Lead Me Home (Fight for Me #3)(34)

Kale’s brows shot to the sky. “And you think Nikki is going to go for that?”

“Hell, no,” I said. “I’ll just have to convince her.”

Kale grinned. “Really?”

“Yup.”

Rex laughed low, rubbing a hand on his chin. “That sounds like . . .”

Torture?

Torment?

I’d be ruined by then. Didn’t matter.

“Fun,” Rex finished with a smirk.

I wanted to smack the smirk off his face. “Fun?”

“What?” He was all wide-eyed innocence. “Nikki is all kinds of fun.”

Asshole.

I punched at him.

Laughing, he jumped back, blocking himself. “Hey, don’t get mad at me because she’s . . . fun.”

Kale chuckled. “Oh yeah, I bet she’s all kinds of fun. Now you get to have fun with Nikki for a whole year.”

“She’s a pain in my ass, is what she is.”

“Right . . .” Rex drew out. “You just keep telling yourself that. But if you do, make sure you don’t break her heart while you do it.”

Suddenly agitated, I scraped a hand through my beard. “Not gonna break her heart.”

Not again.

Rex sobered. “That girl’s been in love with you for as long as I can remember. Followed you around like a puppy all through school. You’ve got to be careful with that, man.”

Wondered if he really had no clue that it’d been more than Nikki following me around. That it’d grown into something it shouldn’t have before it became responsible for the single greatest regret of my life.

How even after I’d shut it down, cut her loose, it’d still festered and grown until it’d consumed me, and I’d found myself a pathetic beggar at her door.

Unable to stop myself from going to her.

Needing her.

Knowing I was just going to hurt her all over in the end.

“Just . . . get that building done. I’ll take care of Nikki until it’s finished. Barely see her, anyway, since we have opposite schedules.”

“All right, then. It’s a plan.”

I nodded.

It was a plan.

A plan that left me completely screwed and somehow satisfied.

Needing a distraction, I pulled away from the guys and shifted to holler toward the kids, “Who wants to get ice cream with Uncle Ollie?”

Frankie Leigh tapped Evan’s shoulder, the little girl signing to her best friend.

In a second flat, both of them were beelining toward me. “Me! Me! Me!” Frankie shouted as she and Evan raced my direction. “I want to ride with you, too!”

Rex laughed under his breath and scratched at the scruff on his chin. “Apparently, I’m going to need to have a talk with Frankie Leigh about ditching her little brother. Literally left my little man in the dust.”

I chuckled under my breath. “Don’t give her too hard of a time. She knows you never take your eye off him.”

Frankie grabbed me by a hand, and Evan slipped his hand into the other, both of them grinning up at me like I was maybe the coolest person in the world.

I gulped down any unease and tightened my hold on their hands, leading them over to my truck parked on the curb.

I unlocked the passenger door and both of them clambered onto the seat, Evan first considering the truck was so his thing. He was running his palms over the leather dash, the steering wheel, checking out every detail.

I shut the door behind them and rounded the front, climbed inside, turning my face toward him so he could see. “Still your favorite, buddy?”

He gave me a thumbs-up and a smile that was nothing but bright shiny teeth. I ruffled a hand through his hair. “You have good taste, that I can tell you.”

He nodded like crazy as he buckled in before he was grabbing Frankie’s hand and weaving his fingers through hers.

I chuckled under my breath.

Oh, so that was how it was.

Little player.

He didn’t even blush when he realized I’d caught him, my eyebrows lifting in question. He just gave me a look that told me she was his to watch over.

She missed the whole exchange, too busy vigorously rolling down the window.

“Start her up, Uncle Ollie,” she shouted, and I did, the two of them laughing as I quickly flipped a U and headed in the direction of the ice cream parlor that wasn’t even up the road a block.

Kale and Rex would walk, but I’d promised Evan a ride, and he was gonna get his ride.

I glanced over at the two of them sitting on the bench seat, so fucking cute, so sweet, so perfect.

Frankie Leigh’s hair blown by the whipping wind, her little hand out the window, gliding up and down like she was riding a wave.

Evan’s attention was wrapped up in the truck, the dials and gauges and the gear stick I shifted that climbed from the floor and basically stuck up right between his knobby knees.

Their hands?

Still linked together.

I needed to downshift to pull to the curb in front of the parlor, so I grabbed his free hand and wrapped it around the knob, guiding him through the motion.

He made this thrilled, scuffing sound that twisted my spirit like it’d been wrung up by a tornado. Seemed it was the simplest of things that made this kid insanely happy, and damn it, if that didn’t make me happy, too.