A/N: Growing up isn't easy, especially when you discover your entire life has been a lie. Rogue is navigating a world where secrets always haunt her. With the assistance of a strange watch, she hopes a trip through time – to the future and the past – will help her mature while she learns about her birth parents' lives.

All she discovers is trouble with a capital T and a Cajun who captures her heart as mayhem erupts around them. Time travelling tropes be damned, this quiet Southerner is in for a wild ride as she faces adversaries and learns the truth about family, love, heartbreak, death and disaster. There's always time for father and daughter fluff, though.

This is the sequel to The Curious Case of Frustrated Fatherhood. Reading it isn't strictly necessary, but it will probably save you from a lot of confusion. Both are major AUs as to the true origins of Rogue.


An Illustrated Book About Birds

Chapter 1


For the hundredth time in thirty-two minutes and seventeen seconds, Rogue sighed and pressed her gloved hands against the heater. She glanced curiously at Logan.

Collecting his beaten leather jacket from the motel chair, he scratched at his jaw roughly, deep in thought. After he read over the British Columbia address for the thousandth time, he looked at her with an amused snort.

While they were both caught up in their varying degrees of time management and timekeeping, she wondered how many times someone could write the word 'time' before it grew wings and labelled itself annoying. Her best guess was the number six on her unsteady scale of procrastination.

"You cold again?" he chuckled, amused by her intolerance to the bog-standard Canadian winter.

Persistent snowstorms blanketed the wilderness, cityscapes, mountains, and lakes. Black ice wished to claim their lives. Followed by a teasing frostiness that only desired to steal her fingers. Then those semi-twisted snowflakes clung to sleet, then snow, before raining instead. She understood the beauty outside the window, but the weather seeped ice into her bones. Now depressing thoughts of Bobby flooded her mind and she focused on them until Logan's voice interrupted her dangerous sprint down a glacial memory lane.

Pulling his jacket on, he grabbed his bag and nodded to the door. "You'll get used to it, Kid. C'mon, the day's getting away from us."

Rogue watched him again, the sleepiness clouding her every waking thought as she locked those memories away. "It's five thirty in the morning."

"Exactly," he answered gruffly, unlocked the plywood door, and stepped out into the tundra.

Rolling her eyes, Rogue shuffled her chair backwards, collected her duffle bag and switched the ancient space heater off. Okay, so it wasn't the actual tundra, but the howling, icy wind caused her to shiver as she followed him outside. Glancing at the two single beds, the peeling seventies-style wallpaper, and the broken television one last time, she closed the door.

"Hey, wait a second. You can't just leave. You need to pay for the TV you broke," she called out in that lecturing tone of hers, almost slipping on a sheet of ice hidden under a foot of snow.

Logan swung around and with his quick reflexes, caught her arm before she took a tumble in the car lot. He kept a protective hold of her, hands on her shoulders as he steered her forwards. "You best keep your feet on the ground and your nose out of my business."

Half-jokingly, she responded with a slight smile that caused the dimples on her cheeks to appear. "But I watched you destroy the TV. It makes me a witness to a crime. Maybe even an accessory."

"The only goddamn crime being committed is letting Elk News across the border to pollute another shithole," he answered gruffly, unlocking the SUV.

She gazed around at Logan's definition of a shithole. Even through the darkness and snowflakes, she pictured the scenic, snowcapped Rocky Mountains framing the horizon. "You're difficult to please. It's beautiful here."

Opening the door, he gestured for her to climb into the car. "Focus on keeping those feet firmly on the ground." As she settled in her seat and pulled the seatbelt on, he looked at her. "How's your head? Any developments I should know about?"

"I'm fine," she lied, her go-to response when she wanted to do anything but discuss her mutation.

Logan sighed heavily and closed her door. While he traipsed around to the driver's side, he lit a cigar and checked the local address again. Shifting his thoughts to Victor's untrustworthiness, he grumbled under his breath for several seconds. Deciding to stake a claim on things and take one of those goddamn chances Jean always rabbited about, he memorised the coordinates and zip code. They were already in the correct province, twenty miles or so from the spot that felt familiar to him.

Winding her window down, Rogue peered out with chattering teeth. "Can you please put the heating on? I swear it's colder than one of Satan's rare trips to the North Pole."

He snorted at her return to those oddball religious phrases. "No Bible-thumping allowed on this trip," he warned her with a grin, opening the door.

