Page 71 of The Penalty

“Ok!” McKenzie calls and gives her a small wave.

As soon as my daughter is out of sight, I take McKenzie’s hand, and we skate around the rink. I’m grateful the place is mostly empty except for a few kids and their moms. No one seems to recognize me either, which is nice.

“I wish I could take you on dates like this, just the two of us,” I tell her. Not that I don’t love hanging out with Kylie, but it would be nice to not have to hide my feelings for McKenzie. We never usually talk about what we would do if we were outside of the little bubble we’ve created, so it’s not surprising when McKenzie looks at me with wide eyes.

“Don’t look so surprised. Do you really think I want to sneak around with you forever?” I ask.

“I-I mean, I don’t know. I guess I figured this was just sex for you.”

As soon as the words are out of her mouth, I hate myself. I hate that I ever made her feel like this was just sex to me. “Baby, this has never been just about sex for me. It’s so much more.”

I hear her let out a small gasp, and I wish like hell I could kiss her right now. But instead, I drop her hand because I know my daughter will walk back out of the bathroom at any minute.

“It’s more for me, too,” McKenzie finally admits right before Kylie falls into me.

“Ok, like I thought this was going to get easier, but it turns out it’s not,” Kylie says with a laugh. And just like that, the conversation McKenzie and I were having about our feelings is over. That pretty much sums up our entire relationship. Stolen moments wherever we can get them.

“You’ve just got to practice. It took me a while to learn how to skate, and I had to use my brother’s hand-me-down skates,” McKenzie says.

Kylie laughs. “ Yeah, I don’t think I’ll be doing any ice skating competitions soon or anything. Dad, get our picture. All of us.”

I take out my phone and change it to selfie mode to snap a picture of the three of us. Kylie on one side, McKenzie on the other. Then the girls grab each other’s hands and skate off, leaving me behind. I snap another quick picture of them, and it just happens to capture McKenzie looking over her shoulder at me with a smile on her face.

This girl has got me in so much trouble, but I’m so far gone for her that I couldn’t stop it even if I wanted to.

I let the girls skate a few more laps before I grab us hot chocolate, and they meet me at a picnic table nearby.

“Thanks for making us do this, Ky,” McKenzie says. “It was fun.”

“I know,” Kylie says humbly. “I’m full of good ideas.”

I laugh. “I wouldn’t go that far, but this was fun. Although, I’m pretty sure I’m going to be sore tomorrow.”

“At least you didn’t fall on your butt,” Kylie counters. We all laugh because she did fall a lot.

“Yeah, you’re probably gonna have a bruise tomorrow,” McKenzie says with a wince.

“Great.”

The three of us finish our drinks before driving home. I keep stealing glances at McKenzie through the rearview mirror because I can never seem to get enough of her.

Later that night, we lay in her bed after we fucked as silently as possible. I miss when she could be as loud as she wanted. There’s nothing quite like hearing your girl scream your name as she comes. But we do what we have to do right now.

McKenzie reaches for her phone, and when she opens it, the screen she had been looking at comes up.

My stomach drops.

Apartment listings.

“Why are you looking at apartment listings?” I ask as calmly as I can even though internally, I’m panicking. She wants to leave?

“I can’t stay here forever, Ty.” Ty. No one has called me Ty in a really long time, and I love the way it sounds on her lips.

“Why not?” I ask.

“Come on. You don’t think people would start to get suspicious?”

“Fuck everyone else.” Childish response, but it’s the best I could come up with. Of course I worry people might find out what’s going on between us, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. Right now, I need to have McKenzie close.