I smiled at him.

Molly materialized at my side. “Do you like Pictionary?”

I looked down at her. “I do, but we can’t play.”

Her face fell. “Why not?”

“Because it’s a moral imperative to play boys against girls and we’d whup their butts. I’m sort of creative, do it for a living. This means I never lose at Pictionary,” I announced.

“Dad and me’ll kill you,” Cody declared.

I looked at him and threw out the challenge, “Impossible.”

He hurled himself over the back of the couch, racing away, shouting, “I’m getting Pictionary!”

My work done, I moved to the couch and sat down.

Already this was better than TV with Dad.

“Nice work, lady.”

This was murmured in my ear by Hop. I turned my neck. He was behind the couch but bent toward me. I caught Hop’s smile and gave him one back.

He straightened and moved away while Cody raced back with the game and got on his knees beside the coffee table. Molly moved in to help him set up.

I took in a deep breath and let it out right before I felt cold on my arm. I looked down, saw a bottle of beer pressed there, and lifted a hand to take it even as I tipped my head back to smile my gratitude at Hop.

He smiled his acceptance.

Definitely better than TV with Dad.

Pads and pencils disbursed, timer at the ready, we settled in and I played Pictionary with badass biker Hopper Kincaid and his two kids.

The best.

The best I’d ever had.

And, incidentally, Molly and I whupped their butts.

Three times.

* * *

Hop and I were standing outside his condo door making out, me in my jacket, him in his thermal henley.

This was lasting awhile and I was going with it, hoping Hop knew the drill inside where his kids were getting ready for bed, so he’d know how much time we had to enjoy what we were doing.

I was also going with it because we’d never just made out, it leading nowhere but to the goodness of taste and touch, bodies pressed together in the cold.

It was fabulous.

Eventually and regrettably, he broke the connection of our mouths but not our embrace.

“Gotta make sure they’re good,” he muttered.

“Yeah,” I muttered back.

“Also gotta let you know, before you got here, got a call from an old buddy of mine. He’s gonna be close. In Denver for the first time in a while. I don’t wanna miss seein’ him. We were tight back in the day. It’ll be good seein’ him but my only shot is Monday night.”

This was a disappointment but still I said, “Okay.”

“Want you to come with me.”

I held his eyes in the outside lights.

I’d made a decision. It wasn’t conscious, it was intuitive. Going with my gut, leading with my heart, I was moving forward not thinking about the consequences.

I’d let Hop in.

That day, I’d eaten breakfast, spent the day and played Pictionary with his kids.

Was I ready to meet an old buddy?

“I’d like that,” I stated before my brain could catch up and do something other than go with my gut and lead with my heart.

“Good,” he replied on a grin, then his arms tightened and his grin faded. “Check in in the morning. Wanna take your pulse.”

Afraid for a long time where my gut and heart might lead, I hadn’t listened to them for years. It was good to know, from Hop’s concern, I could trust them again.

“I’ll call.”

“Do that,” he murmured.

I grinned.

He touched his mouth to mine.

When he lifted his head, I whispered, “I better let you go.”

“Don’t ever do that.”

His words flowed through me in a way I couldn’t help but press close, angle my head and push my face in his neck.

“Are you real?” I asked his skin.

“Baby, you’re standing in my arms,” he answered.

“Please be real,” I whispered.

“Feel this.” He gave me a squeeze. “I’m real, Lanie.”

I drew in breath, drawing him in, then I pulled back and looked at him.

“Okay, then I won’t let you go but I will say good night.”

“That, I’ll accept,” he replied, his lips curving up.

I moved in to touch mine to his. He let me then shifted to kiss my forehead.

He let me go and I moved to the stairs. Hand on the railing, I looked back to where Hop stood in the doorway.

Hop was watching me and, for my troubles, he gave me a grin and a chin lift.

I returned the grin and raised it with a wave.

His grin turned into a smile.

I let his smile feed me as I skipped down the last few stairs and headed to the village.

It was late and, I hoped, late enough my mom would be passed out so my dad would have joined her.

I felt guilt that I’d left them to play Pictionary with Hop and his kids. But Mom was down for the night and Dad wasn’t a brilliant conversationalist, preferring to stare at a television set and let the screen mute the guilt he should feel at what his deception and disloyalty had manifested upstairs in his bed.

He didn’t need me around for that.

I slid inside the door to our condo, closing it quietly, feeling the house at rest and letting the tension that had grown during my walk ebb, knowing that I’d timed things right. I could just go to bed, look forward to checking in with Hop tomorrow and endure the best part of my parents’ visit. The end of it.

Hand on the banister and foot lifted to walk up the stairs to my room, I stilled when my Dad’s voice hit me.

“I know what he is to you.”

I turned at the foot of the stairs to see him standing there, his fingers curled around a cut crystal glass of Scotch. He rarely drank. He let Mom do the drinking. His addiction was betrayal and he indulged in that liberally.

“Hey, Dad,” I said quietly, my mind reeling to find the right way to play this.

“You think you two are being clever but you didn’t hide it. Maybe your mother missed it and his kids are too young to understand, but I didn’t miss it,” Dad declared and I looked at him.

He was angry.

But I was thirty-nine and I didn’t need my father’s approval in regards to who I spent time with.

