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  When he shifts, he can feel the softness of the cotton riding up his ass crack. The panties are meant to fit Corinne, too small on him. She’s right about how they keep him constantly reminded of her.

  “Never mind,” his father says. He shakes his head in disgust and waves a hand in Reese’s direction. Dismissing him. “Go out. Go waste your time and your money, come home with a sick belly. You already have the sick head.”

  Reese had been backing out of the kitchen to avoid the tirade, but this stopped him, dead still. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  His father won’t look at him. He keeps his attention on the paper spread out on the table in front of him. The after-dinner cigarette smokes in the ashtray. Stinking. Reese’s father looks at what’s in front of him so he doesn’t have to see his only child.

  “Dad.”

  His father gives another of those dismissive waves, but Reese isn’t going to let him get away with it this time. He steps closer to the table, forcing himself into his father’s line of view until the old man looks up with a long sigh rooted so deep in his guts it seems to take forever to slip from his lips. Reese puts his hands on the table and leans forward, trying to catch his father’s eyes.

  “What did you mean? Sick in the head?”

  Finally, looking pained, his father raises his head. “Go. Just go. And if you’re going to stumble in with the stink of alcohol on your breath tomorrow morning instead of being ready to help with the milking, you might as well just stay out and not come home.”

  “Are you kicking me out?”

  “I’m sure,” his father says with a slightly curled lip, “that one of your boyfriends can give you a place to stay, if you need one.”

  Reese doesn’t know what to say to this. A dozen responses rise to his tongue and are swallowed, making no sense. He can’t wrap his head around this accusation that feels like it must’ve been building inside his father for a long time.

  “I have a girlfriend.”

  “Sure, you do. That’s why you bring her around so much.”

  Reese hasn’t brought Corinne around because she works nights, because his parents are old-fashioned and might not understand about her being a few years older, they would ask her embarrassing questions about if she goes to church and if she plans to marry him and push out babies. Even if Reese can’t imagine his life without Corinne as part of it, they aren’t anywhere close to that sort of relationship commitment yet. It’s occurred to him that she might not want to actually marry or raise a family with him. She’s never talked about it, never even hinted. In another couple of weeks, they’ll have been together for an entire year.

  “I don’t bring her around because I’m afraid you’ll be rude to her.”

  At this, his father looks up. His glasses have slipped down his nose. Tufts of hair burst from his ears, his nostrils. His eyebrows have grown immensely thick and gray. All of his dad’s hair has turned gray, and Reese discovers he can’t remember when that happened.

  When’s the last time they went to the diner together for breakfast? Reese can’t remember. When’s the last time they did anything but snipe at each other? Reese can’t remember that, either.

  He’s sure his dad’s going to say something so Reese can combat it. They can have a fight. It’ll be a little ugly, but Reese might be able to get some of the things off his chest that have been bothering him for a long time. His dad will yell and scold and accuse.

  Instead, his father simply shrugs. His face holds no expression. Disappointment would’ve been easier to face than that utter lack of emotion.

  All of Reese’s arguments dry up. He actually has nothing to say to the old man; that’s what he realizes as he straightens the knot on his tie. He can’t do much about the slide of cotton into his ass crack, but there, again, he is thinking of Corinne and what she does to him. And for him. How she makes him feel, as though he’s all full up and needs nothing more than to be with her, making her happy.

  His dad wouldn’t understand, Reese thinks, watching his father ignore him. If Dad had ever wanted to make someone other than himself happy it had been a long, long time ago, and hell, it seems as though he’s even stopped trying to please himself.

  Without another word, Reese stalks out of the kitchen and down the long country lane to the main road, where he finds Billy and Jonathan waiting for him. They’re going clubbing, and at the end of the night, they’ll drop him off at Triton’s Diner. Corinne will serve them all coffee and eggs and pancakes, but Reese is the only one she will take home.

  Chapter Twelve

  “There isn’t anything I can do about it, except maybe quit. And I’m not going to do that, not only so he doesn’t get the satisfaction, but of course because I’m not stupid enough to let what happened in the past ruin what I have going on now. I don’t want another job. I like the one I have.” Corinne mixed cake batter as she spoke to her sister, who was sitting at the breakfast bar allegedly looking up job prospects on her laptop. From the way Caitlyn occasionally giggled, Corinne suspected she was surfing Connex, instead.

  Peyton had volunteered to bring in a dozen cupcakes for the bake sale. Typically, since the girl had spent the weekend with her dad and the new family, she’d been too busy with lots of other projects to remember that someone, somehow, needed to provide the treats. That left it up to Corinne, who hated baking, especially the last minute emergency aspect to it.

  “Sprinkles,” Peyton said. “All different colors of sprinkles. But no coconut shavings, because coconut is the devil’s—”

  Corinne watched in amusement as her daughter’s cheeks turned pink. “Uh-huh?”

  “Dental floss!” Peyton burst into giggles.

  “That’s not how that goes,” Caitlyn murmured.

  The phrase was “coconut is the devil’s pubic hair,” uttered by Corinne any time she had to deal with the foul stuff, but now she laughed as hard as her kid was. “Dental floss. Right. Good one. Dental floss isn’t that gross, though.”

  “Tyler must think it is. He never flosses his teeth.” Peyton made a face, wrinkling her nose and glancing into the living room where her brother was busy with some video game. “Or brushes them, either. And he pees on the seat, and he doesn’t flush… I wish I had my own bathroom here like I do at Dad’s.”

  When she and Douglas had bought this house, it had been with the idea of settling for what they could afford without financially strapping themselves. Since at the time both kids were toddlers, neither she nor her ex-husband had looked ahead to the day when the sharing of their bathroom would lead to power struggles or other complications and cause so much domestic strife. Well, there were other things she’d need to change about this house before she could consider adding another bathroom. The kitchen, for one, with its outdated appliances and linoleum.

  “Well,” Corinne said lightly, “I’m sorry that our house isn’t as big and nice as Dad’s new one, but I can talk to Tyler about being more considerate in the bathroom.”

  Before Peyton could answer, the house phone jangled, catching them all off guard. The landline rarely rang, especially this late in the evening. It was almost bedtime.

  “Yeah?” Corinne kept her voice hard, ready to put the smackdown on a telesolicitor. “Are you aware that you’re calling past nine p.m.?”

  “I forgot about your phone rule,” said a familiar male voice. “I apologize, I should’ve called earlier.”

  “Reese. Hi.” Turning, the phone’s long cord twisting as she did, Corinne kept her face away from Peyton’s curious look. The kid had eagle eyes, and Corinne didn’t want to give anything away with her expression. She also avoided Caitlyn’s scrutiny. Hell, she wasn’t sure what she was going to say or do.

  “I have some questions on a few things about the accounts, and—”

  “And you couldn’t wait until tomorrow morning?”

  “You’ve taken tomorrow morning off,” he reminded her. “You won’t be in until the afternoon, and I’m heading back to Philadelphia i