"My mama and daddy are the religious ones," she answered softly, impatiently waiting for the key to turn in the ignition. When he looked at her, she sighed guiltily. "You know what I mean. The D'Ancantos liked religion. I guess they used it as a shield so their nasty asses could pretend they cared about me."

Grunting as he turned the heating on, he realised she hit a new milestone without him walking her through each step. Somewhere inside that overworked mind of hers, she understood her entire childhood had been a lie. While he keyed the zip code into the highly sophisticated satellite navigation system the X-Men patented and owned, he glanced at her again. "You sure you're okay?"

Her eyes narrowed curiously, observing him as she wondered why he cared. He didn't usually but the further they travelled together, the more he seemed to shed that bulky gruffness. Maybe the snow, ice and mountains suited him. "Are you always like this at five thirty in the morning?"

Chuckling, he drove them to the open road. "A straight answer would be nice."

"If you replace my copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover, I'll be forever kind and answer every question truthfully until the end of time."

Now he had doomsday Rogue to contend with. "You need your feet on the ground and your mind out of the gutter."

Wrinkling her nose, she stumbled onto a sudden conclusion that woke various personalities in her mind. "That wasn't fair of me."

"What wasn't?" he asked, his brow furrowing when he caught that distant look in her eyes.

She continued to gaze at him. "You do care, don't you?"

He reached over and snapped his fingers in front of her nose. With a satisfied grunt when she seemed more herself, he focused on the road. "You've got your own thoughts, Marie. Don't go chasing others."

"Oh, I thought you were going to tell me not to chase waterfalls," she sighed in mocking disappointment wearing a faint smile.

Eyeing her for a few, short seconds, he studied her face. "What the hell does that mean?"

"Logan, it's almost 2002. Surely, you've heard of that song with those lyrics. Everybody alive knows it. Even me and I worship country music." Her smile flowered as she warmed her hands at the heater. "You owe me tickets to the convention."

Sighing heavily, he confirmed his stance with a firm nod. Yeah, he would purchase those tickets for her. They both survived and he would keep his promise to die a torturous death through her music choices instead. "Do I look like somebody who follows the radio?"

"If you did, maybe you would stop making silly decisions when it comes to love," she lectured as she turned on the stereo.

Her actions earned two growls from Logan. Once for overstepping the boundaries and poking her nose into his business, and because he hated the current song. "I'm not taking advice from you."

She wagged her finger. "You always say that and then your heart's broken, crushed, smashed, shattered, fragmented, split in two and buried on a mountaintop during a glorious sunset. How am I doing?"

Shaking his head in irritation, he spotted a convenience store to his right and pulled over, parking in the deserted car lot. The bright lights from the building shone through the windshield and he reached over and shook her by the shoulders. "I've got no time for Gloria. Feet on the ground, kid. Feet on the goddamn ground."

Rogue stumbled onto her own personality and gazed at him with uncertainty. "Hey," she said softly, confused for a short moment. "Where are we?"

Sighing heavily, Logan shut the engine off and inhaled a deep lungful of smoke. He checked his jacket pockets and pulled out a wad of cash that belonged to her. "Here," he said gruffly, handing it over. "Don't spend it all at once."

Turning the tatty ten-and-twenty-dollar bills in her gloved hands, her nose wrinkled as she focused on her memories. She noticed one of the bills was marked with a stick figure and a pair of large breasts. That meant it came from a particular patron at Jimmy's Bar and Grill. "Is this mine? The money you confiscated in Meridian?"

He nodded again and opened the door. "Best get some breakfast and eat it on the road."

A half-frozen Rogue made her way inside the convenience store, ignoring the dubious-looking hotdogs on the counter. The sight made her shudder because Gloria was a vegetarian. Shaking further personalities from her mind, she wandered along the aisles and watched Logan outside. He dropped a cigar on the snowy ground and crushed it under his boot. Litterbug. Smiling to herself, she paused at the end of the aisle and noticed her favourite candy on special offer. Who said the perfect breakfast didn't exist?

Logan settled beside her in the car and turned the heating on. He eyed her suspiciously several times, his eyebrows shooting to his hairline when one of the paper bags on her knee spilt its contents. "What the hell's a Sour Patch Kid?" he asked, rooting around in the other five bags and finding nothing but packets carrying the same name.

