Nah.
No way would he buy that. But I open his email and it’s just as I thought.
He’s only worried about his daughter. Hoping for an update and thanking me again for watching out for her.
Oh, I’ve watched over Greg. And I’ll do more than watch over her before this weekend’s through if I have my way.
It should bother me, it should be tugging at me like it did before I had my face between her thighs.
But somehow, another part of me, the part I know belongs to Stacey as much she belongs to me now, just doesn’t care what her dad thinks.
She’s old enough, an adult. She can make her own decisions and she has.
Thank God she has because it’s also made me the happiest I’ve ever been. Like my whole life has been leading up to this moment.
I haven’t seen Greg much since taking the post out here, not a huge amount of time off and I try to spend what time off I do get doing my own thing.
I have a place in the city and a ranch I’m in the process of restoring, but now all of that seems clearer too.
Like it has proper meaning.
They’re not just buildings or investments.
They’re homes.
Homes for our family. The family I yearn to plant inside Stacey when she’s ready of course. I can’t make her do anything nor would I want to.
I want her to want me the same way I do her before anything else happens.
I smile at the thought. It’s a different kind of turn on. A long term one that extends out across our whole life and beyond.
Little Ben’s and Stacey’s, running rings around their old man on the ranch or in the suburbs. It wouldn’t matter to me.
What matters most is family, belonging. Love and trust. Those are things that matter most to me.
Stacey shifts in her sleep, reaching out for my arm just when I get back into our makeshift bed, making me forget everything when I feel her hand curl around my arm before she snuggles back down to sleep.
Even as I watch the swirling, angry red spiral on my screen moving this way and that, its most dangerous area hovering so close to us right now, I don’t feel anything but peace.
I’ve found her, the one I was probably searching for in plain sight all these years.
The girl I’ll make my own, the young woman I’ll grow old with and see more than one hurricane through together too, no doubt.
The hours pass and before long I’m just watching her calmly. Watching the rise and fall of her chest and feeling her against me.
But no matter how much I love this, no matter how much I know I love her, her father’s face keeps surfacing to the front of my mind.
I know it’ll be sooner than later that we will have to have it out, with neither of us ever being one to skirt around important things.
Judging by the weather graphics though, we’ve got at least tonight and most of tomorrow to ourselves.
And if that tree outside is anything to go by, there’s gonna be more debris and downed power lines than clear paths in or out of the park.
We really could be stuck here for weeks.
I almost feel guilty for having the thought as I grin broadly to myself.
Almost.
Until I look down at her again.
She’s my reason for everything now.
For now, we have a roof over our heads and plenty of time, I tell myself.
Time to explore each other but also time for me to catch up properly with Stacey. I want to know about her college exploits, her studies, and what she wants to do with her life.
I can’t just assume she wants to be kept barefoot and pregnant on a ranger’s salary.
Although that idea does make me smile again.
When my folks passed on, older parents themselves when they had me, they left me more than comfortable.
I don’t need to do the Ranger thing, but I like it.
I almost feel tempted to wake Stacey up so we can talk about it when I remember she needs her rest and so do I, but there’s no sleep for me. Not now, not when I can see and feel just how sweet life can be if only I’d just let it run its course.
The same magic formula that’s brought her to me, brought us together like this.
I eventually doze off for a bit, jolted awake by another huge crash from outside somewhere.
If I can hear it down here in our concrete cube, it’s bad but everything seems to be holding up inside.
Stacey likes her sleep, I can tell. Or maybe she needed more rest than I thought?
I wince a little at the memory of telling her dad I’d like to keep her under observation.
The only observing I’ve been doing is of a more intimate kind.