Brazen and Breathless (Untouchable Book 6) Page 21

  “Agreed.” Bubba rolled his head from side to side. “I told her what I needed. What interested me. What…what I wanted to explore with her. I never wanted this with anyone else. Never trusted them with this part of me.”

  I could see that. “I trust Frankie with everything.”

  “So do I,” he said. “And I think somewhere in the middle of that clusterfuck, when I was listening to Dad and worried about what I wanted to ask from her and seeing all the turmoil she was in because of her mother…I forgot that I trusted her with me and I needed to trust her with her.”

  I snorted. “That last part is harder than it sounds.” It shouldn’t be hard at all.

  “Agreed.”

  We inched forward as one car after another placed their order.

  “But one of the things I’ve learned and then nearly fucked up was communication is everything. I need to take care of her. That’s not just something that I want to do, it’s like a physical drive in me. I don’t want to be in charge all the time, but when it’s just us and we’re alone? Yes, I want her to give me that power to be in charge of what makes her feel good. I want to take all those worries and stresses and the crap that life pours on her, and I want to be the wall between that and her for as long as she’ll let me.”

  When he put it that way, it was hard to disagree. Hell, I wanted the same thing. But did I need it the same way?

  “One of the first things I learned when I went to a class…”

  “Hold the fucking phone.” I twisted to look at him. “There’re classes?”

  Bubba smirked at me. “Yes, and I’ll give you the information and even take you to one if you shut up and let me finish. This is hard as shit to tell you without the interruptions.”

  “Done.”

  He laughed at me and then scrubbed a hand over his face. “Fuck me,” he muttered. “Probably easier if I just start at the beginning, but some of that is none of your business.”

  “Accepted.” Because yeah, I wasn’t sure I needed to know the whole history of it. “That said, Bubba. I’m not going to judge. I know I sounded like I was…”

  “You didn’t,” he assured me. “You sounded like you wanted to protect her, and we all do. We all agreed to talk to each other when this shit bothered us before we dragged her into it.” To avoid dragging her into it went unsaid.

  He blew out a breath and paused ’cause it was our turn to order. After I pulled forward again and closed the window, I glanced at him. His gaze was out the window and not on me at all.

  “Bubba…don’t tear yourself up. Tell me. Don’t tell me. I just wanted to make sure you two were fine.”

  He smiled faintly. “You’d think this would be easier, but it’s pretty personal. Communication, though, is the key. I can’t demand she let me protect her and take charge, she has to let me do it and I have to earn the right. It’s easy to try and put my stamp on everything, but at the same time, there’s so much I don’t know that I want to learn because I want to be the best for her, and the fact that she wants to learn and is discovering stuff about herself?”

  When he glanced at me, there was a look of wonder on his face, and that decided me more than anything.

  Whatever they were learning, I wanted to know, too.

  Even if I had to do my own research.

  “Coop, she’s the best.”

  Yeah.

  I grinned.

  She was.

  “And on that touchy-feely note,” I teased. “Tell me about these classes and where I sign up. Might be easier if I do some homework and keep you from opening a vein with me.”

  His laughter eased some of the tension in the car and the raw emotion on his face.

  “And definitely clue Jake in before he walks in on you tying her up, ’cause while I think he’d be fine if he understood it…”

  “His first reaction would not be as easygoing as yours.”

  And we really didn’t need to add anything more to that topic.

  School fucking dragged, though Frankie checked in a couple of times. She sounded alternately bored as fuck and intrigued. I wasn’t sure what I wanted for her more. Though, it also sounded like she didn’t have to deal with Mr. Standish, and I was all for that.

  Archie almost looked sane at lunch. We’d gone off campus and gotten Thai. Frankie wasn’t a fan of a lot of different Thai options. More because she’d eaten Jake’s five once instead of her one, and the fact that it set her mouth on fire and turned her beat red and left her sweating had been a kind of trauma.

  The funny kind, but trauma nonetheless.

  “They aren’t keen on letting me skip two afternoons a week for the next five to ten weeks,” Archie admitted with a scowl. “Grandpa is gonna work on an angle that gets me educational credits.”

  “Or you could, I don’t know,” Jake mused aloud, “trust Frankie to tell us or call us if she needs us there.”

  The glare Archie shot him was just asking for Jake to punch him, so I just said, “Or we can keep taking her temperature. She wasn’t worried about going today, was she?”

  “No, she actually seemed pretty at ease. She’s more worried about that fucking meeting with her mother tomorrow.”

  I rubbed a hand over my face at that one. ’Cause yeah… “Then maybe ease back a little, Arch.” I raised my hands when he glared at me and kicked Jake when he started to open his mouth. The first quieted Archie, the second pulled Jake’s attention to me and not jumping Archie’s shit. “You know your father better than any of us. No one disputes that.”

  “Agreed,” Bubba threw into the fire, but he wasn’t attacking the topic so much as listening. I had a feeling he leaned more in Archie’s favor than against. So did Jake, but Jake was also actively trying to dial back his own overprotectiveness.

  We didn’t always succeed, but we had to try.

