Offside (25 page)

“She didn’t want to do anything about it?”

“Nope,” he replied. He looked out across the back yard and into the darkening trees of the forest beyond. “She was too embarrassed, for starters. She was also doing something illegal at the time and could have been prosecuted as well. She wanted it all behind her, not dredged up over and over again.”

I hadn’t really thought about her reasons, but from what I knew of her, it all fit. She didn’t want people in her business, and having something like that all over the media would kill her.

“I realize you haven’t known Nicole very long, but I want to tell you a little about my daughter,” the sheriff said. I nodded and tried to make myself look busy with my smoke. “She was always an independent thing, even when she was little. She would get her mind set on something, and it damn well better work that way, or there was going to be hell to pay. That girl has a temper.”

“Heh!” I snorted. Yeah, I was aware of the kitten’s claws, no doubt. Sheriff Skye chuckled, too.

“You’ve seen that side of her more than once, huh?”

“Yeah,” I replied, and I could have sworn I heard him say “good” before he went on.

“When I went to Minnesota after that…‘incident’,” he continued, “the girl I found there wasn’t my daughter, or at least not the one I knew. She was timid and scared, and she always waited for someone else to tell her what to do. She never took any initiative. As if there were any way I could have been angrier over everything…”

He paused and shook his head before he continued.

“Seeing her act like that…It just wasn’t my girl.”

He shoved the butt of his cigarette into the dirt beside him and pulled out another one. I still had half of mine left since I hadn’t really been actively smoking it. All I could do was listen to him and try to picture my Rumple that way.

“Then I found out something else from her mother,” Sheriff Skye said, “and I was almost as pissed off at my ex-wife as I had been at the two who did that to her.”

“What?” I asked when he didn’t continue right away. “What did she say?”

“She told me Nicole wasn’t like that from the…from what had happened to her. She said Nicole had been acting like that for months—ever since she started dating that schmuck.”

I stood up and took a few steps onto the patio. I stared at the bright spot at the end of the cigarette as I inhaled. The sheriff looked off into the woods again while I thought about what he said. I tried to picture Rumple all quiet and waiting for someone to tell her what to do, and I just couldn’t see it. Why would she act that way?

“I still don’t know exactly what he said or did to her to change her behavior like that,” Sheriff Skye said, his words echoing my thoughts. “She doesn’t talk about it, and I just hoped bringing her here and away from all of it would help her get
herself
back. I hadn’t really seen any signs of her… signs of that girl I knew the last summer she was here… signs of the daughter I used to have... not until the other day.”

“What other day?” I asked.

“When she came back from town, found you sitting on the front porch, and started tearing you a new one.”

The scene ran through my head again. She sure had been pissed off to find me there. I smiled a little.

“Yeah, I thought so,” the sheriff remarked.

“Thought what?” I asked. I looked at his face to find him smirking.

“Kinda cute that way, isn’t she?”

My face felt a little warm even in the cool fall breeze near the woods. I smiled at the thought of Rumple all ticked off and coming at me, kitten-claws extended and teeth bared. Yeah, she definitely was kind of cute that way. More than cute.

“Seeing that,” he went on, “was when I knew bringing her here had been the right choice. I gotta thank you for that, son.”

“You’re glad I piss her off?” Was I hearing him right?

“I’m going to guess just by the way you said that, you piss her off a lot, don’t cha?”

I nodded.

The sheriff laughed.

“Then I think you just might be good for her,” he finally said after he stopped laughing. “Tell me something else, Thomas.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Do you care about my daughter?”

All hints of a smile left my face as I looked into his eyes. I noticed how similar they were to Nicole’s—not just in color but in their expressiveness and the feeling that you could see right into their owner’s soul if you looked long enough.

“Yes, sir,” I replied. “I do.”

He nodded.

“Let me ask you something else,” he said as he sat up a little straighter and looked at me dead-on. “Was the last woman you ever cared about your mother?”

I swallowed past the hardening lump in my throat, but it only landed in my chest and started hanging out there. I reached up and rubbed deep into my eyes with my fingers then dropped my hand down and ran it over my thigh instead. I looked back at him, back into his eyes.

“Yes,” I said.

“Then maybe Nicole is good for you, too.”

We stared at each other for a moment, and I suddenly wasn’t as concerned about his potential ground rules as I had been a little while ago. I had no idea what he was going to demand, but at least it didn’t sound like it was going to include the words “Get the fuck away from my daughter before I blow your brains out.”

A few minutes of silence went by while I thought about what Sheriff Skye had said. I admitted that I cared about her, and he was quite right—I’d never given a shit about any of the other girls I had been with in the past. I honestly didn’t care if I ever saw any of them again. I didn’t want them dead or anything; I just didn’t even think about them at all.

Nicole was different; I thought about her all the fucking time. It was downright annoying, really. If I thought back to the day I first walked her around the entire school, I probably couldn’t come up with too many hours that had gone by when I didn’t think about her at least once.

My Rumple.

“All right, Thomas,” Sheriff Skye finally said as he ended our silence, “it’s time to go over the rules.”

He straightened his back up against the wall and looked me over.

“Okay,” I replied. I mean, what else could I really say? I tried to buckle down and mentally prepare myself. I even attempted to avoid thinking about what I was going to do if he out-and-out forbade me from being in her room or something, but that was even more difficult to imagine.

“When Nicole first told me about you coming over last night and ending up in her bed, my first reaction was you belonged on the damn couch. If you need a place to stay…well, I wouldn’t ever turn you out, but that place doesn’t mean my daughter’s bed.”

