When We Met: A Small Town Single Dad Romance Read online

  Hers?

  “This place isn’t enough.”

  It wasn’t. Born with wandering feet, Tara despised the idea of staying in this dusty North Texas town. It meant being trapped in a life she never wanted. Before she got pregnant, she had dreams of leaving this map dot and never return.

  Me? I never wanted to leave. I grew up baling hay, got my first taste of moonshine at ten, and spent my life working until I couldn’t stand up straight. I drive the same beat-up Ford I bought at sixteen, and all my jeans have holes and dirt that will never come out of them. I built the house I’m living in from the ground up, and my pride gets me into trouble more times than I care to admit. I spend Sundays in a field working and wear my heart on my sleeve under a steel lock. I was raised to say “sir” and “ma’am,” and when I promise something, I keep my word.

  It wasn’t good enough for her.

  Maybe to torture myself, I stare at her Instagram page. She’s a model now. Lives in LA and is technically still married to me. I haven’t signed the divorce papers and won’t until she gives me what I want.

  Sometimes I don’t want her on my mind, but tonight, maybe I’m weak. Her memory hangs on me, like cobwebs on a ceiling. Between promises, and ones broken, she’s not entirely to blame for leaving. Rebellious and restless, I didn’t make the best of decisions back then.

  I click on the latest one she posted yesterday of her and another guy, and the rock on her finger. Pain hits my chest thinking about the day I slipped a ring on that same finger. I was eighteen, about to be a dad, and thought you married the girl you knocked up.

  My gaze moves to the skin of her collarbone, the spot I used to taunt with slow kisses and heated words. From her blonde hair to the blue eyes, she’s the definition of pure beauty. The kind you don’t see often but appreciate. She doesn’t need makeup plastered to her skin, the lip injections she clearly has, or the name-brand clothes. I remember the girl wearing jean shorts and my flannel, clinging to my shoulders in the back of my truck, scared for the life inside her stirring. I’m haunted by the way my name used to sound on her lips, and her kiss filled my mouth.

  I can’t pinpoint when we went from “I can’t get enough” to “I can’t stand you,” but it happened in a blink of an eye.

  With a heavy sigh, I stare at the Hollywood playboy I’ve seen in a couple movies next to the girl I thought was my forever. I shake my head, anger pulses through my veins. “Good luck, man. You’re gonna need it.”

  Setting the phone down, I catch the photograph on the counter of me and the girls riding in the four-wheeler in the back fields last Christmas—their laughter heard even in the stillness now.

  Without a doubt, I got the best part of Tara. These girls.

  And what does she have?

  Hollywood, I suppose. Fancy cars. Money.

  Sure, I struggle with them, and they don’t have the best things money can buy. They have a roof over their heads and a dad who loves them more than anything else in the world. She can keep all those material possessions. I’ll take the “I can’t sleep, Daddy. I need you,” because that’s so much better than anything money can buy.

  Am I bitter now?

  I can’t say I’m not, but I know I have iron in my veins, and there’s not a damn thing I can’t endure. My stare moves to the envelope on the counter, and the papers I’m sending back unsigned, covered in my greasy fingerprints to remind her I’m a hardworking man. And no, this isn’t that movie Sweet Home Alabama. My reasons go far behind being in love with her.

  Fuck her.

  I’m not giving her what she wants until she gives me what I’ve been asking for. Two can play this game, and I’ve never been fair when it comes to losing.

  Story of my life.

  BARRON

  Reaching for the envelope on the counter, I set it by my wallet and keys.

  “What’s that?” Camdyn asks, curiously staring at the envelope.

  I eye her over my shoulder and smile. “None of your business, little girl.” These kids are always in my business. There’s no privacy, and if I’m in the bathroom for more than five minutes, they’re knocking on the door, wanting to know when I’m coming out. Forget alone time. It doesn’t exist in this house.

  Camdyn stares at me, then loses interest when she notices I’m making them breakfast. “I don’t want syrup,” she notes the very second I pull the toasted waffle from the oven. “It’s too sweet.”

