Page 3 of Giving Grace

Two

Ryan

I woke up for the second morning in a row with the toe-headed terror standing over me and as soon as I opened my eyes, she pounced on me like a jackal.

“Do you want to play Candyland?”

I jog my bleary-eyed glare from her face to the box in her hands and back again. “What time is it?” I mumble while swiping a rough hand over my face. “Where’s your mom?”

“Thirty-four o’clock,” she says like it’s a real thing. “And she’s still sleeping. So, do you?”

“Do I what?” Jesus, it’s still dark outside.

“Wanna play?” She says it like I’m mentally defective, which I guess I am.

“Is Con paying you?” I grumble at her as I struggle to sit up, waking up the bag of knife that live in my leg.

She gives me a shrug. “I don’t know what that means.” Her forehead crumples into a frown. “Do you want to play or not?”

Not.

Not.

Because what grown man wants to genuinely get his ass handed to him by a four-year-old in a children’s board game. At least with Con I can delude myself into believing that I lose to him because he had a higher IQ than Einstein.

“Well?”

Holy shit, she’s relentless.

“Can I take a leak first?”

“I guess.” She instantly wrinkles her nose at me and takes a step back like I might’ve already started. “Oh—wait!” she tosses the game box onto the coffee table and dashes out of sight and I turn just in time to watch her disappear into the laundry room from my seat on the couch. A few seconds later, she’s back dragging a stick that’s twice as long as she is. “Here.” She thrusts it at me. “Uncle Patrick used it to get my Alligator balloon off the ceiling, but you can use it to walk, right? Since you lost your stick.”

It’s a broom handle that’s had its head removed and replaced by a thick wad of duct tape.

“It’s not a stick.” I take the broom handle from her and plant it on the floor.

“Are you sure? It looked like a stick,” she tells me with a shrug.

“Well it’s not,” I grumble back, using my pilfered broom handle to lever myself off the couch. With the added support, my leg merely groans instead of screams. The relief is glorious. “It’s a cane—and I didn’t lose it.”

“Then where is it?”

Shit.

I just got owned by a preschooler.

“Look,” I say to her, giving her a narrow-eyed glare. “You want to play Candyland or not?”

She lifts the box and shakes it at me. “Duh.”

For some reason, the way she says it, like I’m the slowest motherfucker alive, has me swallowing a laugh. “Then stop yapping at me and let me take care of business.”

I bark it at her but instead of dissolving into tears, her face breaks into a wide grin. Probably because she knows she won. “I get to be blue.”

“Whatever.” Trying like hell to keep myself from grinning back, I shake my head as I shuffle thump down the hall toward the guest bath. “But we’re making coffee first,” I tell her, shutting the bathroom door before she can argue.

Three rounds of Candyland and two cups of coffee (it was a joint effort) later, Molly declares me the worst player ever.

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