"The perfect candy," she replied gently, a little annoyed as she fought to put her seatbelt on in an overcrowded personal space. "They were on offer, ninety-nine cents a bag. What did you buy?"

He snatched two bags of beef jerky from his jacket pocket and tossed them to her. "Real food," he answered firmly and turned the key in the ignition.

She glanced at him with an amused smile as she read the ingredients on the back of the beef jerky packet. The only reading she allowed herself to do until she purchased another copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover.


The twenty-mile drive further north brought frozen temperatures and quiet contemplation to the pair. Rogue spun the heating dial sky-high and brushed her hands together fast enough to ignite a fire as she considered moving to the equator. While Logan's gaze snapped left to right, taking in the sights of landmarks and several out-of-business buildings. The closer they travelled to the address Victor gave him, the more comfortable he felt in his familiar surroundings. His head ticked over, not with time, but with hopeful thoughts of reclaiming his long-forgotten memories. He glanced at the kid, snorting to himself when he spotted her eating a second bag of candy.

Eventually, she abandoned her quest to stuff herself full of Sour Patch Kids and gazed around them when the vehicle stopped. They were parked at the foot of a dirt track, feet away from a mailbox overflowing with letters, leaflets, and junk mail. She looked at Logan, waiting for him to say something profound.

Stepping out of the car, Logan scowled as he opened the crooked mailbox. Envelopes poured onto his feet and the wooden stake in the ground snapped. The mailbox tumbled to the ground, and he heaved a sigh, scratching at his jaw. As he crouched to pick up the mass of papers, he checked the names and addresses. James Howlett. Somebody named Kayla. Suddenly, a scene played in his head. A woman with long, dark hair on the ground. Dead. Blood on her abdomen. Him cradling her body as he roared at the sky.

Unbuckling her seatbelt, Rogue watched him for the longest time in silence. He didn't move from the spot, and she wondered if he was frozen solid. Venturing outside into the arctic landscape, her tennis shoes crunching across the snow and ice as she wandered slowly over to him. "Logan?" she whispered.

Her voice snapped him out of his thoughts, and he stood, carrying the letters over to her. "Dump them somewhere safe," he ordered, handing them over and going to rescue the mailbox from the side of the road.

The pained look in his eyes worried her and she continued to gaze at him while stuffing the mail inside the trunk. Reaching for one of the letters, she read the name attached to it. James Howlett. Who was James Howlett? No insightful words left Logan's lips and he gestured for her to get in the car before she froze to death.

He wondered if his claws were responsible for the dark-haired woman's death. With those troubling thoughts hanging over his head like a storm cloud, he drove them up to the house, concerned about what they would find. When he parked the car and cut the engine, he looked at Rogue with a steady scowl. "Stay put," he ordered, passing her the keys. "Lock the doors and don't move until I come back. Understood?"

She nodded and looked around, spotting the wooden cabin ahead of them. Ordinary. That's how she would describe it. It seemed ordinary. Made of wood. It appeared safe. No one was around. Just a cabin. One house. Modern, almost. There were trees on one side. Perhaps a mountain view on the other. She couldn't be certain until the sun rose. As she watched Logan leave, the frozen air caused her to shiver again. She slipped the key into the ignition, locked the doors behind him and turned the heating on full blast.

Logan sniffed the air several times, focusing on the scents. Tracking nothing of any note or danger, he traipsed toward the house and felt that overfamiliarity washing over him again. Almost in a trance, he reached the porch and traced his fingers across a painted sign secured to the wall. Another scene played in his mind. The woman with dark hair painted the welcome sign as he grumbled about the locals being unwelcome until the end of time.

His brow furrowed and with the toe of his boot, he nudged one of the rotten timbers under his feet. It creaked and through a hole in the rotten wood, he spotted the glint of a key. Snatching it, he gave it the once over with his eyes and unlocked the door.

When he stepped inside the house, he felt a notable chill in the air, but zero scents apart from the unmistakable smell of rotten food. Almost heading to the exit because of the overpowering stench, he fought against the urge to hightail it back to the vehicle and covered his nose as he ventured further into the home.

That familiar tug urged him to step closer to the kitchen cabinets and he spotted dirty dishes still resting in the skink. Shaking his head, he looked around again. His gaze rested on a set of eight photos that littered the far wall opposite the stone fireplace.

