Page 37 of Ugly Duckling
She stuck her hand in the water and hummed.
Pulling my towel off, I ignored the way her breath hitched and slipped into the water.
I groaned when the heat hit my sore muscles.
The splash of water had me glancing over to see her white ass—and a very bad tan line to boot—slipping into the water.
“Wow, that’s some tan line.”
She snorted. “Running outside, all day every day, in the Texas heat will do that to you,” she pointed out. “We can’t all have cushy, inside jobs that keeps us in the air conditioner all day.”
I laughed. “That’s definitely not what I do. I spend quite a bit of time outside. In fact, I’d say that it’s about fifty-fifty. Running wires through roof rafters. Installing fencing. Building guard shacks.”
“You do all the work?” she asked as she leaned back in my favorite spot and closed her eyes. “I would’ve thought you’d delegate.”
“I do.” I stretched out in the lounger opposite her and let my own head fall back. “But I’m not going to make my guys do anything that I’m not willing to do myself. Plus, if a guy is out sick, then I usually take over the work he was going to do. It’s easier than trying to shuffle crews around.”
“I coached for a few months at a school that you secured,” she said softly, her hand skimming through the water. “Took over for a track coach that was on maternity leave. Was there for a little over two months, and I have never been more impressed with the security.”
I smiled at that. “I’m glad. That’s what I like to hear. I go to a ton of conferences and meet with as many people as I can to help stay on top of security for schools. I hire all ex-military, too, to make sure that I know what can and will go wrong. My Uncle Parker also helps. My club participates in shooter drills with me with the school. They act like armed bad men and I work with the teachers and staff to make sure that they understand everything that needs to go down during a drill such as that. Then, I work with them over and over until everything is second nature for them. I want to give those kids the absolute best chance.”
“Gunner?”
I looked over at her. “Yeah?”
“Your son’s loss, it’s the worst possible scenario, and I commend you for going out of your way to use your time, knowledge, skill set, and your own finances to make sure that another parent doesn’t have to go through what you went through,” she replied softly.
I rubbed at that familiar ache in my chest, the one that just never quite went away, and said, “The day that I found out that Jett was gone, I called Aleah.”
She looked at me sharply. “What did she say?”
I rubbed harder at that ache. “She said ‘good riddance.’”
Her mouth fell open in shock. “You’re joking.”
“She was tired of paying child support,” I explained. “Every time that she found herself with a job, she quit it because she didn’t like that they’d garnish her wages for child support.”
“I hate her,” Sutton said. “She was the absolute world’s worst person. She was one of my biggest tormentors in high school, and to know that she felt that way about her son dying…I want to ram her face into a concrete wall a couple of times.”
“She was your worst tormentor?” I asked in confusion.
“Yep,” she said. “She was so pretty, and she made sure to always point out how much better looking she was. How she ‘pulled the hottest guy in high school.’ She made fun of me because of my teeth, and I begged my mom to get me braces when I was eleven. I had to have them a second time when I was fourteen because I wouldn’t wait. When I was in ninth grade, she made fun of me for my clothes, and I begged my mom for a new wardrobe. But the bullying never stopped, no matter how much I changed. There was no fixing the real issue.”
She gestured toward her face, and my jaw clenched.
“Sutton, babe. You’ve always been pretty. Aleah was just a fucking bitch. A jealous bitch. If she wasn’t making fun of you for the way you look, she would’ve just been doing it to someone else. You just let her get to you, so she found it fun. She chose you, mostly, because you were everything she wasn’t. Smart, athletic, and nice.”
The confusion on her face was adorable.
“What do you mean?” She shook her head. “I wasn’t a pretty anything.”
“What do you mean, what do I mean?” I asked. “You were gorgeous. You always have been. But you’ve done a lot of growing up over the years since we were in high school. You’re fucking smoking now. Your tits and ass. God, running behind you today was the highlight of my entire month.”
And I wasn’t lying, either.
I loved athletic girls.
All of their muscles and their dedication to their bodies. I found nothing sexier.
