Daddin' Ain't Easy: A DILF Mania Collaboration Read online

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  Chapter Three

  Tor

  “I might be late tonight.”

  Stella reached for Mason, and he held his arms out to her. “I don’t have class so it’s fine.” She pulled Mason into her arms and buried her face in his belly and blew a raspberry. He squealed and grabbed a handful of her dark brown hair.

  “Easy there, buddy.” I pulled her hair from his hand and he squealed in protest.

  “And that is why I always have my hair up when you’re over, right, Mason?” Stella’s eyes beamed with happiness when she looked at Mason. Even when he was trying to rip her hair out of her head, she still loved him.

  How could I get her to look at me like that? “Uh, I have a couple of minutes if you need to do something with your hair.” That came out different than I had planned. I was trying to help, but it sounded like her hair was a mess.

  She chewed on her bottom lip and handed Mason back to me. “I’ll be back in a second,”

  she whispered.

  Mason protested having to come back to me, but Stella disappeared down the hallway before he let out a cry. I shut the door behind me and took his coat and hat off.

  “Do I hear my grandson?” A very tired looking Grace walked out of the kitchen with a coffee cup clutched in her hand and bagel in the other.

  “Hey, Grace. I’m surprised to see you up.”

  She waved the bagel around. “The snow. They let us leave an hour early. You’re seeing my morning ritual of coffee, eating, then trying to fight off passing out for an hour.”

  “What happens after an hour?”

  A huge smile spread across her lips. “I pass out.”

  “Normally on the floor next to Mason.” Stella walked down the hallway with her hair pulled up into a high ponytail. “In that hour before I pester her to sleep in her bed, but she always says no.”

  “Because when else am I going to see my grandson?” Grace insisted.

  Normally whenever I dropped off Mason, Grace wasn’t home yet, and when I picked him up, she was sleeping.

  “How about after you take a nap for a couple hours so you’re not a walking zombie?” Stella walked backed over to me and grabbed Mason again. “Now we’re good to go for the day, right, handsome?”

  How pathetic was I that I was jealous of my own kid? I wished Stella would talk to me the way she did Mason and call me handsome. “Uh, I packed some new toys I got for him.”

  “You went shopping in the storm?” Grace asked.

  “The power of the internet and two-day shipping,” I quipped. Also, sleepless nights lying awake.

  “You buy him too many toys, Tor. I could give him a book and box and he could play for hours.” Stella sat down on the couch and grabbed a stuffed lion from the couch. Mason clutched it to his chest and giggled.

  “Nah, he can never have too many toys.” I didn’t have anything to spend my money on besides Mason. If I wanted to buy him a couple more stuffed animals and toys it wasn’t going to hurt anything.

  Grace sat down on the floor in front of Mason and tried to grab the toy from him. “Let Grandma have that,” she teased.

  “Dada, dada, dada,” he squealed.

  “Grandma,” Grace tsked. “Dada has to go to work.”

  I did need to get going, but like every morning, I didn’t want to leave. I loved watching Mason with Stella, and not that I didn’t want to see him with Grace, I just wanted to stay.

  “What time did you get home last night?” Grace asked Stella.

  “Uh, it was after eleven.”

  “The buses were running behind. It’s a good thing they didn’t stop running before you got off school.”

  “I thought you got a ride home with one of your teachers?” I asked. If she would have gotten a ride home, she should have been home a hell of a lot sooner than after eleven.

  Stella’s eyes dropped to the floor.

  “Did you get a ride home with Mrs. Roth? Did you guys talk anymore about the internship?”

  “Internship?” I parroted.

  “Uh, I decided I wasn’t going to take it.”

  “Why the hell not?” Grace demanded. “That is what you’ve been going to school for this whole time.”

  “It’s just not going to work out right now. The hours she wants me for won’t work with my schedule.”

  Grace opened her mouth to protest again, but she looked at Mason. “You’re right, hon. Something else better will come along.”