His hands dropped to his side, and he walked toward the photos. He recognised the dark-haired woman laughing, smiling, and beaming happily beside him. In each picture, they looked at peace – a feeling he craved since he lost his memories. "Kayla?" he muttered under his breath but still the full story illuded him.

"Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene," Rogue sang along quietly to the radio as she picked up the packets of Sour Patch Kids from the footwell. The sun began to rise, and she sat up, gasping at the view to her right. "Oh lord, it's beautiful."

She gazed at the mountain, the snow hugging the ridges and peaks. It was the most beautiful scenery she had ever seen. Just beautiful. The beauty struck her dumb and try as she might, her mind stuttered to find another adjective to use. She failed to spot a pensive-looking Logan walking back to the car.

He rapped his knuckles impatiently against the window and startled her. "Open up."

Unlocking the door for him, she pointed at the view. "Have you seen that?"

Glancing over his shoulder, he spotted the Rockies bathed in the glow of the winter sunrise. Nodding, he sat down and shut his door, searching for a cigar while he pocketed the house key. "I must have done," he answered gruffly as he recalled the photos on the wall.


Whack-a-mole. A game invented by idiots for idiots. Rogue rolled her eyes as she dropped another dime into the machine inside the grocery store. She doubted Logan's thoughts on her latest pastime would receive any traction or applause. Clutching the mallet, she bashed away, desperate to beat her latest score. Five goes and she still trailed behind her soaring ambitions to pummel the current leader.

A boy stood beside her, leaning lazily against the brick wall with his hands in his pockets. His hair was fashioned into a floppy, blonde curtain. All the rage in the late nineties. It still seemed to be the current hairstyle in the tiny British Columbia town. With his pale green eyes that girls often swooned over, he watched her fail to beat his record. "I haven't seen you around here before."

With her full concentration on the game, Rogue only answered after it ended in defeat. Sighing in irritation, she dropped another dime into the slot. "I'm new, I guess. Just visiting a little house on the hill."

"What hill?" he asked, intrigued by the lock of blonde hair on her head and her lack of proper winter clothes.

Shrugging, she picked the mallet up again, determined to win. "The house on the hill. It's wooden. Has a beautiful view of the mountains. It's been abandoned for years. There's a dirt track. Does that help?"

He laughed because that described most houses on the outskirts of the town. "You're American. I bet you're armed to the teeth."

"Why does everyone think that?" she sighed, rolling her eyes. "We can live without guns sometimes. It's not like we're all born clutching one."

Grinning at her prickly response, he went to help her grip the mallet, but she immediately pulled away. "What's wrong?" he asked, holding up his hands to show he wasn't a threat.

She jumped straight to her favourite automatic response and spotted Logan paying for the groceries. "Nothing."

"You're strange," the boy told her, retrieving the mallet and finishing the game. "What's your name?"

Naivety always found trouble. This time, she chose to keep her details under wraps and tucked inside a place no one would ever check: Her bra. Just kidding. That unspoken comment flowed from the thoughts of Eddie the Car Lot Boy, not her as she stood blushing beside the whack-a-mole game as another boy stared at her.

"Rogue," Logan called, carrying two brown paper bags of food and drink to the exit.

She frowned faintly at Logan's retreating form and tucked her hair nervously behind her ears. "Sorry, I have to go."

As she retraced his footsteps back to the car, she wondered how long they would stay here, in the frozen north. Winter in New York chased the warmth from her body sometimes, but British Columbia stripped everything from her senses until she felt nothing but death peering over her shoulder. Hmm. That sounded dramatic in her mind and all the personalities agreed.

When she reached the car, she loitered by the trunk and watched him put the groceries away. "Did you have to do that?"

He eyed her with a heavy sigh, still working on the Kayla questions in his head. "Do what?"

"Nothing," she muttered, searching through the bags, and finding nothing but prepackaged and ready-to-eat food.

Logan suspected half the appliances back at the house would cause issues, especially the fridge freezer. He would turf that goddamn stench-filled shit into the snow before it killed him. "Come on, we've got a busy day ahead."

She watched him with a curious glance, but he didn't elaborate on his words. Rolling her eyes to the heavens, she wondered for a moment what life had planned for the rest of the day. She hoped for fuzzy socks, warm pyjamas, and a roaring fire. Perhaps even a book. You already knew her favourite story. She would read those extra steamy scenes and eat Sour Patch Kids until her stomach ached and her eyes dropped out of her head. That's what her mama used to say. Read smut, watch porn, or use dirty words, and the Devil would drive the eyes from your face and the mouth from your nose. It never made any sense then, and remembering it now made her realise Priscilla D'Ancanto had issues with anything and everything.

