Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 94903 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 316(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94903 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 316(@300wpm)
I burst out laughing as my cheeks heat. But the laughter is short-lived. It dissolves as the mudroom door opens, and Chase steps into the kitchen.
“Hey,” he says, setting a bag on the table.
He’s downright exhausted. There are bags under his eyes and a layer of filth on his skin I’m not sure can be scrubbed off. That laundry is going to suck.
“Hi, Daddy,” Kennedy says a little too brightly.
Chase looks at her, then at me with a heavy dose of skepticism. “What’s going on?”
“Go,” Kennedy whispers, shoving her bony elbow into my side.
I give her a look to knock it off. Instead, she tries to hurry me by motioning toward her dad with her head. It’s not the subtle encouragement she thinks it is.
“Megan?” Chase asks.
This is going to be a disaster. I can already tell.
“Now,” Kennedy whispers.
I suck in a long breath and steady myself. “Chase, we have something to tell you.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Chase
“So tell me,” I say.
Kennedy moves so she’s a couple of feet behind Megan. Megan reaches back and takes her hand, tugging her forward until they’re shoulder to shoulder.
My daughter’s eyes are shifty. She has a little smirk on her lips that tells me she’s done something I’m not going to love. The gesture is more of a shield than anything—her way of bolstering her confidence.
My sights settle on Megan. Holy shit, she’s gorgeous. It’s hard to believe she’s as pretty as I imagined while I was gone. I didn’t make her up. She’s real.
She clears her throat.
“So?” I ask, prompting her to speak. “What do you have to tell me?” Get it over with so I can get you alone somewhere.
“I want to preface this conversation by saying everything is fine,” Megan says. “There’s no need to panic.”
My stomach knots. “Maybe if you’d tell me what’s happening, I wouldn’t.”
“Good point.”
My high spirits at coming home to my girls dissolve like sand out of an hourglass. I’m draining—all my energy and enthusiasm wane more and more as I wait for an explanation as to why I shouldn’t panic.
Megan takes a deep breath. “I got a call today.”
“Who from?”
I spin a million thoughts in a few seconds, conjuring up every person who might’ve called Megan and every reason. This is not helping.
“I had the pleasure of meeting Principal Walding and Mrs. Falconberry today,” Megan says.
It’s the nonchalance for me. I lift a brow and look at my daughter.
My goodwill is gone. The hourglass is empty, and I’m left clutching the back of a chair for support.
I hang my head and will myself to stay calm. Dammit, Kennedy. “I know you’re being facetious because I’ve met both people, and it wasn’t pleasurable either time.”
If it were a different day, I would look at Megan and wink. But it’s today, and I don’t have it in me to be coy.
“I’m suspended for three days, Dad.”
My head whips up. “Excuse me? Please, say that again because I just thought I heard you say you are suspended.”
Kennedy doesn’t balk. “That’s what I said.”
I switch my gaze between them. I don’t even know where to start.
Every nick, scrape, pulled muscle—they all burn. It’s as if the thread holding me together snapped and smacked me in the face.
“What did you do?” I ask my child.
“So it’s automatically something I did?”
“Well, yeah, considering you were suspended. I’m going out on a limb here and assuming they weren’t picking random kids at lunch to go home for three days.”
She rolls her eyes.
“Ken, now isn’t the time.”
She groans into the air as if I just ruined her life. The audacity kills me.
I march across the room, leaving Megan standing with her jaw hanging open, and swing the refrigerator open. It’s stocked with food—containers of whatever they’ve been snacking on while I was away stacked neatly next to the milk, juice, and tea.
It only serves to frustrate me more.
For once, I didn’t just feel like I was surviving. There was a reason for me to come home beyond taking care of my daughter, and that was really fucking nice.
And instead of sitting down with the two of them, piecing a meal together, and listening to them tell me about their day, I’m grabbing a beer out of the fridge and figuring out why Kennedy is suspended.
Fucking hell.
The more I think about it, the more the frustration adds to my exhaustion.
I slam the fridge closed and pop a beer open with more force than necessary. “So someone better talk.”
“Mrs. Falconberry wrote Kennedy a disciplinary action for stealing a cupcake,” Megan says.
My eyes bulge. “A what?”
“One of those individually wrapped things that taste like garbage,” Kennedy says. “I wouldn’t eat that if I had to—especially when Megan made the best cupcakes the other night.”
I rub my forehead. Make it make sense.
“She also said that Kennedy engaged in a verbal altercation with her,” Megan says warily.