  Stella looked at her watch. “You better get going, Tor, or you’re going to be late for your first appointment.”

  It was half past nine and she was right, but I wanted to know what had changed for Grace to agree that Stella shouldn’t take the internship she just said was the thing she was going to school for. “Where is the internship?”

  “Just at a doctor’s office. More will come along.” Stella rose from the couch and grabbed an empty cup from the side table. “Whenever you get done with work, we’ll be here.” Stella walked into the kitchen, dismissing me.

  Grace shook her head and looked up at me.

  “What’d I do?”

  “You’re a smart man, Tor. I shouldn’t have to tell you the reason why she’s not going to take that internship.” She pointed at Mason. “This boy is her life. She can’t work during the day and still have her time with him.”

  Understanding dawned on me. “I can find someone else to watch him, Grace. I don’t want to keep her from doing what she wants.”

  Grace frowned. “She won’t let you do that, Tor. I don’t think you get what I’m saying. She doesn’t want anyone else to watch Mason.”

  “But she needs to take this internship, Grace.”

  “I know, I know,” she agreed. “She keeps saying once Mason gets into school, she’ll be able to get out there and get a job.”

  “He’s one, Grace. He has at least three more years before I could maybe get him into preschool, and that’s only going to be for a couple hours a day.”

  I wasn’t telling her everything she didn’t already know. “Tor, you aren’t saying anything I haven’t said to her ten times since she came home and told me she got offered the internship to end all internships.”

  There wasn’t anything else that I could say. I didn’t want to have to find another sitter for Mason because I knew he loved coming here, but I couldn’t hold her back anymore. “Tell Stella I’ll be here around six.”

  “Will do. I’ll most likely be gone by then. Be good, Tor.”

  I ducked out the front door before Stella walked back, and pulled the door shut behind me.

  I had to figure out a way to keep Stella in Mason’s life, but still have her follow her dreams. Also, if I could manage to get myself worked into her life permanently that would be even better.

  *

  Chapter Four

  Stella

  “Be good, Stella.” Mom closed the door behind her, and I collapsed onto the couch.

  Be good?

  That was beyond easy when I didn’t do anything that could even remotely be considered as bad. I had maybe a half an hour until Tor got here, and Mason was fast asleep in his playpen in my room.

  I grabbed one of my text books and decided I might as well read next week’s chapters to get ahead. I tried not to dwell on the fact that this was going to be my Friday night. After Tor came to pick up Mason, I planned on ordering a pizza and watching Dateline. I led a really wild and crazy life.

  Halfway through chapter nineteen Tor knocked on the door, and Mason had yet to wake up.

  I tossed the text book on the couch and opened the door to Tor standing there with a pizza in one hand and a six pack of beer in the other.

  “You busy tonight?”

  My jaw opened and closed as I tried to think of something to say. Anything to say.

  “I’m gonna take that as a no, and invite myself in.” He pushed open the door the rest of the way with the pizza box and nudged me to the side to slip inside.

  “I… a
h… what are… huh?”

  Tor set the pizza box on the coffee table and looked over his shoulder at me. “You, me, pizza.”

  “Mason?” I squeaked.

  “He’s not quite ready for pizza, though he might think differently. He does have those two teeth.”

  That wasn’t what I meant when I said Mason. “I mean he’s here.”

  A panty melting smile spread across his lips. “I sure as shit hope so, Babe. I wouldn’t think you would have sent him home on the bus or something.” He threw a wink at me and strolled into the kitchen as if he did this every day.

  I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t even have Mason to try and hide behind.

  “You want a beer, Babe?” he called.

  Did I want a beer? A tranquilizer would be ideal. “Uh, sure?”

  “You good with the bottle, or you want a glass?”

  I lived in Lincoln Ruins. No one drank their beer or liquor out of a glass. “The bottle is fine.”

  I heard him rummage through the drawers, then the sound of two bottles opening. “You gonna stand by the door all night?”