No fluffy socks or comfy, snug pyjamas greeted Rogue when she entered the house. The flies, the stink, and the photos of Logan on the wall drew either complaints or curiosity. She almost suffocated herself with her sleeve as she wandered over to the wall and gazed at the framed pictures. Horrible smells could float away while she peeked into his past.

As she studied the pictures, something fascinated her. They appeared happy together. The look on Past Logan's face was something she struggled to read at first and the longer she stared, the clearer it became. He was carefree.

Logan, meanwhile, struggled against the overpowering stench that clogged every inch of the house. Opening all the windows and doors, he unplugged the fridge freezer and groused a running commentary of curses and threats to whoever the fuck had left this shit here to rot. He pushed the white appliance to the nearby back door and shoved it forcefully free of the house and onto the porch, growling when it punctured a giant hole into the decking.

Pulling herself away from the photos, Rogue found an old can of air freshener on the countertop and followed him. She sprayed and sprayed, close to dying from the smell of rotten food. "How out of date is it?"

Coughing roughly and spitting on the ground, Logan grimaced as his senses continued to pick up the stench. "Almost twenty years judging by some of the mail," he answered gruffly, frowning at her when she sprayed his jacket with that goddamn fruity scent.

Rogue wandered inside again, spraying every inch of the house. Dead bugs littered the windowsills, and she pulled a disgusted face. She hated bugs, spiders, and anything that crawled. Bobby crawled towards her once with his creeping hands. Shuddering at the memory, she continued to walk from one room to the next, armed with the air freshener and then a can of bug spray she found under the sink.

Later that evening, once the sun set, Logan tossed several more logs into the fireplace. A freshly showered Rogue settled on the dusty rug and felt at peace. She crossed her legs and watched the flames flicker and the logs crackle.

Sitting on the couch behind her, he sighed and reached forward, tapping her on the shoulder. "You and that death wish of yours need to take a few scoots back," he warned, knowing damn well she would easily set herself on fire with that clumsiness of hers.

Brushing a hand through her damp hair, she scooted backwards and smiled at him. "You know what, Logan? I can run my life well without your help, thank you kindly."

"Uh-huh," he answered disbelievingly as he snapped the cap off a bottle of beer.

She shifted onto her knees so she could peer at the photos behind him again. "You look happy with her."

With a heavy sigh, he handed her the bottle to hold, left the couch and took the photos down. Balancing them in his hands, like a kindergartner's model of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, he carried them to the basement door.

Rogue drank a small, sneaky sip of his beer and winced when she heard the noise of the framed pictures tumbling down the basement stairs. "You didn't have to do that."

He muttered about her goddamn nosiness under his breath and returned to the couch. Taking the bottle, he eyed her suspiciously for a moment and quirked one of his eyebrows in an unspoken question.

She turned around, facing the fireplace again. A small glance over her shoulder confirmed that he continued to look intently in her direction. "Is there anything I can do for you?"

He snorted at her sassy show of attitude. "Yeah, stay away from my beer."

Offering him a tiny shrug in response, pretending she had no idea what he meant, she faced the flames. "Can we please talk about my book? Remember the one you threw out the car window twice?"

Logan leaned backwards, half-slumping into the comfortable cushions. He eyed the clock on the wall. It too seemed as dead as his relationship with Jean Grey. "Go to bed."

"I'm not even tired," she complained from her spot on the rug, stifling another yawn.

"Is that so?" he said with a knowing look, watching her yawn again.

Rogue climbed carefully to her feet and wandered around the room until she grew bored, checking drawers curiously and craftily while he watched the burning logs shift in the fireplace. As he lost himself in his musings, she found an old teacher's ID card that matched the face of the woman in the photos. "What kind of surname is Silverfox?" she asked, stirring him from his thoughts with all the force of a mean left hook.

Looking over his shoulder, Logan heaved his heaviest sigh yet. "Go to bed, Marie," he ordered roughly, leaving no room for an argument.

