Sunday Morning (Damaged #7.5)(12)

“I don’t know. A decade? A year? A day? Hell, maybe I won’t last an hour.”

Jodi’s gaze softened, revealing her insecurities about this situation. I was the first real guy in her life. I ought to wish she came with more experience and baggage to make us equal. Instead, I liked knowing I was the only man to make her feel this way. She was certainly the only woman to make me feel this f*cking weak.

“So I can still stay here?”

Giving her a nod, I downed the rest of the beer while wishing I’d bought a coffee pot. Most days, I went down to the local diner for coffee and breakfast.

“What about your plan to wait?” she asked, watching me like a hawk. “Won’t waiting be harder if I’m here?”

“No, because I rarely am. Besides, I need to keep you safe,” I said, standing up. “I know enough about your mama to know she has men coming in and out at all times of the day and night. That’s not safe for you. Not with those men thinking you and your mom are a package deal.”

Jodi gave me a little snarl, and I knew she hated those men. She might even hate her mother.

“Put on your shoes. I’ll take you to breakfast.”

Jodi’s pissed expression faded, and she smiled slightly. “Thank you for letting me stay here.”

“You can have the bed,” I offered, opening the door for her.

“No thanks.”

“Don’t play the martyr.”

Jodi followed me down the stairs to the front lobby of the apartment. “You’re too big to sleep on the couch. I can’t imagine how hard it would be for your old man back to hang off that thing.”

I gave her a side glare, but she only smiled wider. “I’ll have to remember you’re an old man, so I don’t jump you.”

Now I was smiling too. “Don’t want to break a hip from you manhandling me.”

Jodi’s eyes lit up in a way that made me think I was done for. She was radiant in a town where nothing else was. I couldn’t imagine sharing this woman with anyone else. No, keeping her was a done deal. Keeping her looked to be more difficult.





8 - Kirk


I wanted to stay away from Jodi. Well, want was the wrong word. I needed to stay away from Jodi and allow her a chance to grow up. Having her stay at my place made avoiding her completely impossible. I still managed to minimize our time together.

If I stayed at the club until after midnight, she was asleep when I arrived home. If I slept long enough, I awoke after she left for school. The weekends were trickier, but I knew I could avoid her if I really tried.

The problem was I didn’t f*cking try. Not really. Once I started imagining Jodi at my apartment, I could think of nothing else. What was she doing right then? Was she reading or watching TV? Was her long, wavy blonde hair up in a ponytail or loose against her freckled shoulders?

When I saw her asleep at night, I had trouble going to bed. Sometimes, I ended up sitting in the living room and watching her for hours. The light from the silent TV flickered on her serene face. I even found myself wondering what she was dreaming.

I’d lost my f*cking mind over a chick too young to vote.

Once I began stalking my damn apartment, I gave up and admitted I wanted to see her. That night, I returned home in time to discover a recently showered Jodi eating mac and cheese in front of the TV. She frowned at me, and I saw a flicker of worry in her eyes.

“Is something wrong?” she asked before I could.

“The club is boring after a certain age.”

“Poor old bastard,” she teased, taking a bite of her food. “There’s some leftovers on the stove if you’re interested.”

This was how our new routine started. Me coming home and eating cold mac and cheese while watching an episode of Jake and the Fatman. We talked only a bit that first night. She said school was boring. I asked why she didn’t quit. She said she had nothing else to do during the day. That was it.

We watched the show, and then she crawled under the blanket on the couch. I waited until she’d gone to sleep before I took a shower and went to bed. Unable to sleep after so many years of staying up until after three, I rested in bed for a long time while imagining Jodi at school.

The next day, I woke up when I heard her in the kitchen. Even though we barely spoke, I ended up driving her to school. Jodi liked the looks on people’s faces when they saw her get off my hog. I preferred the look on her face when she saw me waiting for her after classes.

“Are you claiming me in front of all these high school boys?” she taunted, climbing onto the back of the Harley.

“Do I need to?”

“No. None of them have any interest in me.”

“Fools,” I muttered.

Soon, we got into the habit of not going to the apartment right after I picked her up from school. We’d ride for nearly an hour sometimes, never going anywhere particular.

Often we ended up in Memphis, and I’d wonder about leaving Chesterfield. There was a big f*cking world outside of the shithole we called home. I’d never cared to leave before. With Jodi in my life now, I was thinking bigger.

“What do you want?” I asked Jodi one day after we stopped for dinner at a greasy spoon outside of Memphis.

Somehow, she understood I wasn’t asking about the food. I sensed we spent so much time together without talking that words weren’t really necessary anymore.