So I straightened my shoulders and declared, “Hop and I have known each other for a long time. Recently, we got together. His kids don’t know yet.”

He shook his head and took two steps toward me before he stopped and asked, “Lanie? Seriously?”

“Seriously what?” I asked back.

“Seriously, you didn’t learn a lesson that it was impossible to miss when your last choice got you in Critical Care for six days?”

That was a blow he meant to land viciously, and he succeeded brilliantly.

“Dad—”

“And this one, this… this… man is worse. By far. My God, when was the last time he cut his hair?”

“I’m not sure when Hop does or does not cut his hair is the measure of a man, Dad,” I replied.

“You would be very wrong, Lanie, and I’ll point out again, not for the first time,” Dad shot back.

Blow two. Direct hit.

“You don’t know him,” I returned.

“I don’t need to know him. One look at him and I know the kind of man he is.”

God, I hated that from anyone, but especially my father.

“Sorry, but unless you have clairvoyance, something like that is impossible,” I bit out.

“I don’t need clairvoyance when I have age and wisdom, Elaine Heron. The first of those are creeping up on you without you seeming to realize it, your life wasting away, and the second seems to have escaped you.”

“I’ve known Hopper for eight years and you’ve known him less than a day and you think you can stand there and tell me you know him better than me?” I asked.

“We can start with that. What kind of name is Hopper for what kind of man?”

I had to admit, unlike all the other guys, Hop didn’t have a nickname that the brothers used almost exclusively to refer to him and I’d always been curious about that. One of the many inconsequential (but I found fascinating) facts I’d learned about Hop before I was with him was that his name actually was Hopper Kincaid. Seeing as he already had a name that fit, the boys didn’t bother giving him another one.

And I liked it.

But I wondered at it.

“I don’t know,” I answered Dad. “The name his parents gave him?”

“That’s ridiculous,” he bit out.

“I like his name,” I returned sharply. “I like pretty much everything about him.”

Dad took two more steps toward me, stopped again and hissed, “Lanie, wake up. Do it now before you waste your life. No children, no decent man to look after you, no future. Before you’re dragged into yet another world that is not good for you in any way, by a weak man who takes the easy path of life, and you find yourself paying for his choices.”

His words, each one…

No.

Each syllable slammed into me, breaking something I was holding together by a miracle.

And when it broke, there was no way to hold back what it was keeping at bay.

So I let it rip.

“Would that Papaw took the time before he died to warn Mom of that very thing,” I clipped and Dad’s head jerked. “You gave her children but you took away everything else, being a weak man who chose his own selfish needs over his family. You cannot stand there and say Hop is not decent, at the same time sinking in the mud you stepped in your own damned self. All that while Mom’s passed out cold upstairs, losing herself in a bottle because she can’t cope with the fact she lost her husband three decades ago. But he didn’t have the courage to cut ties and walk away so he tortures her with his selfishness every single day.”

His face turned to stone before he made an attempt to do something he couldn’t do. That was, putting the lid back on his boiling over pot of deceptions.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you,” I leaned toward him, “fucking do.”

“Remember who you’re speaking to and who you are, Elaine. That language—”

“Go fuck yourself, Dad,” I snapped and his head jerked again.

“I cannot believe you would dare—”

I took a step toward him and hissed, “Believe it!” I leaned back and threw out both my hands. “You know, when you go to her, you don’t just fuck over Mom. You fuck over Lis and me. Every time. Every time you go to her, it says, straight up, you do not give one single,” I leaned into him again, “shit about any of us.”

“This, this right here is the effect of spending time with that Tyra friend of yours and the kind of people her husband and your friend Hopper are.”

“Yes,” I agreed, nodding my head. “Yes, Dad. This right here is the effect of being around people who are loyal, decent, and honest. This right here is the effect of being around people who do not let other people mess with their heads or screw them over. This right here is the effect of exactly that. And, in about five seconds, there’ll be another effect. The effect of me walking upstairs and packing my bag. After that, the effect will be me walking out of here. After that, the effect will be you having to explain to Mom tomorrow where I’ve gone. And after that will be the effect of me explaining to Mom that I’ll speak to her if she doesn’t call me drunk off her ass but I am never again speaking to you.”

“You play that game, just like your sister, you’ll be cut off,” he warned.

“Newsflash, Dad. Just like Elissa, I wanted a father who was loyal and true to my mother and, if he couldn’t be that, he could at least let her go so she could find happiness in herself or someone else. Money and cars and houses, nothing holds a candle to that, so you can’t buy my love and loyalty and you can’t hurt me by taking things away I never wanted in the first place.”

“You say that now but—”

“Save it,” I bit off, lifting my hand and throwing it out at the same time turning on my boot and stomping to the stairs.

“Lanie, you leave, you do this, your mother will be devastated,” he called to my back. Four steps up, I turned back to him.

“You’re right. She will. And that sucks. But you know what? She’s lived with devastation a really long time. She knows the drill.”

On that, I turned again and stomped up the steps.

I yanked out my suitcase while pressing buttons on my phone.

“Lady,” Hop greeted after one ring.

“I… uh, Hop…” I trailed off mostly because my throat closed and I couldn’t force words out of my mouth.