Page 27 of The Pucking Date
“You seeing anyone?”
I exhale slowly, scrub a hand over my jaw.
“There’s someone,” I say finally. “But she won’t have me. Smart woman like her...she sees the headlines, the reputation. Probably thinks I’m just another mess waiting to happen.” I glance at my father still smiling that empty smile. “Can’t say I blame her.”
My mother raises a brow, all mischief and mama sass. “Well honey, what in the Sam Hill is wrong with her? Can’t she see you’re finer than frog’s hair?”
“She’s smart.”
She snorts. “Baby boy, that don’t narrow it down one lick.”
I sigh, rubbing the back of my neck. “Yeah…that’s kind of the problem.”
“Don’t you even start with me,” she says, already reaching for her phone. “I seen that last photoshoot, Finnian James. Shirtless and grinnin’ like you done caught the cat AND the canary.”
She pulls out her phone, taps, then flips the screen toward me. It’s one of those curated disaster pieces—me with two girls on my arms at some post-game event from months ago. Skin, teeth, lighting, staged to sell something.
“It was a sponsor event. Everyone’s trying to get their shot. I blink, and it turns into a headline.”
“But this kind of carryin’ on probably ain’t helpin’ your cause none,” she says, dry as week-old cornbread.
I wince. “Yeah. I know.”
“You’ve gone and made yourself quite the name, haven’t you?”
I look down at my hands. At the familiar calluses, the healing split on one knuckle. The gloves help, but hours on the bag leave their mark anyway. Bone-deep tension doesn’t sweat out easy.
“Yeah. But I like this girl, Mama.” She watches me, eyes narrowing. “I mean it. She’s different. Smart. Sharp. Scary as hell in heels.”
A flicker of amusement crosses her face. “So naturally, you’re smitten.”
I nod. “She don’t take nothin’ from nobody. She’s all polished edges and fire, and underneath it, I can see how much she’s carryin’.”
“And she won’t give you the time of day?”
“She wants to,” I say quietly. “I can feel it. But she’s been burned. Bad.”
“And now she sees you as another matchstick.”
I swallow hard. “Pretty much.”
She leans back slightly, that hard edge in her gaze softening.
“Then you best show her she’s wrong about you, baby boy. ’Cause if she’s got half the sense God gave a goose, she ain’t fixin’ to sit around waitin’ for you to prove her right.”
Behind her, my father makes a sound. A low, gravelly hum. We both turn. That same smile, eyes fixed somewhere beyond us. Shifting his gaze between us and the TV. Whatever he’s seeing, it isn’t us. Whatever’s happening in his head, he’s keeping it locked away.
My mother rises, brushes her hand over his shoulder, and begins to tuck him in for the night.
So I sit there in the growing darkness with the man who gave me everything—and then watched it all burn. The father I’ve been trying to forgive. The ghost I’ve been trying to outrun. The reason I’ll never be able to come home, no matter how much I want to.
5
NOT HIS TO PROTECT
JESSICA
The fan’s whirring furiously as I drop into the last set of squats, sweat trailing down my spine and fire licking at my thighs. My quads are torched, the HIIT circuit conquered, and I’m running on six hours of sleep with a to-do list that reads like a tragic novella. Standard Tuesday.
