Page 33 of Starting Over with You
She taps my nose. “Sweetest girl, I know.”
“Sweet girls don’t go to the Thirsty Pine and get shit-faced without seeing their daddy first.”
I cringe at my dad’s booming voice. I knew he was going to give me a hard time for going to the bar instead of heading to his house for dinner. “I had to hear from my deputy that my daughters were dancing on a bar.”
I slowly turn to face my dad with a grimace on my face. Willie Colburn has always been a big man. He’s built like a rugby player and tall as all hell. His hair is stark white now, as is his long beardthat he braids down the front of his chest. He’s been growing that thing since I was a baby. He has five beads in it, one each for Missy and me, then our kids. I meet his pale-blue eyes, and I sigh deeply when he opens his arms to me. I go right into them, wrapping myself around him as he does the same. I haven’t seen him in over a year, so this hug is needed.
He kisses my temple, then the top of my head. “How you holding up?”
“Like a champ.”
He kisses me again and then presses his hand into my back. “Tammy, love, hold my calls.”
“Yes, Sheriff.”
She sends me a sweet smile before Dad guides me into his office. It’s the same as it was when I was a teenager, decorated in leather and dark browns. He has a wall full of photos of Missy and me from when we were younger, some even with Sadie in them, and then he’s got a bunch with him and his grandkids. He tries hard, and even if his best isn’t quite good enough, I still love my dad fiercely. I sit down across from him and grin when he hands me a Coke in a glass bottle and a bag of Doritos.
He winks. “Girl, you’ve been in this town not even twenty-four hours and already threw up all over Dean Moore’s truck?”
I look away sheepishly. “I had it cleaned.”
“That was his granddaddy’s hat you ruined.”
“I cleaned it too. It’s perfectly fine!”
He laughs, shaking his head. “You three gonna give me trouble again?”
I bring in my brows. “Did we stop and I didn’t know?”
He lets out a booming laugh, leaning back in his chair. “Fine, fine. The boys settled?”
“Yeah,” I say with a sigh. “They got there last night, settled in, and skated this morning with some of the guys they met at one of the camps they went to. The coach wants them to run a peewee camp with him. It raises money for the program.”
Dad smiles proudly. “Fantastic. I’m proud of those boys.”
“Me too,” I say, emotion clogging my throat.
Dad looks me over, then narrows his gaze. “Tell me the truth. How’re you doing?”
I shrug, tracing the Coke logo with my nail. “It all doesn’t seem real, really.”
He nods slowly. “He called me.”
My face burns as I scrunch it up. “For what?”
“Asked me to talk some sense into you, to not do this when y’all only have a year left.” I just blink as I hold his stern gaze. “I told him to fuck off. That loving you right was supposed to be more important than that money.”
I press my lips together, our gazes locked. “You know?”
He scoffs, giving me a look. “Kenleigh, come on. Your sister has the biggest mouth on the mountain.”
I grin at that, looking back down at my bottle. I feel like I’m ten once again after stealing all his Reese’s and then lying that I didn’t take them. “Are you mad?”
“At you? Never. I don’t know how you stayed with him without killing him.”
“The boys.”
“I figured,” he says softly. “Of course, I wanted more for you and Missy. I didn’t want y’all to have failed relationships or a child out of wedlock. But at the end of the day, I don’t give a shit about any of it as long as my girls are happy.”