  “I likes si-rup,” Sev adds, climbing up on the barstool at the kitchen island. “I have it?”

  Camdyn sighs, rolling her eyes. “Syrup.”

  “I say that!” Sev grumbles, scowling at her big sister, her hands flat on the counter like she’s going to launch herself over it to prove her point. I wouldn’t even be surprised if that happened.

  “No,” Camdyn corrects her, always needing to be right. “You said si-rup. There’s no I in it, dummy.”

  “No!” Sev screams in her face, tears forming as she stands up on the barstool. “I not! I not dummy.”

  Remember when I said they didn’t get along? Truth. Every damn day is like this. They’re eighteen months apart, and it shows on days like today. Sighing, I turn to face them. “Sev, sit down on your butt. Cam, lay off your sister.” I pour syrup on Sev’s waffle and not on Camdyn’s. “She’s three.”

  “Stop calling me that.” Camdyn hates her name shortened to anything but the original. She also follows the directions on everything to a fucking T, and if you miss a number during hide and seek, she will call your ass out every time. “My name is Camdyn.”

  “I named you.” I level her the dad stare and slide a fork her way. “I’ll call you whatever I want.”

  Frowning, she takes her fork and pushes brown curls from her face. “She started it.”

  “No, you did. Now eat, or we’re going to be late for school.” As I watch her angrily cutting her waffle and then giving up to eat it with her hands, I smile at how different these two are. While Sev has blonde curls, blue eyes, and a personality bigger than her tiny body can handle, Camdyn is more reserved yet wild in her own ways. Loves horses, wears cowgirl boots everywhere, hates her hair brushed, and wears as few clothes possible. She once went a whole day without pants before I realized she wasn’t wearing them. We went to the fucking bank like that, and I had no idea.

  Gentle by nature, yet unforgiving, she’s got my brown hair and has beautiful dark, mysterious eyes with long thick eyelashes that curl up toward her eyebrows. She never wants to admit defeat, will argue until she can’t breathe, and you also never know what she’s up to. Always scheming and looking for trouble.

  It’s funny that both of them have equal traits from me and Tara. While I was the wild hell-raiser of the South, always into trouble and cared little for rules, Tara was by the book, yet pushed her own boundaries.

  Look at me talking about her in the past tense, as if she’s dead.

  To me, she might as well be.

  “Daddy?”

  Sev draws my attention to hers. “Yeah?”

  “I go to school too?”

  “No, you’re hanging with me today.”

  It’s hard to believe she’s old enough for this, but Camdyn started preschool this fall because she wasn’t quite old enough to start kindergarten this year. Turned five three days after the cutoff, and believe me when I say I heard for weeks about how unfair this rule was. She only goes half the day, but half the time spent at the shop with me is better than nothing. They need someone other than a bunch of roughed-up mechanics and cowboys as role models.

  Still eating her waffles, Camdyn shakes her head, her eyes focused behind me. “Vader’s on the counter again.”

  I scowl at the cat and hold up the butter knife in my hand. “Get down.”

  He simply looks at me as if to say “try it, motherfucker. I’ll kill you in your sleep.” And I wouldn’t put it past the bastard either. I hate that cat. He’s Sev’s cat, and I wish someday his nine lives would be up.

  Want to hear s
omething real crazy?

  The day we brought Sevyn home from the hospital, Vader showed up and never left. We don’t know where he came from, but there was this little black feisty kitten at our doorstep. It’s weird that she’s so into everything creepy and the fucking cat showed up, isn’t it?

  When I turn around to take the plates off the counter, I notice what Camdyn is wearing. A crop top. That she clearly made herself by cutting the bottom part of her shirt off. “What are you wearing?”

  “A crop top,” she tells me, as if I didn’t know, and goes back to loading her backpack with shit I don’t think she needs at school—like ten hair ties and just as many hats. Maybe she’s going to change every hour, but knowing Camdyn, she’s a pack rat. I say that nicely, but she can’t let go of anything. She’s lost four teeth, and she talked the tooth fairy into giving her them back. They’re in our junk drawer next to her first lock of hair. Twice Sev has tried to steal them to make another, nicer sister by casting a spell.

