Neanderthal by Avery Flynn

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Griff

“Sorry again about the whole calling-at-work thing,” Griff said, gripping the steering wheel tight as they headed across the Harbor Bridge to Waterbury and the Paint and Sip date Dixon and Nash had cooked up with Fiona’s help.

Calling Kinsey at work had been an impulse that he probably should have ignored, but he’d gone with his gut, something he probably—no, scratch that, definitely—shouldn’t have done, considering his track record with women. The stiffness in her voice when she’d picked up had told him immediately that he’d overstepped.

Some guys could get away with that shit. For example, Nash could have smoothed it over with a well-timed joke, and Dixon would have used the power of his personality to move the situation forward.

Not Griff.

He’d been all elbows and knees, everything rushing through his head at full throttle and him without the ability to catch any of it. Whatever ground he’d gained with that kiss last night had given way like quicksand. So he’d fallen back on silence and grunts after telling Kinsey he was making sure she wasn’t going to ditch the date.

No denying it, he was a stone-cold charmer.

Kinsey made a little grimace face that shouldn’t be cute but was. It was sorta like seeing a rainbow try to be a thunder cloud. He’d no more started to smile at the idea of her not having to pretend to be all sunshine and lollipops around him when his dad’s voice roared to life in his head.

You should never offer anyone else personality advice, given you only know how to be gruff or asleep.

“Not a big deal, the timing was just messy.”

Look at you, mucking it all up again, boy.

Griff shoved his dad’s voice down deep, blocking it even as he knew it was only a matter of time before the old man popped up again, either in Griff’s head or in real life. He had to go up to Roberts Pointe soon to see good ol’ Pops, which meant his subconscious was pretty much all Dad all the time. It fucking sucked, but if he went to the family home at least once every two or three months, then Dad left Morgan alone. He could suck it up so she wouldn’t have to deal with their dad’s bullshit.

Kinsey put her hand on his forearm, her touch gentle. “Are you okay?”

“What do you mean?” he asked, gunning it through the intersection right as the green light he had been too distracted to notice turned yellow. “I’m fine. I’m always fine.”

“Seriously, don’t worry about the call.” She let go of his arm and fidgeted with the strap of her purse. “Work’s just tense. It was good to hear your voice.”

Yanked back from the edge of complete mental fuckery with thoughts about his dad, Griff let out the breath he’d been holding and forced his grip on the steering wheel to loosen. Maybe it was being around Kinsey, maybe it was her saying she liked hearing his voice, but the right side of his mouth turned up as a warm feeling settled in his chest.

“Is that a smile?” she teased, her own grin practically ear to ear. “An actual smile from Griff Beckett?”

There was no use in trying to straighten his mouth, not that he was sure he could. “Nah, just a twitch.”

“And a joke, too.” Kinsey chuckled and then continued dialing up her Southern accent. “Why, Mr. Beckett, I do think you might actually have a good time tonight.”

“Fun is overrated.”

Is this your version of flirting?

Sadly, yes.

“Really?” She pivoted in her seat so she was practically facing him, the other cars on the parkway going by behind her.

The move pressed the seat belt tighter against her as it lay between her tits. Damn. She was wearing jean shorts and a white T-shirt with a V-neck. He couldn’t stop sneaking peeks from the corner of his eye and being really fucking jealous of a piece of safety gear. He white-knuckled the steering wheel again but for a totally different reason this time.

She wet her lips and toyed with the nylon strip. “Is that why you get pummeled in the ring for a hobby?”

“I give as good as I get, and it helps me relax.”

“What else do you do for fun?” she asked.

Her soft voice brushed across every nerve ending in his body. A million dirty thoughts and images of her naked, telling him with that sweet mouth of hers exactly how she wanted him to make her come slammed into his brain at once. He almost veered onto the shoulder of the road as he exited the parkway and onto the expressway that would dump them out in Waterbury’s business district. Using years of practice in not saying what was going through his head, he let out a noncommittal grunt.

“Griff,” she said, his name sounding like a stroke, a tug, a squeeze to his ears. “Tell me.”

It took just about everything he had not to pull over onto the side of the road and show her, but instead he shrugged, changed lanes, passed a minivan with a kid in the back flipping off every car as it went by, and grunted again.

“What do you do to relax?” she asked, her gaze intent on him as if no matter what the answer was, she’d be fascinated. “You have to have more hobbies.”

He was hot, his palms were slick, and his dick was getting hard. He had a plan for this, dammit, and it didn’t involve coming in his pants on the Waterbury Expressway.

“Legos,” he said, grinding out the single word. “I have a whole room’s worth and some more in storage.”

She let out a little gasp. “You have an entire room devoted to Legos?”

His gut twisted. Well, there it was. He’d lost her now.

“That is so cool!” She clapped her hands together. “What’s the biggest one you’ve ever made? Do you display them or is the room for building only? How long have you done it? How’d you get started?”

The rapid-fire questions and her enthusiasm quieted all his other thoughts, and he relaxed back against the leather seat.

“The Lego Architect Colosseum, which has more than nine thousand pieces and is based on the Roman one.” He continued answering her questions in order. “Yes. Since I was a kid. And my mom got me started. She used to do them with me, and when she died, there were a bunch left over that we’d planned on doing. I did them on my own and just kept doing them.”

They’d spread them out on the big dining room table that sat twenty, the one they only used when Dad was home and insisted. By the time Griff and his mom started building, he, Morgan, and Mom ate on the counter-height square table for four in the kitchen six days a week. They’d still used the crystal glasses—one filled with wine, the other two with cherry-flavored water—and the dishes came from one five-star restaurant or executive chef or another, but they got to sit close enough to one another that no one had to shout to be heard. That had all ended with the accident. After that, Dad still stayed away most nights or locked himself up in his study while he and Morgan made do with YouTube cooking tips and online grocery delivery.

Kinsey reached out and gave his shoulder a squeeze. “I’m sorry about your mom.”

Of course she’d known before he’d said anything. “Morgan told you.”

“Yeah.” She moved her hand back into her lap and turned her body so she was facing front again, her face angled so she was looking out the passenger window. “We bonded in our group over missing moms.”

He got into the far-right lane in prep for the off ramp. “Your mom’s dead?”

She shook her head. “My mom is still alive, she’s just out there somewhere doing whatever it is that’s more important than the kids she left on her mother’s doorstep. I haven’t talked to her in years. Sometimes there’s a Christmas card.”

“Ouch.”

She let out a sigh. “Pretty much.”

He pulled off the expressway, and they drove the five blocks to Paint and Sip in silence.

Way to go, numb nuts. Got any other topics you want to ask her about? Maybe her last heartbreak or when she lost her first pet?

He parked in the small lot on the corner—he sucked at parallel parking—and they sat there for a second.

“Sorry for dredging up mom stuff,” he said.

“It’s okay. I usually don’t tell people about her. It’s just that with you…” She paused and then gave him a shy half smile. “Well, with you I’m just comfortable.”

An unexpected warmth radiated through his chest as he tapped his fingers on the steering wheel to a chipper beat. It wasn’t like him to feel like this, but around Kinsey? It was just different, better, easier.

He heard the click of her unfastening her seat belt a few beats before she leaned over and kissed him, her lips lightly touching his before she pulled back and opened her door.

“We better get in there before class starts.”

Stunned from the kiss and all those 428 possibilities that involved them both naked coming at him at once, he sat there watching as she got out of the car and shut the door, ready for their date.

So maybe he hadn’t fucked this up—yet.