  I spun around and saw him leaning against the entryway to the kitchen, a beer in each hand. “I, uh, I’m not sure what I’m doing?”

  Tor chuckled and motioned to the couch. “Why don’t you sit down, Stella. I hope I didn’t interrupt you studying.”

  “No. Well, yes, but no.”

  Tor tilted his head and closed one eye. “I didn’t go to a fancy college so I’m not sure exactly what that answer means.”

  I wasn’t going to a fancy college. Lincoln College was a mediocre college that didn’t rank nationally in anything. “It means I was studying, but I didn’t really need to be studying.”

  He pushed off the doorway. “I don’t think that answer is anymore clearer than what you said before.”

  It wasn’t. I could barely remember what I had just said so trying to explain it was going to be hard. I needed to know why Tor was in my house acting like he belonged there. “What is going on here?”

  Tor sat down on the couch, set the beers down, and flipped back the cover to the pizza. “I’m starving so I picked up a pizza, brought it over, and figured we could hang out.”

  “We never hang out,” I pointed out.

  “You’re right,” he agreed, “so I wanted to change that.”

  Tor Kestrel wanted to hang out with me? I had to wonder if he was high or already drunk. “I’m beyond confused.”

  “There isn’t anything to be confused about, Stella.”

  That was where he was completely wrong. I took two steps toward him then stopped. “Tor, you can’t honestly be sitting there thinking that you and I eating pizza on a Friday night is normal.”

  “Well, if it’s not, it should be.”

  Tor Kestrel had been abducted by aliens sometime between him dropping off Mason this morning and now. He lifted a slice of pizza from the box and held it out to me. “Why do I feel like you’re the creepy guy in the van offering me candy?”

  He looked at the pizza then at me. “It’s pizza, not candy.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You completely missed my point.”

  “If your point is, I’m offering you something in return to get in your pants you’re wrong.”

  I felt relieved but also let down. “Oh.”

  “Let me clarify that. I’m offering you pizza because I figure you’re hungry. The whole getting into your pants thing is something I wouldn’t mind, but I figure pizza wasn’t the way to get that. Though, if it is, you can have the whole pizza and I’ll meet you in your room.”

  My jaw dropped, and I once again had no freakin’ clue what to say. I turned to look at the door, then back at him. “I… you…”

  “Stella,” he called. “Come sit down, eat some pizza, and watch TV with me. That’s all I’m asking for right now.”

  He said for right now. What was he going to ask for later? Hopefully what I dreamed about every night. “I should go check on Mason.” My thoughts were running rampant, and I needed to get out of the same room as Tor to get my head straight. I fled the living room before he could protest.

  Mason was still sound asleep in his playpen next to my bed, and I was half tempted to wake him up just so I would have him to be a buffer between Tor and me.

  “Never wake sleeping babies.”

  I swore I jumped ten feet in the air and clutched my hand to my heart. “What are you doing?” I hissed.

  “Shouldn’t I be the one pissed you were two seconds away from waking my kid so you wouldn’t have to talk to me?” Tor stood in my doorway, once again leaning against the doorframe, with his arms folded over his chest.

  “I wasn’t going to wake him,” I insisted. At least not that I was going to admit out loud.

  He hitched his thumb over his shoulder. “Come eat, and I promise not to run you off again.”

  I really couldn’t hang out in my room when Tor was in the living room. There weren’t any excuses I could come up with that could work. “Fine, but no underwear talk.”

  A smirk spread across his lips. “You were the one to bring it up this time, Babe.” He pushed off the doorframe and walked back into the living room.

  I glanced one last time at Mason’s sweet sleeping face and willed him to wake. It didn’t work.

  I trudged quietly back to the living room and sat down on the opposite side of the couch from Tor. “What kind of pizza did you get?”

  “The only kind there is.” He held a slice to me. “Every meat known to man and cheese.”

