“Well, you've just earned yourself one. Get up. Let's go. You're going to sit in this downstairs bathroom for …” I brainstorm time periods and decide that since she's seven, we'll go with that. “Seven minutes. Get in here and I'll start timing you.”
Kinzie makes about … zero moves to get up and listen to my directions. In fact, she looks right at me, hauls back her head … and spits.
The projectile lands harmlessly on the floor between us, but I've had just about enough of that shit. I move around the couch, lean down and haul my niece over my shoulder while she screams and flails and kicks. I'm not hurting her, but she acts like I'm in the process of beating her to a bloody pulp, wailing and punching and … fuck, did she just bite me?
I sit Kinzie down on the closed lid of the toilet with its fuzzy pink cover and kneel down in front of her.
“I'm done with the attitude, okay? I've been nothing but nice to you. Until you have a change in attitude, you're sitting here until I say otherwise, got it?” Kinzie kicks and yells, but I'm not here to argue. I get up and leave the room only to have her burst out of it fifteen seconds later. With an eye roll, I follow her up the stairs and into the master bedroom where Brooke and I almost fucked yesterday. Part of me wishes I'd just gone through with it, let myself see what that soft, curvy body of hers would feel like wrapped around mine. The other parts knows I made the right decision.
Last night, Brooke Overland was angry and desperate and hurting.
Today, she … well, it was hard to say exactly what she was, but it wasn't all that much better.
Clearly, the girl has issues. I'm not saying she's not hot and that I wouldn't mind spending the rest of my time here tangled up in her sheets, but … it ain't gonna happen.
Brooke is too fragile, too sensitive; she's clearly got issues up the wazoo.
Kinzie dives underneath the bed and I follow after her, carefully wrapping an arm around her waist as she screams at me, and dragging her out from under the bed.
This time, when I put her back on that fuzzy toilet seat cover, she sits there for a good two minute before she makes another run for it.
This is gonna be a seriously long goddamn day.
When Brooke gets back to her sister's place later that night, her long brunette hair is tangled and her lips are pulled down into a permanent frown. The makeup she put on so carefully this morning is gone, replaced with black smudges around the eyes, purple circles underneath them, and a dab of red along the side of her chin that I think used to be her lipstick.
“Rough day at the office?” I joke when she lets herself in and pauses, blinking several times at me like she'd forgotten I was even here. It is awkward as hell in that living room, but I stand my ground, Sadie tucked up against my shoulder as I rub my hand in a circle on her upper back. I'm already starting to get the hang of this baby thing. Honestly, I think she's easier than the older ones. At least she doesn't walk, talk, or otherwise move around. No broken cell phones, no spitting, no kicking me in the shin. All this one does is eat, poop, and sleep. Those three things, I can handle.
“Thanks for staying so late,” she says, lifting her chin up in that proud way she's got. I wonder where she learned that from? “I meant to get back before dark, but I ended up stopping back by the strip club and talking to the owner.”
Deep breath from her as I raise an eyebrow.
“He says he'll give me another chance. I need to be back there tomorrow at nine sharp. Is there any way you could stay the night again?” She flicks some loose hair back over her shoulders and challenges me with a look that I can't interpret.
“Usually when a chick asks me to stay the night, she has other things in mind.” I smile when I say it, but Brooke doesn't smile back. I wonder what's been going through her head all day, about what happened between us. Maybe that's what's bothering her? “Look, about yesterday …”
“I'd rather not talk about yesterday,” she says, and I nod.
“Okay, then. Well, to be honest with you, your place is a hell of a lot better than where I've been staying. It's bigger, quieter.” There's no Bible-thumpers or pot dealers living next door. “If you don't mind, maybe I'll just go back and grab the rest of my stuff? Camp out here for the next week and a half?”
“The parents won't mind. I mean, the parents of …” She gestures at Sadie, and I realize that I haven't exactly explained the whole situation to her. “Your … charges?”
“My charges?” I laugh and the sound echoes in the nearly empty house. Whatever Brooke's sister was doing before she left, it certainly didn't have much to do with interior decorating. “No, the parents won't mind. They're in South Africa until the end of next week.”