  I know… my kids are weird. Believe me, I know this.

  Sev eyes her sister, pushing her curls from her face with syrup hands. Sighing, I reach for a wet rag on the counter to wipe her face. “I’m aware that it’s a crop top. I’m asking why my five-year-old daughter is wearing it.”

  Camdyn looks down at her shirt and a good portion of her stomach hanging out. “I like it.”

  “I don’t care if you love it. Little girls cover their bodies.”

  The frown digs deeper. “Why?”

  “Because I said so,” I growl, annoyed she’s questioning my rules. “When you’re eighteen, you can wear what you want. Until then, your shirt covers your belly button.”

  Her face scrunches in annoyance as she turns to stomp to her room. “You have too many rules!”

  I know exactly what boys think of girls wearing crop tops. And though she’s a child, I’m not about to have any grubby little boys befriending my daughter because she’s half-dressed.

  If you haven’t guessed it by now, I’m fucked. I have one kid who’s into witches and one that’s looking like she might grow up to be a whore.

  After breakfast, I get the kids into my truck. Thankfully Camdyn is dressed in a regular shirt and her belly button is covered.

  I drive a late ’90s beat-up Ford 350, and while the heater works, forget air conditioning. Even with heat, it takes a long time to warm up.

  “It’s cold,” Sev notes, shivering in her booster seat as she yanks her gloves on, her voice barely heard over the hum of the diesel engine.

  “It’s always cold.” I rub my hands together, watching her and Camdyn get buckled, and set the envelope with the papers in it on the seat next to me. I smile to myself, anticipating her reaction. I know why she keeps sending them back, hoping I’ve changed my mind about signing them, but I haven’t. She doesn’t get to dictate any of this. After everything she put me through, she’s not calling the shots any longer. I am.

  “My nose is chilly.” Sev rubs it aggressively.

  I look back at her and hand her the blanket she kicked on the floorboards. “Stop doing that. It’s going to fall off.”

  Amarillo in December… cold. Our summers are hot and dry, but those winters, they make you question why you live here. It goes from 106 to -6 in the blink of an eye. The wind never stops blowing the awful smells from the cattle yards, and somewhere between the flat dry land and the city is the Grady Ranch, where my family and I have lived our entire lives. Before that, my grandparents and great-grandparents. This ranch has been in my family for over a hundred years, and why I will never leave it.

  The drive to Camdyn’s preschool isn’t long, but it’s the other direction of the shop I work at, which is literally within walking distance of my house on the ranch. A business handed down from my dad, we repair mostly tractors and heavy equipment there, but we get the occasional ranch vehicle and local customers who don’t want to take their cars into the city. While we live in Amarillo, we’re out in the country away from Route 66 and amusement parks. Can’t see Cadillac Ranch from ours, and if I don’t have to go into the city, I don’t. I hate traffic, other drivers, and would rather ride a four-wheeler than a horse. There, you know a bit about me. A little more than you did last night.

  “I fucking hate people too,” Camdyn says when I yell at the tractor that decides now is a great time to cut us off. We may not have traffic out on these country roads, but we do have tractors and those motherfuckers think they own the road.

  I glance in the rearview mirror. Hell, even Sev stares at her in silence. My girls, they are being raised to say “sir” and “ma’am,” had whiskey on their gums to numb teething, skinned-up knees, and dirt on their cheeks. Their hair is wild, they can throw a line, and clean a fish without help (don’t count on eating it), make a buckshot (not accurately yet), and smile every time I call them “darlin’.”

  They know I cuss. They’ve grown up around cowboys. Fuck, asshole, pussy, cunt, motherfucker, cock sucker, douche, suck my dick… all things they hear daily by the guys in the shop or in the cattle yards. They know if they so much as form the lips to say the word, they’re spending some time in the chair that pinches their butts.

  With my eyes heavy on hers, I turn to look at Camdyn. “What did you say?”

  “Sorry.”

  I hit the brakes again as the tractor slows, a cloud of dust kicking up behind him. “Where did you hear that? Who said they hate people?”