My eyes dropped to my feet, and I took a deep breath as I tried to imagine sleeping on their couch downstairs while Nicole was up in her room. I didn’t like it much, but he didn’t leave me hanging for too long, either.

“But I got the idea from her that wouldn’t work so well,” he continued. “So, you can stay in there with her, but the door stays open.”

My eyes went wide as I realized what he was saying. He was giving me permission to sleep with his daughter. Well, not
sleep
with her…but…damn. Just…
damn
. Okay, so having the door open wasn’t all that great, and it might be kind of weird, knowing her dad could look in and see me in there with her, but it was better than the alternative.

I looked up at him and nodded.

“I’m pretty good with that,” I said honestly.

“And no throwing rocks at the window, for Christ’s sake,” he said. “I don’t need you breaking glass or sneaking around. If it’s too late to knock, there’s a key outside. Nicole can either show you where it is, or you can call her to come let you in—I’ll leave that up to her.”

“Okay,” I said with a bit of a grin.

“And don’t you dare eat all of her cooking and leave none for me,” he added.

I laughed.

“Deal,” I replied.

“There’s one more thing,” the sheriff said, his expression turning serious. “And as far as I’m concerned, it’s the most important one.”

“What’s that?” I asked. My palms started to sweat a little, and I wiped my hands down my pants.

His eyes darkened as he looked at me over the smoke trails.

“Don’t you hurt her, son,” he said, his voice approaching deadly. “She’s been hurt enough.”

I nodded solemnly.

“I’m not saying I expect you to make sure she lives happily ever after. From personal experience, I know how relationships at your age can come and go. If you two go your separate ways, I know she’ll be upset for a while even if she’s the one to break it off. I wouldn’t hold that against you, but don’t you hurt her like that other kid did. Don’t you betray her trust. Don’t you use her for your own self-gain. You do something like that, and I don’t care who your father is, I won’t stand by and take it.”

“I won’t,” I promised.

I meant it.

“And for God’s sake, Thomas,” he added, “if you guys become more than whatever the hell you are now, don’t have sex with her when I’m in the house. That would just be…really, really awkward.”

I’m sure my eyes about bulged out of my head, and I might have eventually come up with some kind of response, but the sound of wheels on the gravel driveway out front caught our attention first.

“Sounds like the pizza is here,” Sheriff Skye said. He stood up and took a last drag off his cigarette just as the front door opened up.

“Dad? Is Thomas here?”

“Aw, shit!” Sheriff Skye jumped high enough to tap a ball over the top of a goal, smashed out the cigarette butt, grabbed all of the butts together, and shoved them underneath an upside down flowerpot off the side of the porch. I had the idea if Nicole found those cigarette butts, I’d be seeing
that side
of her again.

Was she going to notice? I looked him over quickly.

“The pack’s sticking out of your pocket,” I told Sheriff Skye.

He reached up and placed his hand over the left pocket of his shirt and covered the pack and his heart at the same time. He grabbed the pack out of his pocket, looked around frantically, and then threw the pack into the shrubs at the side of the house.

“Here's goes nothin',” he said as he opened the door with a plastered smile on his face. “Hey, Nicole!”

He waved frantically while still standing in the middle of the doorway. I just kind of hid behind him, not really understanding the dynamic between the two of them and not entirely sure I wanted to be there right at that moment.

“Hi, Dad,” she responded. She tilted her head to peer at me and then looked back to the sheriff.

“Hey there!” he called out. He actually waved while still standing in the middle of the doorway. “How’s Ron and Timmy?” He danced back and forth between one foot and the other, which made me realize I was doing the same thing. I stopped, and then his words hit me.

Ron and Timmy? Who the hell were they?

“Dad!” she snapped at him with narrowed eyes. He just kind of shrugged at her but stayed in the doorway. I wondered if she could already smell smoke on him.

Nicole took a few steps forward, and Sheriff Skye nearly backed up into me.

“What are you two up to?” Nicole asked.

“Nothing,” Sheriff Skye said. He finally walked through the door and skirted around her to sit back in the recliner. “Just some guy talk, ya know?”

“No, I do not know,” she replied. “What
is
that smell?”

“Um…smell?”

“Dad!” Nicole yelled. She shook a finger at him. “You said you quit!”

Well, that didn't take long.

“You know how much I hate that,” she went on, “and as soon as I'm away from the house? Seriously?”

“It was me,” I piped up, “not Sheriff Skye.”

They both looked at me, Nicole looking confused and Sheriff Skye just looking like he was trying to catch flies. I nodded my head frantically and even went as far as pointing to myself.

“You—” she started, but the Sheriff interrupted before she could continue.

“Oh no, son,” the Sheriff said as he shook his head quickly back and forth, “I can't let you do that.”

He looked back to Nicole.

“I know, I was supposed to have quit, but…”

“It was me!” I insisted. “I was a little stressed out, you know? I didn't know why you ran off so quick. I thought I might find you here, but you weren't and…”

I trailed off and shrugged, hoping that was as much of an explanation as she would require.

“I…had something I needed to do,” she stammered a bit. “But—”

“He's just covering for me.” Sheriff Skye jumped in again. “Really.”

“Am not,” I insisted. “It was me, Nicole—really.”

“Thomas, you don't have to—”

“I'm not!” I said.

“You are—”

Sheriff Skye and I looked at each other, and the absolutely flabbergasted expression on his face was just too much. I busted out laughing, and that set him off as well. Then I couldn't stop, and it was actually starting to hurt my side. I wrapped my arm around myself and bent over a little but still couldn't stop even though I kept saying “ow, ow, ow.”