Dream Spinner (Dream Team Book 3), Kristen Ashley [reading eggs books txt] 📗

boyfriend was not the time to chat about it in case number three freaked her out.

“It’s our perfect Sunday, yeah?” he reminded her, even though they were taking a detour from that right now.

He’d get her back to it when they got home.

“My dad tonight, your dad tomorrow night,” she said softly.

“Hattie.”

He sensed her turn her eyes to him.

He glanced and saw he was correct.

“Done and then done,” he stated. “And just to say, I’m not gonna be a dick to your dad. I’m just gonna be honest and firm in letting him know you got a man in your life and where that man stands on how he expects the people in it to treat you.”

“Okay.”

She didn’t sound convinced.

“You got something on your mind, now’s the time to talk about it, before we walk in there,” he told her.

“You know I heard all you said to me this morning,” she noted.

“Yeah,” he replied.

“And you know, we’ve been having sex, eating, snoozing, and you kicked my ass in Pac-Man again.”

He grinned. “Yeah, I was there through all that.”

“I’m totally practicing Pac-Man while you’re at work tomorrow.”

“Honey, I’ve had years to become a master.”

“Well, your turns are very long at the video machine because of it, and as utterly fascinated as I am at witnessing your Pac-Man superiority, I have to admit that, at times, my mind may have wandered.”

Ah.

“Yeah?” he prompted on a smile.

“You’ve said things that have made me think.”

He wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.

What he knew was, they didn’t have two hours to go through it. They had maybe fifteen minutes before they got to her father’s.

Even so, he said, “Sock it to me,” because if she needed it, he’d stop and talk to her for two hours and that was not about avoiding her dad.

It was to give her what she needed.

“One day, just, you know, on a roll, watching documentaries on Netflix, I watched the Amy Winehouse doc. Did you see that?”

“No.”

“Well, we can just say it didn’t depict her dad in the greatest light.”

There it was.

“Okay,” he said.

“Then, I don’t know, it was a bummer, obviously, since she’s lost to us now, and she was so amazingly talented. And Lady Gaga is so badass. So, in order to cleanse my palette, I watched Gaga’s documentary. And her dad is in it. And he’s awesome. Very supportive.”

No.

There it was.

“Yeah,” he said quietly.

“Did you see that one?” she asked.

“No, but I get you,” he told her.

“I never really … ” She paused. “It’s just my life. I never really stopped to think about it.”

“And now you are.”

“Yes. And what you said about loyalty. I don’t know if that’s true.”

“Baby, you go there every—”

She cut him off.

“I go there to win his approval. I’m realizing now that I’m still trying to win his approval, Axl.”

Well.

Shit.

He hadn’t thought of that.

“I can’t say I don’t love him,” she carried on. “He’s my dad. And like I told you, he can be charming. Funny. Not just to others, also to me. It isn’t just ugliness and yuck.”

Yuck.

So damned adorable.

He fought smiling.

“So, it’s not all bad times,” she continued. “But it isn’t even that. It’s just … ” Another pause. “I want what I can’t have because he’s not going to give it to me because if he did, he’d lose his ability to control me.”

Shit.

She was onto something deeper and more sinister than what he was seeing as an outsider who hadn’t even met the villain yet.

“Yeah, it’s why he tells you you’re less when you’re more,” he concurred.

She didn’t reply.

He reached out and touched her thigh then kept his hand there, the back of it on her jeans.

She slid her fingers around his.

He brought their hands to his leg.

“The sky is not green, it’s blue,” he said. “You just need to find the place where you see the color of the sky through your own eyes. You with me?”

“I’m with you.”

“And it fucks me to say this, but if you got that, if you’re firm in that, in understanding who you are, you can take care of him and it won’t be a threat every time you go over there because he can say what he wants and it won’t affect you because you’ll know it’s bullshit.”

“If I go over there,” she mumbled.

He felt a weird thump in his chest.

“Sorry?” he asked.

“I have a lot to think about, honey,” she said. “And you’re right. He messes with my head. I don’t know if I can …if I … ” It took her a second, but she got there, “If I can get myself straight while he’s messing with my head.”

Fuck, in that Jeep with her, he could not shout in triumph.

Instead, he kept a lock on it and said, “Told you, I’m here to support you. We’ve had to adjust that considering how shit is. But that doesn’t change the support part.”

She squeezed his hand. “Thanks, babe.”

“And something else to think on,” he continued. “It is without a doubt that our upbringing is a huge factor in the people we turn out to be. But Amy Winehouse’s dad didn’t pour booze down her throat to make her drink herself to death and Lady Gaga is a straight-up boss. You gotta find that line you draw where it’s you who decides your future.”

“Yeah,” she said quietly.

He let it go at that, fucking elated that some of what he said was sinking in and she was reconsidering where she was at with her dad.

Her phone binged with a text and she slid her fingers from his hold to pull it out of her bag and check it.

She’d texted her father earlier to let him know she was bringing someone over while she got his dinner together.

These texts had been Axl’s first experience with holding his tongue when it came to this sitch, because her father texted right back, saying he didn’t want company. Thus ensued a back-and-forth of her standing her ground that Axl was coming. A back-and-forth Axl