  “You. Yesterday when that guy hit your truck with his cart in the parking lot.”

  Right. I did say that.

  Why is it my girls can’t remember to flush the damn toilet but if I call someone a cock sucker, they remember that shit for months?

  Camdyn stares at Sev as she’s laughing uncontrollably. “Can we watch a movie tonight?”

  “Sure,” I mumble, turning down the road to Camdyn’s preschool. “It’s spaghetti night.”

  “Yummy!” Sev yells with no volume control, and her eyes glued to my phone where she’s watching Hocus Pocus for the third time this week. Which explains the laughing. “I love getti!”

  I eye Camdyn in the mirror, a warning to shut the fuck up and not start a fight with her baby sister. Instead, she sighs and rolls down the window, letting in a blast of cold air into the truck. “Roll that up.”

  “It’s cold!” Sev whines.

  “It’s too hot in here.” As a lover of the cold, Camdyn refuses, dancing her stuffed bear along the edge of the window. I can see from the side mirror it's dangerously close to falling out the window.

  “You drop that out the window, and I’m not going back to get it this time,” I warn.

  Just as I say that, the wind blows it right out of her hand and into the field we’re passing. Our eyes meet. “Get that words out of your head,” she snaps, eyebrows bunched together in pissed-off five-year-old attitude.

  I fight off laughter, knowing it will only spark a wildfire in her. “What words?”

  “I told you so,” she mocks, scrunching her nose.

  I may have said that a time or two.

  Shaking my head, I blow out a breath. “I told you if you hung it out the window again, I wasn’t going back to get it.”

  She scowls at me the rest of the drive to her school and refuses to get out of the truck.

  I drop my eyes to my busted-up knuckles as I grip the wheel, trying not to lose my cool. Turning to face her, I blink slowly, waiting for her to unbuckle.

  Sev kicks the back of my seat. “I’m hungry.”

  Sev is an endless pit when it comes to eating. She’s tiny as all get out but eats constantly. I grab her foot. “Stop kicking the seat.” I look to Camdyn. “You got a problem, little girl?”

  “I do.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “It’s you. I’m not little. I’m five.”

  “You’re still little, girl.” I raise an eyebrow, my jaw working back and forth. Sighing, I adjusted my hat and shake my head. “I told you not to put that damn bear out the window. How is it my f
ault?”

  “You didn’t turn back.” Tears well up in her eyes, and I have to look away. “I won’t be happy until you get it back,” she adds, arms crossed over her chest. This kid, she’s the grudge holder. I think I explained that, but she’s going to be pissed at me all day, no matter what I do.

  “No. I’m not going back.” I motion toward the door, trying to get Sev to stop kicking me in the process. “Sevyn Rae Grady, you better knock that shit off.”

  Her eyes widen. I used her full name, and she knows I mean business. At least she stops kicking me.

  “Now, get out of the truck, Camdyn. You’re late.” I reach for the door handle, a blast of frigid air smacking me in the face the instant it’s open. My eyes water, a chill working through me. Around the front, I make my way over to the side of the truck where Camdyn is on. Yanking it open, she’s there, still pouting.

  I laugh. She’s too cute when she does this. Hell, even Sev is looking at her like she needs to get over it.

  “Stop laughing at me,” Camdyn snaps, finally unbuckling herself and reaching for her coat and backpack. “I’m angry.”

  Twisting the handle on the door, I roll up her window. “I can see that.” I pick her up and help her out of the truck.

  Squirming, she wiggles her way out of my arms and stomps toward her preschool. Standing at the front of the truck, I wave to Edie, her teacher, who meets her at the door. It’s a house, not technically a school, but out in the country, it’s what we have.

  With her coat slung over her shoulder and her backpack dragging behind her, Camdyn doesn’t look back at me, won’t say goodbye, and if she could flip me off, I bet she would.

  “Sissy so mad at you, Daddy,” Sev notes when I start the truck up again.

  Blowing into my hands, I rub them together. “She’s always mad at me.” Camdyn, she’s a lot like Tara. Nothing I do makes her happy. I fear that kid becoming a teenager.