Larger Than Life by Alison Kent (read the beginning after the end novel .txt) 📕

get the best of me. In my line of work, that should never happen, but it especially shouldn't happen with you."

Slumped back in his chair now, Spencer reached up, pushed his ball cap back from his face, then changed his mind and pulled the brim lower as if he wanted to hide. "I'm not going to be seeing Candy anymore."

"Why not?" Yancey asked calmly when what he was feeling was a reviving blast of cold fresh air.

His son looked up, frowning and confused. "Why not? That's all you have to say? No 'I told you so,' or 'It's about damn time'?"

Here was where he needed to tread lightly. To keep this conversation from heading south. "I'm concerned about you being distracted. You've got a lot coming up this next year. I've told you that. That your head needs to be on school, not on girls."

Spencer snorted. "Not in girls. Wasn't that what you said Friday?"

Yancey's teeth clicked together as he held back the words his temper was raring to speak. "I know about being your age, Spencer. I was dating your mother and only a few years older when you were born. But I knew how important it was to get my degree. And the opportunity you're getting from Tech isn't one that comes along every day. I don't want you to blow it off or waste it."

"I don't see what the big deal is," Spencer said and shrugged, getting back to the distraction of his breakfast. "Your degree didn't keep you from ending up out here in Podunksville."

What a big fat cluster fuck this was. Yancey could tell his son the real truth, alienating him forever. Or he could tell the alternative truth, that Jeanne's pregnancy had taken them away from the life they'd planned together and brought them out here instead.

It was a twisted version of the point he was trying to make. But he would not betray the woman he loved more than he loved anything. "Your mother and I chose to live here. We wanted a simpler life after growing up in the city. This is all you know, son. Get a taste of something else before you come back here. And then if you do, so be it."

Spencer got to his feet, carried his dishes to the sink, rinsed and stacked them, returned the cereal to the pantry, the milk and juice to the fridge. Then he pushed his chair up beneath the table and stared down. "What if I come back for Candy?"

Toying with a rip in the tablecloth, Yancey took a deep breath. "If you do, you do. If you want to come back here and ranch, or even join the department, that's fine. I just don't want you to settle if there's more that you want. And these are the years you need to take to figure that out."

Spencer's head bobbed, which Yancey took as thoughtful agreement. Or at least he took it as thought. And then the boy pushed away, gestured toward the back door. "I'd, uh, better get going."

"Okay, then. I'm late myself so I'll follow you out." Yancey crossed to the sink, emptied the cup of coffee he'd never finished and rinsed it out.

"Uh, Dad?"

Yancey turned to find Spencer pressing a finger to the broken glass in the door. "Yeah?"

"About Candy and the . . . clothes." Color rose and darkened his face. "Seriously, nothing bad went on. The knife was, uh, her idea. It was a game. That was all."

Not any sort of game Yancey had interest in hearing about. Still, he appreciated the boon. "Then we won't talk about it again." He paused, swallowed, found his own gaze averted, found himself speaking from the heart when he said, "And if things aren't working out with you two, I am sorry."

"Yeah, me, too. I'm, uh, gonna head out now," Spencer said, and Yancey let him go, watching through the kitchen window as the boy who was as tall as he was, who had the same dark hair his mother once had, who would never know the truth of how much he was loved, drove away.

It was several minutes later before Yancey managed to pull himself together in order to face the rest of the day. But then the eight-minute drive, which took him from the edge of town to the county offices smack-dab in the center, left him calmer than he'd been all morning.

The talk with Spencer probably could have gone better, but things that needed to be said had been. And Yancey couldn't feel bad about that. What he could feel bad about was letting something at home keep him from getting to the office when he was due in.

In all his years of working for the department, there was only once he could remember that happening. The day a six-year-old Spencer had decided to drive himself to school and had bashed Jeanne's car into the edge of the carport, requiring stitches across the bridge of his nose. Kids. He chuckled to himself. Hard to live with 'em, couldn't imagine living a life without.

Pulling his car into the small asphalt lot and parking in his assigned space, Yancey gathered up his belongings and headed inside. The boy had been the same blessing and curse he figured all children were. He was just damn proud to have had a part in this one's upbringing—a truth that nothing would change, he mused, pulling open the glass door emblazoned with the department's logo.

"Oh, Sheriff Munroe?" his secretary Kate called from the cart where she stood making fresh coffee. "You've got a visitor waiting—"

But Yancey was already walking into his office and discovering that for himself. He came to a stop just inside the doorway where a hand slapped what he knew to be an official court document against his chest.

"Wagner. I see you're still not shy about shoving your way in and making yourself at home." Yancey grabbed the paperwork and circled around his desk, finally looking up to meet