?”

“We, uh…” I started cautiously, too cautiously.

“Spit it out, Tess. What did you and Father of the Year talk about?”

Oh man.

Seriously, the Lucas family needed to work through these issues and soon.

“He was worried that I was like Olivia and showing you what you wanted to see but was something else underneath,” I said softly and Brock fell back against the couch.

He lifted both hands and rubbed his face but under them he bit out, “Jesus Christ.”

“I wasn’t offended,” I told him, his hands dropped and his eyes cut to me.

“Well, babe, that’s good but I am.”

“Brock –”

“That it?”

“Uh…”

“Tess,” he growled.

“He knows what happened to me,” I whispered.

Brock scowled at me in a very scary way then he snarled, “Fucking, fucking, fucking, ” he stood, swiping his father’s beer bottle off the table and sidearm throwing it across the room so it exploded against the wall, beer splattering everywhere and he finished, “Hell! ”

At these actions, I crawled back into the corner of the sofa and curled my legs tight against my chest, wrapping my arms around them. I watched him standing there, shaking his head and tearing his fingers through his hair all the way to the back of his neck where he left them curved around still shaking his head.

Then he dropped his hand and turned to me. “Which one?” he demanded to know.

“Which one what?” I asked quietly.

“Which sister? Jill or Laura?”

“Brock, I don’t really mind,” I told him cautiously.


“Bullshit,” he fired back and I had to admit he was right. It was. “That man has no business knowin’ that happened to you.”

“Your family knows,” I pointed out.

“Precisely,” he clipped, “and that man isn’t family.”

“Brock,” I whispered, “he’s your Dad.”

“He is?” he asked sarcastically and I decided that was a good time to quit talking.

Even furious, Brock didn’t miss much; he saw me close down, decided to aim at a new target and thus yanked his phone out of back pocket, opened it up, hit some buttons and put it to his ear.

Then he started pacing.

Then he said, “Yeah, Jill it’s me and, head’s up, I’m fuckin’ pissed.”

Oh man.

He guessed.

He kept going. “Why? I’ll tell you why. Because Tess didn’t tell her fuckin’ best friend she’d been raped, not for six fuckin’ years. Martha found out a month ago. Her own goddamned mother and sister don’t know but you know who does? Dad. ”

He paused maybe to listen but not for long before he continued.

“Do not pretend you know by association what that shit feels like. Laura knows. That’s why Laura didn’t fuckin’ share. You had no fuckin’ business spewing that shit to Dad. I left the house to take my boys home, left her with Dad and he fuckin’ talked to her about it. She’s alone here with a man she barely fuckin’ knows and, bein’ Dad, he thinks it’s his place to have a conversation with my fuckin’ woman about her bein’ violated. ”

Another pause that didn’t last long.

Then, “Is she okay? What do you fuckin’ think? She’s curled in a ball in the corner of the goddamned sofa Mom bought because I was so fuckin’ pissed my sister is fuckin’ screwy, the instant I learned, I threw a goddamned beer bottle across the room. And the reason I’m so fuckin’ pissed, Jill, is because she is supposed to feel safe with me. And my own goddamned sister orchestrated a fuckin’ scenario where, my back’s turned for a half a goddamned hour, she was sittin’ on my own fuckin’ couch and she was not. ”

Okay, weirdly, what Brock just said made me feel less freaked out at his wild, angry, unrestrained behavior.

There was another short pause.

Then, “Jill, you had a different Dad than me. You and Laura, you had a different Dad than Levi and me. And now, for years, I’ve been takin’ your back with this shit, even before he got sick. But you gotta get your head outta your ass, woman. No man, even Dad, deserves to die alone thinking his son has abandoned him. But that’s as far as it goes and you need to get that and you need to show me while I have your back, you have mine and I’ll make this official right fuckin’ now. You have my back, you have Tess’s and you can read what you want into that and my guess is, what you read will be right. Are we clear?”