AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Do y’all not have a good relationship?” I asked when he wouldn’t answer.
He lifted his head, gaze on me, stress carved into the set lines of his face. I wanted to wipe it all away, but I didn’t know how.
“My father…” he started but then paused, covering my hand with his own on his knee. “He’s a good man. I know his intentions have always been good.”
“But?”
“But he never knows when to just leave me the fuck alone,” he grated. “I got my MBA from LSU so that I could start my own business and hopefully, finally, be out from underneath his thumb. For fuck’s sake, I deliberately told him two years ago, well in advance, that he needed to find another manager for his stores when mine was built because I’d be leaving Broussard Appliances for good.”
His chest rose and fell more quickly.
“And how did he feel about that?”
He shrugged, his eyes not on me but on some distant point in the room in front of him. “He wasn’t happy, but I didn’t expect him to be. But then the grilling of my plans started and all of his fucking advice started rolling in. The problem is that it doesn’t matter what I do. I’ll never be good enough.” His gaze snapped to mine, a feverish, tormented look shining in his hazel eyes, his words catapulting my heart rate faster. I knew that feeling well. “Do you know that he didn’t even congratulate me on the grand opening? You know what he told me that night?”
“What?” I asked softly, trying not to show my own anguish at the sight of his pain.
“He told me, ‘Now the real work begins.’” He scoffed. “He can’t just be happy for me. Or accept that I might know what the hell I’m doing. Or, for fuck’s sake, just support me even if I fail. It’s always about what I’m not doing good enough.”
“Have you ever told your dad how you feel?”
His head swiveled to me, an expression of shock wiping away the pain that had been etched there a second ago. “Uh, no. We don’t have those types of conversations.”
“The kinds where you share your feelings.”
He shook his head and stared down at his lap, taking my hand in his and brushing his thumb over the veins in my wrist. “We don’t have that kind of relationship. Our house isn’t like yours.”
He didn’t say it as an insult but a simple observation.
“You mean like my hippie mom who talked to me about birth control, condoms, and clitoral orgasms at thirteen?”
He huffed out a laugh and looked over at me. “She didn’t.”
“She most certainly did. She wanted to be sure we knew that we could explore our bodies and have safe orgasms without the help of a man. But she also wanted to provide safe sex options for us if and when we decided to include boys in the mix.”
He looked at me dazedly, a small smile quirking his mouth. “I can’t even imagine.” Then he chuckled.
“What?”
“My dad caught Hale jacking off once in the downstairs bathroom when he was fourteen. His only advice was,do that in your own bathroom or lock the goddamn door. That was the only sex talk he or I ever got from either of my parents.”
“Your mom never offered any?”
He laced our fingers together. “Before my first date, my mom said, ‘Be nice, Bennett.Remember that all girls have fathers and brothers.’She was basically telling me to treat them like I would a sister or imagine how I’d feel if my date’s father or brother knew what I was doing.”
I laughed. “That’s twisted.”
“It was her way of making me keep it in my pants.”
“And did it work?”
He gave me a devilish look, his smile curling in a way that had my heart rate quickening for a different reason.
“A little. I engaged in lots of oral sex in high school, telling myself I was kind of obeying her. I didn’t lose my virginity till I was nineteen and in college, so I’d say it was partly effective.”
Laughing again, I squeezed his hand. “And how about Hale?”
He blew out a breath and rolled his eyes. “Nothing ever stopped Hale from doing what he wanted. Least of all his conscience or bad parental advice.”
