Maybe This Time (Maybe #1)(6)
Then why do I feel slightly guilty?
“Where’s Ry?” Dash asks, looking up from his phone, pulling me from my thoughts.
“At the gym, I’m heading there now before work.” Ryan and I own our own bar, Knox Tavern. It’s just a small pub, but it’s ours and we do okay for ourselves. I’d like to think my mother would be proud of us if she were around.
“Alright. I’m gonna stick around and wait for Summer.” He's trying to appear casual, but I see the way his eyes flicker to mine before he looks back down at his phone.
“You know she’s off limits, right?” I can’t stop myself from asking.
“Do you?” he replies.
“Not my type,” I answer without hesitation. Dash mulls my comment over, before nodding in agreement.
“You’re right about that. Summer’s a good girl,” he says, a wistful smile on his face. It pisses me off. Fuck! She’s only been here one night and she’s f*cking with my head already. With my control.
So what if she’s hot? I’ve had a lot of hot. Sweet, not so much, but only because I generally go for women who know what they're getting into with me. They have no misconceptions of love, romance or forever. They use me, and I use them. We both have a good time, no harm, no foul.
Summer seems like the romance kind. The kind of woman who would try to change a man like me.
I’m not changing for a pretty face.
No matter how stunningly beautiful that face is.
Summer Kane isn’t for me.
Summer
“What’s up with your neighbour?” I ask curiously, as we carry the last set of bags from the car. I might have gone a little overboard with the groceries, but I figure I'll end up cooking for all the guys anyway. They seem to be a permanent fixture in the house.
“What do you mean?” Xander asks. I found him in the car park of the supermarket I was at, and he said he wanted to make sure I found it okay. My brother is turning out to be a really sweet guy. How wrong my mother was.
“I dunno. Nothing,” I tell him, looking over the fence. Xander shrugs. The only person still in the house is Dash, who is texting on his phone, a movie running in the background.
“I’m gonna head to the gym. You gonna see Jack today?” Xander asks, his tone nonchalant, but his eyes plead with mine.
“What’s the big deal?” I ask, wondering why everyone’s being so pushy.
“Come on, he hasn’t seen you in two years. He wants to see you, Summer.”
“And a few more days won’t kill him,” I say, before leaving the living area.
My father is a tough subject for me to discuss. I don’t know him at all. Sure I'd seen him over the years, once a year to be accurate. My mother let him visit every year on my birthday and then I wouldn’t see him again until the next. Even when he did visit, the look on my mother’s face made me wish he'd just leave. She'd get angry and moody, but mainly bitter. My mother hated my father, but she loved him, too. I know that, because so much hate had to stem from somewhere. When he cheated on her, he turned her love to hate.
Her adoration to scorn.
My mother loved me, but she also loved to remind me daily what a piece of shit my father was for what he did to her, and what a menace Xander was. I don’t know where my mother got her information from, but she always had news for me about my brother and all the trouble he was getting into. It used to hurt, a lot. I don’t think my mother knew how it affected me, because she was consumed by her hate. But it hurt me every day to have her say cruel things about my own flesh and blood, about the brother I hadn’t even met but already loved. She let her bitterness take over and control her, and then she passed away without loving another man.
Jack Kane was it for her.
Apparently he was it for a lot of other women, too. I sigh heavily and lie down on my bed on my stomach. I need to find a job, and stat. I have a bit of money saved away, plus what's left of my mother’s insurance money, but I can’t rely on that for long. I was saving it for a rainy day. My father had also opened a bank account for me, with all the child support he paid over the years, but I hadn’t touched that. Not one cent.
To be honest I don’t really know how to feel about it. My mother came from a wealthy family and money was never an issue growing up. She used to tell me that the best thing a man can do for his children is love their mother, and he didn’t do that for me. He didn’t love her, at least not enough, and I paid the price.
I turn on my e-reader and continue to read about my book boyfriend of the week, Jake Andrews. If only there were men like Jake Andrews in real life. A knock on the door pulls me from my book. I puff out a breath before calling out, “Yeah?”
The door opens, and in walks the man of the hour. Jack Kane, my father. I sit up on the bed, surprised.
“Hey, Summer,” he says softly, his eyes bright.
“Hey, dad.” I stand up and walk over to give him an extremely awkward one armed hug.
“You are so beautiful, baby girl,” he says, shaking his head in awe.
“Thanks,” I answer shyly. He looks the same. Tall, standing at about 6’1, with light brown hair and dark eyes, my father is one of those men who will always be handsome. He must be about forty five now, but apart from a few laugh lines, he looks younger than his age. He's wearing jeans, and a leather jacket over a black T-shirt. He probably rode his motorcycle here.