  “But Frankie has already made her feelings clear,” I continued. “This internship is important to her. Succeeding on her own merits is important to her. And us having her back is important, and sometimes—as shitty as it feels—having her back means letting her do it her way. If I had my way, she wouldn’t be anywhere near him, and I know you feel the same way. The thing is…you keep pushing her, and she’s either going to fold to protect you at the cost of her own ideas or she’s going to lose faith in herself, which is a thousand percent worth.”

  “Oh fuck you,” Archie grumbled. “Why do you have to have a fucking point?”

  “Because he’s an asshole,” Jake offered up with a wry smile. At least I wasn’t getting punched for kicking him now that he’d heard why I wanted him to wait. “But he’s our asshole. And he’s right.”

  “It’s really annoying,” Bubba supplied helpfully.

  “Thanks guys, I’m feeling the love.”

  Archie was still grumpy, but his shitty mood lifted some. Especially when Frankie sent us pictures of her lunch which included the biggest damn cupcake we’d ever seen and the message, Sprinkles makes everything better.

  I dropped Bubba at the music studio for the lessons he had to teach, and I’d swing by and get him later or Frankie would on her way back after the internship. Unlike the week before, she didn’t get done early. Jake and Archie were off to work on their project. Secretive bastards.

  Parking at the apartments, I planned to go up and feed the cats and maybe do a little housekeeping. We were getting messier, and that mess had begun extending past the bedroom and the kitchen. Not that I hadn’t noticed Jeremy had come by and picked up all the dirty clothes. I was pretty sure Archie hadn’t clued Frankie in on that, but since I hadn’t pressed a shirt since choir in the fifth grade and Frankie would rather pull off her own fingernails than iron, it had to be the magical butler.

  All my plans slid to the side, however, as I saw Dad waiting in the lot leaning against his car as I pulled in. Crap.

  The last person I wanted to talk to today. Son of a bitch.

  Sucking it up, I pasted on a pleasant expression and climbed out, backpack in hand.
“Dad.”

  “Coop,” he said, a smile on his face that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I was waiting on you.”

  Fuck a duck, really?

  “Yeah?” I swung the backpack up onto my shoulder and locked the car. “What’s up?”

  “Think we can go in and talk?” It was freezing out here. I blew out a breath.

  “Yeah, come on up to Frankie’s with me,” I told him. “Mom might be home, and I don’t want to bug her.”

  Dad hesitated, and I glanced back at him.

  “No one’s home right now and I gotta feed the cats.”

  He frowned, but then followed me. He didn’t comment when I used a key to let us in, and I could tell immediately Jeremy had been there. Arch was gonna get so busted if Frankie figured out Jeremy was still coming by to clean up after all of us, and man, I was there for that particular conversation.

  It would be worth some popcorn.

  I dropped the backpack on the table and toed off my shoes since I didn’t want to track dirt anywhere.

  “Have a seat,” I told him. The kitchen was far enough. “Let me feed the cats, and you can dive into whatever you needed.”

  Tiddles trotted right out to see me, but the other pair made themselves scarce. They probably wouldn’t come out while Dad was here, so I only put down part of a can for Tiddles so that I could save the rest for the girls. When I turned back, Dad hadn’t taken a seat.

  If anything, he looked more uncomfortable and his gaze focused on the fridge. There were pics of the five of us on there. Some old, and a couple of new ones from the trip to Colorado. “You good?”

  Dad snapped his gaze to me and shifted “I’m fine, just…not all that comfortable being in Maddy’s place.”

  “Well, Ms. Curtis doesn’t live here anymore, so you’re safe.” I opened the fridge and pulled out a soda. When I offered him one, he shook his head and his frown deepened.

  “What do you mean she doesn’t live here anymore?”

  “I mean, she moved out.”

  “And Frankie’s living here by herself?”

  “Not that it’s any of your business, Dad, but yeah, and she’s fine.”

  He shifted his stance again and shot a glance past me to the other room.

  “You want to tell me why you wanted to talk to me? Or maybe what’s got you so…”

  I stopped, drink halfway to my lips.

  “You’re fucking kidding me right now, aren’t you?”

  Dad locked his gaze on me. “Don’t say it like that. You said you knew—”

  “That you fucked around on Mom. Do not tell me you fucked around on Mom with Maddy fucking Curtis the cunta-fucking-saurus?”

  Pretty sure that was the moment my brain exploded.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Hold Your Hand

  On the drive home, I listened to Torched the whole way. I needed the upbeat music. I kind of needed the emotionally dark pieces, too. I didn’t want to examine that part too closely. Not yet.

  While the day at Standish hadn’t been quite as grueling as orientation day, it had been packed with challenges. Bryan and I were assigned to the marketing team for the day, which meant meeting after meeting, a review of the company public relations, and the upcoming campaigns on two major projects I’d never heard of.

  One was the rebranding of an airline that Standish now apparently owned. The diversity of the company portfolio was dizzying. Apparently, they enjoyed absorbing other companies and then folding them into the umbrella of the corporation itself. Those new companies became whole divisions with their business practices streamlined.

