Muffin Top (Page 39)

“No matter what your dad says,” he started, not sure where those words were going, but the need to keep her here like this under the stars where it seemed like the rest of the world was just a dream was too strong. “I’m not afraid of real risk.”

She looked at him, the ends of her dark hair tickling his chest. “You talked to my dad about your ‘thing’?”

“You mean my stupid idea to stop having sex?” Because holding her like this right now, he was convinced he’d never had a worse idea than to put an obstacle between them.

“When did it become a dumb idea?” she asked.

“The minute you got in my car.” Yeah, that was about the reality of it.

She kissed the spot on his chest where he could feel his heart beating and then rested her cheek against that same spot. “What did you talk about?”

“Well, he talked. I just kept telling him I wasn’t going to talk.”

“And that shut him up, did it?” She chuckled against his bare chest, the puffs of hilarity tickling his skin.

“No. He’s kind of like you that way.” Okay, he was a lot like her that way. “He said I was afraid of real risk, of emotional risk.”

“But you’re not?”

“No.” He wasn’t an idiot. There were things in his life that scared the shit out of him—most humiliating among them was his bone-deep fear of clowns and talking squirrels. “I just don’t want to do to someone I love what my dad did to my mom.”

The breath left his chest. He’d never said those words out loud. To anyone. It was the dark secret he’d carried for so long, he didn’t realize how heavy it had become until he offered it to Lucy. He felt a little dizzy with the lightness invading his body, but maybe that’s just because he’d forgotten to breathe. He took a deep breath and focused on the woman in his arms.

Lucy, always a woman in motion even when she was sitting, went still. “What are you talking about? They are the happiest couple I know.”

From the outside, that’s exactly what they looked like. Frank and Kate, married for decades with a raucous, close-knit family who didn’t know the truth. Didn’t understand what kind of man they sat down with every weekend for family lunch. But he did, and the one thing that scared him more than clowns or talking squirrels or talking squirrel clowns was the chance that he could turn out like the man he was named after.

“That’s what I thought, too,” he said, keeping his face turned up toward the stars, but he wasn’t seeing them anymore. “In high school, I went down to the firehouse and caught my dad kissing one of the secretaries from headquarters.”

They’d been pressed together. His dad had his back to the wall and the other woman, Becky he’d thought her name was, had been glued to his dad from toes to lips, clinging to his old man like he was the oxygen she’d needed to breathe. Just the mental image of it all these years later hit him like a gut punch by Godzilla that left him gasping for breath again.

“What did you do?” Lucy asked, her voice soft, comforting.

He’d raged. He’d cursed. He’d wanted to take his dad’s head off. But he didn’t. Once the red cleared, he thought of his mom, his brothers, his sisters. What would they do if his dad left? It would break their hearts. And if there was one thing he’d never let happen, it was to let them hurt. He’d distracted Finian with a bullshit mission to get something from the corner store before his brother caught sight of Dad sucking face with Becky. Then, he’d confronted his old man.

“I told him that if it stopped, I’d never tell.” Oh, his dad had told him some bullshit line that it wasn’t what it looked like, but Frankie was old enough by then to know what he had seen.

“And did he?” Lucy asked.

“Yes.” He’d watched his dad like a hawk after that, always mindful, never letting the others know what was going on, never letting on that there was a problem.

The silence stretched between them as the old nightmare ghosts flooded up to the surface, along with the guilt of keeping such a secret from his family. Part of him had wanted—still wanted—to tell them everything, unburden himself, but he couldn’t. It was bad enough that his dad thought so little of his family that he could do something like that. There was no way he could do the same. So if that meant he shielded them from the ugly and ate the bile that rose each time he saw his mom look at his dad as if the sun rose and set on his smile? He’d take it. If it meant they got to live the lives they wanted, he’d take it.

“Are you sure it was a thing, or could it have been a weird moment?”

How many times had he asked himself the same, especially when there was never even a hint of a repeat or shady behavior on his dad’s part? “Even back then I knew the difference between a kiss and an I-want-to-fuck-you-against-a-wall make-out session.”

“Wow,” she said, sounding anything but impressed. “I never would have thought it.”

“Neither has anyone in my family.” He wrapped his arms tighter around her and pulled her close so the top of her head fit under his chin. “You’re the only one I’ve ever told.”

“So why didn’t you tell the others?”

“I didn’t want to see my mom hurt.” The news that Frank Hartigan Sr. had kissed another woman would be a shiv to his mom’s heart.

Lucy kissed his chest, right above where his heart beat against his ribs. “A protector to the core, aren’t you?”

“I’m loyal. I know right from wrong.” He paused, listening to the frogs or crickets or whatever other woodland animal his city ass couldn’t define sing their song. “And I promised myself on that day that I’d never do to someone what my dad had done to my mom.”

“You don’t want to be alone, but you don’t want to hurt anyone, either. Ever think of just trusting yourself rather than have a no-girlfriend rule?”

Yeah, he hadn’t really thought of it before, but that made sense. “I wouldn’t call it a rule, just more of a guideline until I met someone who really would be the beginning and end for me.”

Someone who made him laugh all the time and drove him nuts some of the time. Someone who challenged him and didn’t fall for his bullshit. Someone who got him to share his secrets while sitting naked on a floating dock because spilling his guts was the only thing he could think of to steal just another couple of minutes like this with her. Someone he actually liked.

“Frankie Hartigan, you really are the last of the romantics,” she said, her words carrying just enough bitterness to soak through the sweetness.

“You don’t believe in a one and only?”

She let out a huff of disbelief against his chest. “Growing up like I did, the child of divorce with a mother who came back and, shall we say, found solace with my father whenever her new husband had another mistress? True love doesn’t seem realistic.”

Ouch. That would definitely sting, but still… “That’s pretty damn cynical.”

“Okay, truth?”

“Yeah.” Why should he be the only one with his ass literally and metaphorically hanging out?

She tugged at the blanket’s corner, pulling it up and wrapping it around her, not as if she was cold, but as if she was trying to hide. She pushed away from him, stood up, and began pacing across the blanket spread out on the floating dock as if the words needed motion to get out. “I want that happily ever after someday, but I’m skeptical,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.