“Can I have a burger and fries? And a chocolate milkshake? Or a root beer float?” she asked with a hopeful smile.
“You can have whatever you want,” he said, leaning down and brushing his lips against hers, glad that she was finally settling down.
“Write down how she likes her burger and I can go get-” his father began to say, sounding eager for a reason to get the hell out of there.
“I’m getting her burger,” he snapped, turning around to face down his father.
“I’m getting it,” his father snapped back, pushing away from the door.
“You’re the one that gave her the medicine,” he pointed out, keeping his gaze locked on his father as he reached out and grabbed his wallet. “You should stay and monitor her.”
“You’re the one that gave her rug burn!”
“He really did,” Jodi said with a dreamy little sigh and smile that he forced himself to ignore and headed for the door.
“I’ll be back in twenty minutes,” he said to his father. “Please just watch her.”
He thought that his father was going to argue, but much to his surprise, his father stepped away from the door with a nod. Thankful for a break, even a small one, he left the room and headed towards the elevator, praying the entire time that Tinkerbelle would be sound asleep by the time he returned so that he could pretend for at least one night that his father didn’t know that he’d skipped getting matching Mickey ears so that he could fuck his girlfriend raw.
Chapter 34
“So……,” he said, facing the small woman watching him curiously and having absolutely no idea what to say to the woman that his son was obviously head over heels in love with.
She blinked adorably up at him.
Just blinked.
“Have you ever been to Disneyworld before?” he asked, just to break the increasingly awkward silence.
Nothing.
“We brought Danny here when he was two, but shortly after that the ban started,” he said, expecting a comment or question about the ban, but instead she simply stood there, blinking and starting to freak him out a little bit.
“When they finally lifted the ban a few months ago Mary decided that it was time to bring the kids down here. We-”
“Why do you hate Danny so much?” she suddenly asked, startling the hell out of him.
“I don’t hate him,” he said, blinking down at the small woman.
“You don’t talk to him,” she said, blinking up at him curiously.
He rubbed his hands roughly down his face as he admitted, “I don’t know what to say to him.”
“You don’t look at him.”
He sighed heavily, suddenly wishing that he hadn’t put Aidan in a headlock and threatened to beat him within an inch of his life if he didn’t tell him where Danny was staying.
“I look at him,” he said, wondering when the medicine was going to kick in and knock this small woman out and put him out of his misery.
“No, you don’t,” she simply said, not sounding mad, but curious. “Why?”
He chuckled without humor as he double-checked to make sure the door was locked and then walked past the small woman, pausing only long enough to pat her on the head simply because he couldn’t help himself, and sat on the couch. “He doesn’t want anything to do with me.”
“Why?”
He rubbed his hands down his face and leaned back against the couch as he studied her. “Will you remember any of this in the morning?” he asked, watching as the small woman walked over to the bed, sat down and winced.
“Remember what in the morning?” she asked, looking adorably confused.
Chuckling, he asked, “Has Danny ever told you how he ended up a Marine?”
She shook her head, cringed, and flopped down onto her side with a little sigh.
“Danny was a cocky kid, but a good kid. I never had to ask him to help his mother or look after his brothers and sister. He always got good grades. Didn’t do drugs. Never caused any real problems, and then…….,” he looked off, shaking his head, still unable to believe how badly he’d screwed everything up.
“Then the first time he’d fucked up, seriously fucked up, I lost it. He’d scared the hell out of me and I reacted poorly. I was so determined to make sure that he never did anything so stupid ever again that I made everything worse. I dragged the poor kid out of the ER and made him take his SATs when he should have been taking it easy and getting an earful from his mother. Instead, I pushed him and when he fucked up his SATs I kept pushing him. I was so goddamn angry that he’d done something so foolish that could have cost him his life, cost me my son,” he ground out, flexing his fists and wishing like hell that he could go back to that morning when he’d found his son barely breathing on the bathroom floor and do things differently.
“When he joined the Marines……,” he paused, taking a deep breath as he locked his trembling hands together, “I was terrified for him and that didn’t stop until he was brought home three years ago when they shipped his body back to the States. Then my terror turned into something that there are no words to describe.”
He looked up to find her worrying her bottom lip as she watched him. “Did you know that they’d shipped him home to die?”
She shook her head against the mattress.
“He got shot saving his unit, and a medic unit along with a truck full of patients. He should have died in the shitty hospital they’d sent him to, but his CO called in some favors and once he was stable enough to travel they sent him home…to an even shittier hospital.”