  Translation, whole departments could be eliminated if Standish already had something that could cover those areas. Which meant while the company grew and added labor and specialized divisions, those unfortunate companies they took over as often as not, also had to lay off their workers.

  It was a kind of gut punch.

  Not that they covered what they did for all those people they let go in their efforts to streamline. Pretty words for an ugly practice. Bryan hadn’t seemed discomfited by the knowledge, which didn’t really endear him in my book. All I could think about were the people who had to feed themselves and their families. Maybe the folks here hadn’t ever gone to bed hungry or worried about how they were going to pay the bills.

  I might be seventeen, but I had more than a passing familiarity with that. Good business practices didn’t always make for good human ones.

  The second project was a lot more interesting to me, personally, and I found myself wanting to focus on it. It involved grants for students in specialized fields, whether it was arts or engineering. Standish actually sought out students in need on all levels and offered grants to get them into everything from better private and prep schools to colleges.

  It sounded amazing. The kind of program Ian could use. Or Jake for that matter.

  Still, when the marketing and public relations executive we were shadowing described it as marketing gold because it gave them good community standing and helped repair their reputations, it left a sour taste in my mouth. Was doing something for a selfish reason that ultimately helped other people, even as it helped you, a good or a bad thing?

  This was the landscape where morals and ethics collided. Bryan teased me about overthinking it when I brought it up so I left it alone. I might ask Coop about it later. I bet he’d understand why it bugged me, even if I couldn’t fully verbalize it yet.

  Twice, I went to text him about it, and twice, I made myself sit on it. Better to wait until when I could talk to him face to face. Who knew? Maybe I’d be less twitchy about it by the time we were all home. It wasn’t like I could do anything about it, even if it did make me a little crazy.

  Unlike our first day, we were there kind of late. It was well after five when our guide cut us loose, and I was finishing up my notes to send to our program advisor. They liked to get a daily report, not required—their words, not mine—but they also felt it could help us organize our thoughts and let them know what aspects of the program were working for us.

  I liked crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s.

  The guys were all tied up at the moment anyway, so it didn’t matter if I took an extra thirty minutes to get this done. Bryan offered to walk out to my car with me, but I told him I’d be fine. There was security in both the lot and the building. He left with a smile and a demand we check out one of the restaurants down the street on Friday. I shrugged, because we had to eat and I had gotten the best cupcake earlier that day.

  Honestly, the best part of my day.

  Once the report was finished, I packed up my stuff and sent a message to the group chat that I was getting ready to leave and head home. Then I asked about dinner. I could swing by and pick something up if anyone was at my place. I’d check their responses when I got to the car.

  A stream of people was leaving, so it wasn’t like I was alone on my way to the parking garage. In fact, I was almost to the level I’d parked my car on before the last person peeled away, but the sound of footsteps echoed behind me, and when I glanced around, my keys were tucked between my knuckles like I was Wolverine and ready to cut someone.

  It was an old trick and one I hadn’t felt the need to use in a while, but it was already dark out, save for the lights in the garage itself, and they just cast deeper pools of shadow. The last person I’d expected to see stood there, and he slid his hands into the pockets of his slacks.

  “I was just making sure you got to your car all right,” Mr. Standish told me, and I let out a breath. Save for that brief moment on my first day, I hadn’t seen him at all. My proximity to him on this internship was making Archie crazy, and I’d assured him I hadn’t seen his father at all just two hours earlier on a break.

  Great, now I would have to tell him about this. “My car is right there,” I said and turned away, intent on getting to it.

  “Frankie…”

  I hit the unlock on the key fob, aware he was following me now, and t
hat was already enough to make me uneasy.

  “Look,” he said and then let out a sigh. “I’m sorry.”

  Wait.

  What?

  I pivoted, one hand on the door, and glanced at him. He was a few feet away, but not closing the distance. Fuck, he looked so much like Archie, it was unnerving. But where there was always a warmth and a playfulness in Archie’s eyes, Edward’s were a lot colder, even if his disgruntled expression betrayed an unease.

  What the hell did he have to be uneasy about? The fact he was having an affair with Maddy? That ship had sailed a long time ago, right?

  “What?” Yeah, I could probably have formed that question with a lot more intelligence. But I really didn’t have more to add.

  “I’m sorry,” he began again, the awkwardness there uncomfortable as hell to witness. “I know this hasn’t been easy for you on any level, and I’m partially to blame for that.”

  Where was he going with this? “The internship is fine.” Was I playing dumb? Yes, I was. “Maybe unexpected. But fine.” Then, because he still stared at me, I added, “I’m learning a lot, which is the point of the program, right?”

  “Good,” he said with an exhale, and it was awkward as fuck to see the same unease I experienced on the face of a grown man. He pulled a hand from his pocket and ran it through his hair. “I gave specific instructions that you were to be treated well.”

  Well, that just drained what fun there had been in it out.

  “But it wasn’t the internship that I was apologizing for.” He seemed more collected and took another step toward me. “Your mother…”

  “I don’t want to discuss her with you.” Not even a little bit.

  “I understand.”

  He couldn’t possibly, but whatever.