Damage Me (Crystal Gulf Book 2) by Shana Vanterpool

Author:Shana Vanterpool [Vanterpool, Shana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: long-distance relationship, social issues, friendship, soldier, military, new adult
ISBN: 9781945107597
Publisher: Swoon Romance
Published: 2016-07-05T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

Dylan

“Again!”

“Again?” I asked, staring at Aubrey like she’d lost her mind. “We watched it twice. Aren’t you tired?” I checked the time on the Blu-ray player. It was almost two in the morning. “Mommy said your bedtime was supposed to be at ten. And it was only that late because of the party.”

She paused in the middle of eating her lollipop. “Mommy told me it’s ‘kay.”

Her lie was the cutest damn lie I’d ever heard, but it was a lie nonetheless, and I didn’t want her to end up like me, so I kept my amusement out of my voice. “She did?”

She shook her head ‘yes’ emphatically. She pulled her blanket tighter around her and snuggled against my side. “Again.”

I wondered briefly if anyone told my baby no. She acted like that word was foreign. She’d managed to get two pieces of cheesecake out of Nena. She got a later bedtime from Whitney. She got Bach to give her a ring lollipop, which he pulled out of a large box of them, as if he hid them just for her. She got Harley’s grandpa to give her a helicopter ride, even after he warned his back hurt. And now she had gotten me to watch Frozen, again, for the third time.

Growing up, I didn’t even bother asking for things. There was nothing to give me. If there were my folks weren’t going to waste it on me. My dad worked when he felt like it and mom made her money the way Bach’s did, by gambling, which meant some months we had enough and for the rest we did not. The house I grew up in was my grandparents, so rent was nonexistent. They were as bad as my parents, but they had their moments, in that they didn’t hit me for saying my stomach growled. They didn’t make me feel like an asshole for wanting clothes that fit, they just didn’t give a shit. There was a difference between not caring and not doing something. I learned that lesson at a young age. To know that Aubrey had everything she wanted comforted my soul. She was sitting in the theater room of a mansion watching Frozen on a ninety-inch flat screen.

It was too much, and I loved it even more because of it.

Half way into the movie she started to fade. Her head fell on my chest, and her breaths evened. I resigned myself to this position. I couldn’t walk and carry her. I couldn’t even shuffle, let alone carry a toddler up the steps to the second story. We’d have to stay here until someone else woke up. I turned the movie off and settled down, turning on ESPN. Truthfully, I didn’t want to be anywhere else. I’d waited so long for this.

The moment I walked into the Evans family home and saw my daughter pieces of me let go of the feelings of betrayal I held for Harley. She made this happen. She gave me my baby.

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