"I'll try, Father," she replied. "Thank you."
He studied her for a long second, then his jaw locked.
"Never mind. I'll wait."
I watched as Hennessy's hand fisted at her side, behind the metal of the door.
With a quick jerk of her head in the affirmative, she cleared her throat.
She finally closed the door and locked it for good measure, then put the blinds down.
My brows rose at that.
The woman apparently had a thing with windows, because each and every window in her office had the blinds open. It was like the girl was afraid of the fucking dark or something.
Even with the afternoon sun glaring straight into her eyes, she hadn't put the blinds down.
Her father waiting outside, though? That she put the blinds down for.
"Your father hates me, by the way," I thought to tell her.
Hennessy turned to stare at me, eyes wide.
"He does not," she immediately disagreed.
I snorted.
"He's hated me since I was a young kid and taught twenty first graders the F word," I told her bluntly. "When I was twelve, I fell and broke my arm, accidentally tripping a little girl and causing her to rip her dress. He said I did it on purpose, and that little girl had pushed me away and I deserved to break my arm. When I was seventeen, he refused to give me a letter of recommendation for a scholarship. At nineteen, I put him down as a reference for a promotion. The owner wanted to know what kind of character I had. So, he called your father because I'd stupidly put down that I'd gone to that church thinking it would be in my favor. Your father made it a point to tell him my every sin-at least how he saw it. I got fired instead."
Hennessy's mouth fell open.
"That little girl was me," she breathed. "I never knew … "
I shrugged.
"Don't know what that man has against me, but seriously, he hates my guts. I'm pretty sure if it didn't break some kind of moral code, he'd have done everything in his power to get me kicked out of this county."
She looked away. "My father is very … "
She looked like she was struggling for the word, and I grinned as I filled in the blank.
"Assholeish?"
She snapped her gaze back to me.
I expected an immediate denial, but she pinched her lips together and shrugged.
"Shit," I said. "You agree."
She looked away.
Then, when she turned back, her eyes were distant, as they had been this entire time.
"You were telling me how you and the rest of the men in the Hail Raisers were misunderstood," she said primly.
I wanted to bring that light back in her eyes, the defiance that I saw shining there for a few short seconds while I told her about how much her father hated me.
In fact, that became my new mission in life.
I, Tate Edward Casey, was going to make Ms. Hennessy Hanes step out of her comfort zone.
At first, it started out as a flame.
Much later, though?
Well, then I wouldn't be able to stop myself from watching her eyes light with something-anything-that wasn't blankness.
Chapter 4
When two people kiss, they create a long tube from butthole to butthole.
-Useless facts that you'll probably share with your best friend
Hennessy
I found myself counting down the days until the next session with Mr. Tate Casey.
At first, I wasn't sure that was what I was doing, but as I got up the day that he was supposed to show, four days after the last time he'd come to my office, I found myself looking at my closet with a different eye.
No longer was I going for clothes that said ‘professional.'
Now I was going for clothes that screamed ‘I'm sexy.'
Or at least, that'd been my intention as I stood in front of my closet.
Everything that was in my closet was so new that most of it still had tags on it.
I'd moved from the apartment my father had paid for and into my new place that I now paid for solely on my own a short three weeks prior. The moment that I had, not only had I bought a new wardrobe, but I'd also splurged on makeup and girly shit that I'd never been able to have before.
Like big hoop earrings that my father used to hate.
Those were the first things I slipped into my ear that morning.
And when I say big, these earrings were big. Like the size of an onion ring from Outback Steakhouse.
They hung so far from my ear that if I bent my head over sideways, the hoops would touch my shoulder.
I freakin' loved them!
The next thing I found were the stockings.
I hadn't worn this particular pair yet.
I hadn't dared.
They were too sexy.
But as I pulled them out of my drawer, and held them up with the garters I'd bought to hold them up, I knew that today I'd be wearing them.
I sifted through my pile of lingerie, things that I'd only ever dreamed about wearing, and selected the matching pair of underwear and bra that I'd bought to go with the stockings.
They'd all been online.
When I'd found the stockings, I'd seen the ‘Customers who bought this, have also bought this' section of the page, and from there, I'd gotten lost.
I had twenty thousand dollars that I'd had left after I'd spent most of my inheritance on a new home and an office in the middle of downtown Hostel-an inheritance I'd received from the death of my mother's mother-and with that money I splurged.
Five hundred and sixty-nine dollars later, I had every kind of lacy lingerie that every woman dreamed of.
And I'd never once thought about wearing it.
Not until Tate had entered the picture.
Now, as I slipped the thong panties on over my hips, and turned around to examine myself in the mirror, I wondered if a man could tell a woman was wearing a thong through a skirt.
Then, as I looked at myself in the mirror, the same monster that sounded exactly like my father started speaking in my head.
Only sluts dress like this.
High heels are for girls that plan on working their vaginas for a living.
Short skirts scream for a man to rape you.
Yes, that last one was actually said by him, in the middle of a freakin' church picnic, when I was on the cusp of womanhood.
I'd come outside, a medium length skirt on that was flowy and wispy around my knees, and my father had seen me. Then he'd flipped a freakin' switch, and had gone from that loving man that everyone loved, to the father and man that only I knew.
It'd been the one and only time he'd lost it in front of his congregation, and come to think about it, I remember seeing Tate there for that one. His mother had forced him to come, I remembered, and he'd been off in a corner, standing under the shade of a tree while all the other teenagers played Frisbee.
I hated Frisbee.
In fact, I'd always hated everything that ever had to do with anything remotely involving me getting sweaty.
So I'd gone to the tree, too. I hadn't seen him until I was nearly standing right next to him.
The heat of the day was enough to cause a sheen of sweat to form along my spine from the moment I stepped out of the back door of the church.
I looked down at my skirt, wondering if it'd upset my father that I was wearing it.
It was white, flowy, and whispered around my knees each time I took a step. Although it looked transparent, it really wasn't thanks to the white slip that was sewn inside. Not to mention I was wearing black bicycle shorts, so just in case I sat down and wasn't crossing my legs, then I wouldn't be showing anything off.
My top was black, covered in sequins, and barely came to just over my shoulders at the top.
The rest of it was tucked into my skirt where a wide bright pink, stretchy belt, also covered in sequins, completed the ensemble.
My sandals were flat, ugly, and needed to be replaced.
Unfortunately, since I had such a small foot, my best friend couldn't share her shoes with me like she'd done the top and the skirt.
Krisney, my best friend since I was old enough to walk, had grown over the summer, and although we were still the same size clothes-wise, she had a foot that was two sizes bigger than mine.
Meaning we could no longer share shoes like we once did.
"Watch your step."
Startled, I looked down at my feet, and saw that I was inches away from stepping into a hole the size of a small tire.
"Thanks," I smiled, looking up at the boy-man.
That short beard and deep voice, as well as multitude of tattoos, screamed that this ‘boy' by age, but man by appearance, wouldn't appreciate being called a boy.
"Hello, Tate." I smiled.
I didn't know Tate well.
If I were being honest, I wasn't sure anyone knew Tate all that well except for Tate himself.
He was quiet, reserved, and standoffish on the best of days.
He must be having a good day.
I was convinced that the angry boy was bi-polar. He seemed fine as long as there were no adults around. The moment that someone from the church, whether it be my dad or a freakin' elderly grandmother, came around, Tate was hiding.
I'd always wanted to ask him why, but that was also another thing I wasn't allowed to do-talk to Tate Casey.
My father had laid that ground rule out a long time ago, and seeing me here next to him would likely set my dad off into conniptions.
"Oh, great," Tate muttered under his breath. "The band is coming!"