Brazen and Breathless (Untouchable #6) - Heather Long Page 0,85
sounded like you wanted to protect her, and we all do. We all agreed to talk to each other when this shit bothered us before we dragged her into it.” To avoid dragging her into it went unsaid.
He blew out a breath and paused ’cause it was our turn to order. After I pulled forward again and closed the window, I glanced at him. His gaze was out the window and not on me at all.
“Bubba…don’t tear yourself up. Tell me. Don’t tell me. I just wanted to make sure you two were fine.”
He smiled faintly. “You’d think this would be easier, but it’s pretty personal. Communication, though, is the key. I can’t demand she let me protect her and take charge, she has to let me do it and I have to earn the right. It’s easy to try and put my stamp on everything, but at the same time, there’s so much I don’t know that I want to learn because I want to be the best for her, and the fact that she wants to learn and is discovering stuff about herself?”
When he glanced at me, there was a look of wonder on his face, and that decided me more than anything.
Whatever they were learning, I wanted to know, too.
Even if I had to do my own research.
“Coop, she’s the best.”
Yeah.
I grinned.
She was.
“And on that touchy-feely note,” I teased. “Tell me about these classes and where I sign up. Might be easier if I do some homework and keep you from opening a vein with me.”
His laughter eased some of the tension in the car and the raw emotion on his face.
“And definitely clue Jake in before he walks in on you tying her up, ’cause while I think he’d be fine if he understood it…”
“His first reaction would not be as easygoing as yours.”
And we really didn’t need to add anything more to that topic.
School fucking dragged, though Frankie checked in a couple of times. She sounded alternately bored as fuck and intrigued. I wasn’t sure what I wanted for her more. Though, it also sounded like she didn’t have to deal with Mr. Standish, and I was all for that.
Archie almost looked sane at lunch. We’d gone off campus and gotten Thai. Frankie wasn’t a fan of a lot of different Thai options. More because she’d eaten Jake’s five once instead of her one, and the fact that it set her mouth on fire and turned her beat red and left her sweating had been a kind of trauma.
The funny kind, but trauma nonetheless.
“They aren’t keen on letting me skip two afternoons a week for the next five to ten weeks,” Archie admitted with a scowl. “Grandpa is gonna work on an angle that gets me educational credits.”
“Or you could, I don’t know,” Jake mused aloud, “trust Frankie to tell us or call us if she needs us there.”
The glare Archie shot him was just asking for Jake to punch him, so I just said, “Or we can keep taking her temperature. She wasn’t worried about going today, was she?”
“No, she actually seemed pretty at ease. She’s more worried about that fucking meeting with her mother tomorrow.”
I rubbed a hand over my face at that one. ’Cause yeah… “Then maybe ease back a little, Arch.” I raised my hands when he glared at me and kicked Jake when he started to open his mouth. The first quieted Archie, the second pulled Jake’s attention to me and not jumping Archie’s shit. “You know your father better than any of us. No one disputes that.”
“Agreed,” Bubba threw into the fire, but he wasn’t attacking the topic so much as listening. I had a feeling he leaned more in Archie’s favor than against. So did Jake, but Jake was also actively trying to dial back his own overprotectiveness.
We didn’t always succeed, but we had to try.
“But Frankie has already made her feelings clear,” I continued. “This internship is important to her. Succeeding on her own merits is important to her. And us having her back is important, and sometimes—as shitty as it feels—having her back means letting her do it her way. If I had my way, she wouldn’t be anywhere near him, and I know you feel the same way. The thing is…you keep pushing her, and she’s either going to fold to protect you at the cost of her own ideas or she’s going to lose faith in herself, which is a thousand percent worth.”