Camdyn stares at Sev’s greasy hair. “You look like Johnny Depp.”
Sev rolls her eyes. “I don’t even know him.” Picking up her fork, she twirls it like Morgan’s doing. “I don’t likes red sauce. I says already I not like it.”
“Just eat it.” I groan and then look at Camdyn as I dish meatballs on my plate. “How do you know who Johnny Depp is?”
Her eyes move to Morgan and then away to her spaghetti. “I don’t know.”
“You let them watch Black Mass, didn’t you?” I snort, watching Morgan choke on the food he just took a bite of.
Camdyn sits up straighter in her chair, her body rigid and straight. “I closed my eyes at the scary parts,” she tells me, as if this should be okay.
“And the naughty parts.” Morgan smiles. He pushes his plate away. “Is it time for hide and seek yet?”
“Yes!” Camdyn jumps down. “I live for this.”
She really does. She’s Morgan’s hide and seek partner, and I’m stuck with the crazy little one. Ten minutes later, I’m hiding behind the couch with Sev. She won’t shut up.
“You’re the worst hide and seek partner.”
“I’m three,” she points out. And then grins. “I tooted.”
Covering my nose almost immediately, I scoot away from her. “What did you eat?”
She gets right in my face, squeezes my cheeks, and scrunches up her nose. “Nut sacs.”
“I found you!” Camdyn yells, popping her head over the side of the couch. Immediately, she smells the tainted air. “Gross, Sev!”
Let’s be real here. Sev stinks up this house more than anyone. And to think, these meatballs are my family.
“Did you tell her?”
I know earlier I said I don’t want to be involved in his drama, but this is Morgan we’re talking about, and when Tara left me, he was there every day, helping me take care of my girls. I rely heavily on him, my dad, and Lara Lynn. Without them, there’s no way I would have made it this far two kids, and a full-time job.
“I was going to.” Morgan lifts the beer bottle to his lips, his eyes on the snow mercilessly falling outside. “But her suitcase by the door said enough.”
As I sit there with my brother, drinking beer by the fire, I’m beginning to wonder if the Grady boys are cursed when it comes to women. I stare at the snow as Morgan seems to chew on the words he wants to say. Leaning forward, he rests his elbows on his knees. Twisting his head, he glances over at me. “I love her. I don’t want her to leave, but what am I going to say? It’s the same argument every day.”
I raise an eyebrow, the firelight on his face adding to the haunting thoughts he’s having. “Because you work too much?”
“That.” He sighs, his shoulders rolled forward. “I don’t spend enough time with her. She hates being out here alone… I can’t give her kids.”
“She knew that going into it though, didn’t she?”
“She did, but it doesn’t stop her from wanting them.”
I know Morgan worried about Carly eventually wanting a baby. A baby he couldn’t give. “True. You can have one of mine,” I tease, peeling the label on my beer.
“I vote Sev,” Camdyn says, sitting down beside us.
I jump at the sound of her voice. “Where did you come from? Are you secretly training to become a Navy SEAL?”
Morgan smiles, standing up to retrieve a new beer. The second he’s up, Camdyn steals his seat. “What’s a Navy SEAL?”
“Someone who sneaks around in the dark.” I know that’s not what they are, but I also don’t want to explain anything to a five-year-old at two in the morning.
“Can I watch a movie?”
“No. It’s the middle of the night.”
“Then why are you awake?”
I lift the beer in my hand, winking at her. “I’m drinking beer.”
With determination, she tries again, hoping for a different answer. “Can I watch a movie?”
“Nope. You already watched one.”
“Why?”
“This is my time. Alone.”
She stares at me as if the concept of me wanting alone time is a foreign word to her. It is. She spends every single day with me. They have no concept of me wanting adult time. “You’re not alone. Uncle Morgan’s here.”
“And you need to go back to bed.”
She groans, flopping herself onto the floor. “Fine.” Before she runs into her room, she says something that hits me so hard. Like a bullet to the chest. “Tanner told me my mommy didn’t want me.”
I’m going to kill this Tanner boy.
And then an even harder question comes before I can answer her. “Is she ever coming back?”
For a while, I thought maybe she might, but then I realized that Amarillo and this life didn’t have anything to offer Tara. “No, probably not.” Camdyn knows more than Sev does about their mother. She knows she left, but has never seen a picture of her, and I’m not even sure she remembers her.
Morgan returns to the couch and hands me a beer, remaining quiet.
Camdyn draws in a heavy breath, too much worry on her face as she eyes the snow and then me. “Do daddies leave too?”
I lean forward and grab her into my arms and hold her close to my chest. “Not this one.”
There’s a flash of a memory. The one where Tara was holding Sev moments after her birth and crying for reasons I couldn’t understand. Maybe us Grady boys are cursed.
Women always seem to leave us.
Even navigation is drawing a blank.
KACY
When I was five years old, I used to climb up to the top of our roof from my bedroom window and then jump into our pool. I had absolutely no fear. I didn’t have a concept of it back then. I still don’t because hello, road trip on my own. So many things could go wrong, but I cared about none of it when I left.
I also remember thinking my dad was ten feet tall and could do nothing wrong. I believed, wholeheartedly, that he hung the moon and stars. His gentle hands, the soft whisper of an “I love you,” and he’d sing to me just before I fell asleep. He meant the world to me. Still does, despite his faults.
Dads are supposed to protect you from harm, and while he did, he was too caught up in his life to notice his wife was sleeping with my boyfriend.
You want to know what else he was too busy to do?
Teach me to drive in snow. And read a map because guess who doesn’t have service?
Me.
And guess what it’s doing somewhere outside Amarillo?
Snowing. I’m not even talking about a few flakes in the sky. This is a full-blown whiteout. I’ve been shaken up and put inside a real-life snow globe. All I see are flakes flying around in all different directions, like sugar being thrown at my windshield. And to top it off, the wind is insane and rocking my car from side to side, making staying on the road nearly impossible.
The damn map makes absolutely no sense to me. There’s lines and highways, but the road I’m on, it’s not on the goddamn thing.
“Well, I don’t know if I ever thought this through. I’m a little bit insane, and I think I’m going crazy. And I don’t know if I’ve been this lost!” I sing, and yes, I’m rewording “Push” to fit my current situation. I’m that scared. Have you ever been lost on a ranch road in the middle of nowhere? Well, then you don’t get to judge me.