Promise Me (Book One of the Kirkland Family)

Promise Me: Chapter 20

He stared at her, silently pleading with her to let it go, but she clasped his hands and said, “Please, Daddy?”

His daughter would never understand what she asked of him right now.  How could she?  With a patient smile, he squeezed her hands and faced Hannah’s house again.  Give me strength...

“Back so soon?” Hannah asked, fists on her hips as he walked through her front door.  He barely glanced at her.

“Josie forgot her bag.”

She waved a hand to the floor by his feet.  He stooped and gathered up Josie’s backpack, hoping to leave again before she said another word.  

He didn’t even get to the door.

“Whatever problem you’ve got with me, your daughter doesn’t deserve your anger,” she said to his back.

“This has nothing to do with Josie,” he said over his shoulder.

“I’m glad,” she said, relief coloring her words like a paintbrush to a canvas.  He tensed, because she was doing it again.  Seducing him with her kindness...the smile he knew could grace her lips at any moment.  He’d admit that it wasn’t so much as the way she responded to his advances, but also the way she obviously loved and cared for his daughter.  He knew she meant no harm in any of it, and that was the real problem.

If he allowed himself to become entrapped in her, he’d never be able to break free, because of Josie.  And then she’d use him and manipulate him -- she’d eventually figure out that she could -- and because she was a woman, she’d have no mercy on him.

He took another step closer to the door.  “Justin?” she whispered to him.  “You didn’t scare me...in the shed...when you said those things.  I don’t know why you’re angry with me.”  A soft, trembling hand touched his shoulder.  “I just wanted you to know that...that I battle with my own animal.”

Justin closed his eyes and clutched Josie’s bag in his fists.  Don’t...don’t tell me that!

Her touch left him, but he couldn’t move.  He stood in her hallway, three feet from the open door, and he could not force his legs to move past the threshold.  

A small, wary laugh sailed through his ears as she added, “I can’t believe I told you that...you must think I’m a silly idiot.”  A sigh followed, and then, “Maybe because it’s been too long for me, too.  I think--”

Justin whirled around and drew her into his arms.  She squeaked at his impetuous behavior, but he kissed the sound into silence.  Her fingers grabbed his shirt as he devoured her, tasting the moans emitting from her throat, until he broke away, unable to look at her, else he’d never leave her house.  She swayed into the wall behind her, groaning, “I need to sit down,” but he ran full blown to his truck and tossed Josie her bag as he started the engine.

Josie’s mouth hung open.  “Did you just...kiss Hannah?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he muttered, reversing into the street and jamming the gear shift into first.

“Omigod!  You kissed Hannah!”  His daughter’s delighted giggles carried them all the way to the farm outside of town, teasing him with her girlish replays of what she witnessed.

And that was another reason he should stay away from Hannah Baker!  

*****

Three hours later, Hannah showed up at his parent’s farm.  She stayed in the house with his mom, and he stayed outside with his dad, setting up the backyard for their barbeque party.  But every time he passed the kitchen window, he could hear her laughing inside, even through the glass.  It made his fists clench, and his dad noticed.

“Something eatin’ at you, son?”

“No.”

“You two have been fighting again,” Ronald Kirkland mused.  “Reminds me of the first few years of marriage with you mom.  She’d make me so mad sometimes…”

Justin shot him a disbelieving look.  “You and Mom never fight.”