  The smell of bacon wafted toward me, and my stomach rumbled. “How did you know that was my favorite?” I grabbed the slice and took a huge bite.

  “Asked the guy behind the counter if he ever delivered pizza here. He told me every Friday night you ordered the carnivore.”

  “Stalking much?” I mumbled around a mouth full.

  He shrugged and sat back in the couch with a half-eaten slice in his hand. “More like detective work, Babe.”

  I grabbed the beer closest to me and took a swig. “New sideline for you?”

  “You betcha. If the tattooing doesn’t work out for me, I can always get into catching cheating lovers in the act.”

  We ate in silence till I couldn’t take it anymore and reached for the TV remote. “Anything you feel like watching?” I asked.

  “Whatever you normally watch, Babe. I’m sure it’s better than the kid shit I have on all of the time.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh at the idea of Tor watching Barney, Sesame Street, and anything on the Disney channel.

  “Yuck it up, Babe, but I’m sure you watch the same thing all day.”

  I shook my head and kicked my feet up on the coffee table. “I have the morning show on until eleven, then the noon news, and then if Mason is being fussy, I’ll put a cartoon on for him.”

  “How in the heck do you manage that? I swear as soon as we get through the door he’s pointing at the TV and crying till I turn the damn thing on.”

  “Sucker,” I mumbled. I found the evening news that was on before Dateline. “He plays you like a fiddle.” I grabbed another piece of pizza and tucked my legs underneath me.

  “Probably, but it also gives me a couple of minutes to get dinner ready while he watches some pig show.”

  “I’m sure it’s not easy to watch him by yourself.”

  “You do it every day, Babe,” he pointed out.

  I tilted my head to the side and chewed slowly. “Yeah, but it doesn’t feel like the same thing. I choose to watch him, you on the other hand really have no choice.”

  “True, though I don’t want another choice.” Tor reached for his beer. “That kid is the best thing that has ever happened to me.”

  I had never heard Tor talk about Mason like that before. You always hoped and assumed that parents loved their kids more than anything, but Lexi was the testament to the fact that wasn’t always true. “He is pretty special.”

  “Yeah, he’s definitely some
thing. He’s got me buying him all sorts of toys and the kid can’t even say anything more than dada.”

  “I think that’s more your doing rather than his,” I laughed. “He has you wrapped around his tiny finger.”

  Tor sighed and leaned back into the couch. “Yeah, he sure does.”

  “You ever wonder what it would be like if Lexi was still here?” I slapped my hand over my mouth, and squeezed my eyes shut. “Forget I even said that,” I mumbled. Tor and I were finally having a real conversation and I had to go and ruin it by bringing up Lexi.

  Tor chuckled and shook his head. “Thought about it once or twice when Mason’s up all night cranky as shit because he’s got a tooth coming in or something.”

  I picked at the crust of my pizza patiently waiting.

  “I’m sure I sound like a huge dick when I say this but I really don’t care.”

  I sucked in a breath and held it.

  “If Lexi were still here, she would have fucked that kid up beyond repair. I saw the games she played with me, and I have no doubt in my mind she would have used Mason against me any possible way she could have. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying she didn’t love him, just that Lexi was always looking for ways to pull favor in her direction.”

  “You can’t do that with a baby,” I insisted.

  “I know, Babe. That’s what I just said,” he laughed. “I would never have wished something bad to happen to Lexi, but in the back of my mind I knew that it was possible with the life she chose to lead that one day she might not be there for Mason. Now, I didn’t think it was going to happen so soon after she had him, but I’m kind of thankful it did before she started playing games with him.”

  “I get it,” I whispered.

  “Figured you would, seeing as I saw and heard about the shit, she pulled with you.”

  My stomach dropped, and I wondered if she had told him that I liked him. “Uh, yeah?”

  “She was always dogging you for the way you looked, or the clothes you were wearing. I never understood it. It was like she was jealous of your life when in reality she could have had the same things as you if she would have just put down the needles and pills.”