Her face dropped as she shed every pleasant thought. She put the ID card down and shut the drawer with a quiet huff. Climbing the staircase slowly, she craved her favourite book to send her into a peaceful sleep. Instead, she had to make do with those bland books she found abandoned on the nightstand. After all, nutrition, fitness, a healthy style and how to be an enlightened art teacher didn't scream steamy fun.

Logan finished his beer and busied himself turning the couch into a bed. It looked simple on the instructions he found in a junk drawer in the kitchenette, but the goddamn catch kept sticking. Fetching another well-earned beer, he contemplated clawing the couch to pieces and booting it down the basement steps. It shouldn't be this complicated. He lived in a school, for fuck's sake. Hadn't he picked up any book smarts from those kids he hated?

While he fought a losing battle with his makeshift bed, his hearing was attacked by a high-pitched scream from upstairs. Deadly claws instantly tore through his knuckles, and he snarled. Racing upstairs, he sniffed the scents around him, urgently searching for an intruder. When he burst into the only bedroom, he spotted Rogue balancing on the bed with her socked feet, an arm held high, and a gloved finger pointed to the corner.

"What's wrong?" he growled, his eyes snapping from one corner to the next.

She whispered one terrifying word that sent chills down her spine. "Spider!"

Blinking slowly, he stared at her as the answer sunk into his head. "A spider?"

Nodding, she inched closer to the edge of the mattress and further away from the nightstand. "An enormous spider. A. Huge. Deadly. Scary. Spider. I can't stay here, Logan."

He sheathed his claws and closed the distance between them, holding out his hands for her to take. "Don't be stupid. It's just a spider."

She backed away, shaking her head. "I'll climb out the window if I have to."

With a warning growl, he scooped her into his arms and carried her onto the landing, avoiding the spider. Setting her down safely on her feet, he eyed her with gruff concern. "No climbing out of goddamn windows. You keep doing that, you'll break your neck."

She fled down the stairs, terrified the spider would follow her. "I'm staying down here where it's safe."

"Spiders have legs, Kid," he explained gruffly with a smirk.

"I'm not listening to you," she called in a sing-song voice, sitting on the couch with the bottle of beer.

Stepping inside the bedroom, he rolled up his shirt sleeves and shifted the nightstand in search of the goddamn spider. As a thought entered his mind, he shouted down the stairs. "They usually come in pairs." He frowned when he heard a familiar clink of a bottle. "And you better put that beer down if you know what's good for you."

If spiders came in twos, she would never sleep in that room again. Sneaking another sip of his beer, she slammed the bottle down on the kitchen table, so he had no trouble hearing it. "Happy now?"

"No," he grunted because he wasn't pleased searching for a spider in a house that he owned but had no recollection of building or buying.

Inching the bulky piece of furniture further forward, he looked behind it and frowned. A set of polaroids wrapped in an elastic band were on the floor coated with cobwebs and dust. He snatched them into his hand and blew the dirt away. A woman's face appeared from the past. Blonde. Blue eyed. Attractive. He had no idea who it belonged to.

With his finger, he brushed the last of the dust away. His eyebrows furrowed. In every photo, she smirked confidentiality at the camera, topless and with a decent pair of breasts. At the bottom of each polaroid was a date from November 1984 until July 1985 marked in thick, black pen strokes, alongside the words 'Miss me?'

Clearing his throat, he looked through the photos again. Only the top half of her was ever shown. He wished he could recall her name because they must have shared some heated moments between the sheets. She seemed lively judging from the sparkle in her eyes and the colourful beads she wore around her neck in the last photo. Maybe it was taken at a party or something in the South? Probably Mardi Gras which sounded like a noisy hell to him.

Tucking the photos into his back pocket, he returned to his spider search. After a full hour spent shifting furniture, Logan eventually found the hairy intruder and killed it with a book titled: Teaching Art. The Dos and Don'ts to Painting a Pretty Picture with a Purple Paintbrush.

Tossing the book in the nearby trashcan, he righted the furniture and headed downstairs. Snorting in amusement, he found Rogue asleep on his bed. At least she knew how to follow instructions when they were written down and nearly twenty years out of date. Grabbing his beer, he sighed at her. She'd drunk a few mouthfuls, he could tell. Shaking his head, he settled down at the kitchen table and watched her sleep. He had a whole kid to take care of. Him. An asshole with a kid. He didn't know where to start, but after some thorough thought, figured he could begin with a lesson tomorrow. It was simple, really. Stay away from his goddamn beer because he didn't want to share.