Cason wasn’t just the forbidden apple; he was the whole damn tree. Each bite more delicious than the one before it.
Chapter 15
Cason
“You need how much?” Emery asked, talking on the phone as we sat at the kitchen table the next morning. “Why?”
Ryan had called him shortly after we’d sat down with our breakfast. I couldn’t hear anything other than an indistinct voice muttering on the other end of the phone.
“Fine,” Emery said, giving in way too easily. “No, you don’t have to come here.” His now panicked eyes flashed to me, and my gut knotted in response. “I’ll transfer it to your account. Okay. Bye.”
Relieved that Ryan wouldn’t be stopping by, I took a drink of my coffee and relaxed in the chair, wincing a bit at the ache in my ass. That would’ve been a hard one to explain—me being in his dad’s kitchen wearing only my underwear.
“What does he need the money for?” I asked. Emery glanced at me, and I shrugged. “Sorry. I’m nosy.”
His eyes crinkled around the edges. “He wants to take his girlfriend to a concert. It’s a few hours away from here, so they’ll be staying the night afterward instead of driving back.”
“So, he’s calling Lexi his girlfriend now, huh?” I asked with a grin. That was a first.
“You’ve met her?”
“Yep.” My smile fled when I saw the disappointment in Emery’s eyes. Ryan had the audacity to call him asking for money, but didn’t have the decency to introduce them. “You could’ve told him no. Or told him to get a job and make his own money.”
“I know.” Emery cut a sliver of his fried egg and ate it, his expression unreadable. “He rarely calls me for anything. I guess I just wanted to be a cool dad for once.”
“You’re a cool dadallthe time,” I countered, nudging his foot under the table. “You don’t need to give Ryan whatever he wants without him having earned it. All that teaches him is that you’re a pushover.”
“Hey.” Emery gently kicked my leg. “I’m not a pushover.” That unreadable expression returned as he looked at his mug of coffee. “I just want him to love me again.”
Fuckin’ hell. The sadness in his voice felt like a linebacker shoulder-charged me right in the middle of my chest.
“He does love you,” I said, recalling the few instances when Ryan forgot to be pissed at his dad and let his true feelings show—like moments when he smiled or told a story about Emery. Then, he’d force a glower and say something hateful to balance it out. “And you don’t need to kiss his ass to prove you love him.”
He nodded and grabbed his phone. Probably to transfer the money to Ryan. After a few minutes, he placed it back on the table and continued eating.
“When I hung out with him the other night, he told me he had lunch with you,” I said.
“I’m shocked he told you.” Hope sparked in his eyes. “What did he say about it?”
“Not much,” I admitted, hating the way his hope diminished a bit. “But he said it wasn’t too bad. Which, for Ryan, is pretty much saying he had a good time.”
Emery smiled before putting an egg on a piece of toast and eating. Thinking it looked good, I copied him. Minutes passed as we ate, but it wasn’t a weird silence. Especially since we smiled each time our gazes locked.
“Ryan told me something too,” Emery said. “He said you were offered the baseball scholarship first and turned it down.”
“What’s your point?” I asked, uncomfortable under his scrutiny.
“I guess I want to know why you’d turn down a full-ride scholarship to a damn good school. You wouldn’t have had to pay for a thing, and you’d get to play college ball.”
“That’s Ryan’s dream, not mine,” I answered, having no regrets about turning it down. “Yeah, the full ride would’ve been nice, but I was still able to get a few good scholarships because of my GPA. The college here in Fort Smith has a great criminal justice program, and that’s all I need.”
“That’s right. You said you’re going to be a criminal justice major.” Emery took a drink and set his cup back down. “Have you decided what you want to do with it yet?”
I wasn’t sure why he wanted to get to know me, but I didn’t mind it. Talking was nice.
“Kind of,” I answered, getting an excited fluttering in the pit of my stomach at the thought of college. “I think I want to be a detective. I know I have to build up to that, though. I might start off as a cop maybe.”
“You don’t have to go to college to be a police officer,” Emery pointed out. “You just have to be twenty-one and go through training.”
