The Time in Between

by Kristen Ashley

  Absolutely not, Coert typed.

  I darted a hand out to close my fingers around his wrist before he hit send.

  I looked at him. Coert looked at me.

  “It’s fine,” I told him.

  “It is fuckin’ not,” he told me.

  “Honey,” I slid up to get closer to face to face with him, “you said she’s a good mom. But you didn’t have to tell me that. I see it in Janie. I’m watching Beauty and the Beast with her daughter while you’re on a callout. I’m going to be spending every other week with her girl. She’s entitled to meet me and do it without you glowering at her and waiting for her to mess up.”

  “I’m not going to glower,” he bit out.

  “You’re glowering right now,” I shared.

  “I’m pissed at her right now,” he returned.

  “Let us do this,” I urged gently. “I have this. Her reason for having a concern about this sleepover is valid. Just,” I slid farther up to get eye to eye with him, “let us do this.”

  “You forgive. You let people shit all over you without calling them on it. I’m not saying Kim’s gonna do that. What I’m saying is, you won’t put a stop to it if she does. But if I’m around and it starts, I will.”

  “I don’t do that.”

  “Baby, you forgave me and I destroyed your entire life.”

  I blinked.

  “And you came back here and I was a total dick to you repeatedly in order to drive you away again, and you not once called me on that, not even once did we discuss it after we got back together. You just let it go, forgave me without saying the words. So I hear you but I gotta say no. This meet happens with me,” he finished.

  I felt him move his hand and my hold on his wrist tightened.

  “I thought we got past that,” I shared when he again focused on me.

  “We did.”

  “We didn’t since you just brought it up.”

  “Being past it doesn’t negate it happened,” he stated.

  “Coert—”

  He tossed his phone aside and twisted his wrist from my hold but only to cup my face with his hand when he was free.

  “Look at me,” he ordered.

  “I am,” I pointed out the obvious since I was staring right into his eyes.

  “This is it. This is me. I’m your man. The man who loves you. The man you love. This is who I am. This is how it is. This is how it’s gonna be. And if you don’t understand what I’m saying to you, I’ll spell it out. My job is to look after you. My job is to protect you. From bad shit. Or just from the crap of life happening. It’s always been that since the first time we kissed. And when I don’t, and there will be times when that’s out of my control, like arguably that whole fiasco we endured, I’m gonna feel that. It’s gonna live in me. I’ll be able to hack it but that doesn’t mean it’ll go away. And you have to let me feel that because it’s just plain . . . me.”

  My heart was beating fast, my stomach was warming, but my lips asked, “Do I get to protect you in return?”

  “Baby, you forgave me. Yeah. That’s your job too. And trust me, you’re on it.”

  “Then let me take Kim,” I requested.

  He closed his eyes, shook his head once, opened them and said, “Do you not get why that has to be a no?”

  “This is about you. This is about you and Janie. And this is about the future of you and me and Janie. Not Kim. You and me and Janie. We’re setting a different precedent now. And I feel the right way forward is if I meet Kim alone. Please, Coert, I understand you. I promise. I love what you said more than I can ever express. But even so, I beg you to let me do this. Because I believe it’s the right thing and I can do this and I want very badly for you to let me. But it’s more. I want you to trust me to do this and in doing that, show you trust my instincts when it comes to protecting not only you, but you and Janie.”

  “Then you can meet Kim on your own.”

  He didn’t even wait a second to answer me.

  Not a second.

  I didn’t know whether to burst into tears or attack him and rip his clothes off.

  I didn’t do either.

  I said, “God, I love you so fucking much.”

  His lips twitched. “Earned the F-word from my proper Cady.”

  I felt my brows draw together. “I’m not proper.”

  “Honey, you used to curse all the time. I’m not sure I’ve heard worse than a ‘damn’ from you since Christmas.”

  “Are you honestly teasing me about cursing right now?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he whispered before he dipped in and brushed his mouth against mine. “I am.”

  “Text Kim back with my number so we can set up a time,” I ordered.

  “Thinkin’ my Cady’s feelin’ bossy. Wonder who’s getting tied up tonight.”

  “My headboard doesn’t have slats.”

  “Worth braving the cold to ride back to my house then.”

  He was not wrong, and Maine cold was cold but it would be very much worth it.

  I could argue both ways on the tying up score and we’d now had more experience with it. We were currently even. Me twice. Coert twice.

  Maybe we should try wrestling to see who got to tie the other up.

  He was stronger but I’d learned the last weeks I could do things that Coert found very distracting.

  I’d suggest that later.

  “Text her, Coert.”

  “Get me a beer while I do, baby.”

  I gave him a glare but started to move away to get him a beer.

  He caught me, rolled me to my back and laid a hot and heavy one on me.

  Then he let me go and said, “Beer.”

  I didn’t have it in me anymore to glare so I didn’t.

  In other words, Coert did things I found very distracting too.

  Coert turned his attention to his phone.

  Midnight accompanied me as I got my man a beer.

  Two days later, I made sure to be just a wee bit late so Kim could get there first and sit where she wanted to sit so she felt more comfortable.

  This wasn’t strategic.

  This was sympathetic.

  I had it all. The good man, and every other week, his beautiful daughter. I had a bright future—marriage and another child and living a life having everything I ever wanted.

  I could afford to be sympathetic.

  I saw her right away in a booth a few down. She was facing the door.

  I also saw right away that she was prettier in real life than in the pictures Patrick’s private investigator took of her.

  She was studying me as I walked her way and she did it unsmiling.

  I did not take this as a good sign.

  That was until her eyes got wide and I realized she didn’t know who I was until I stopped at her booth.

  “Cady?” she asked.

  “Kim,” I replied. “Nice to meet you.”

  She slid out and offered her hand. “Yeah, you too.”

  We’d barely separated and sat in the booth and I was still setting my purse beside me when the waitress showed.

  We ordered drinks and Kim said, “Sorry, this is rude and it’s rushing you but I don’t have a lot of time for lunch so have you been here before? Can you order? Or do you need to look at a menu?”

  She was nice about it but I still got worried what it said that she was pushing me to order when I hadn’t even taken off my coat.

  Still, I looked to the waitress and said, “Patty melt.”

  “Oh thank God,” Kim stated immediately. “You didn’t order a salad making me feel like I need to order a salad.”

  Okay, that was promising.

  She turned to the waitress. “Reuben.”

  “Gotcha,” the waitress said and moved away.

  I pulled off my gloves, scarf and coat and tucked them beside me on the bench seat.

  “Let me guess, the lag time between texts, you had to talk Coert into letting you come alone.”

  I opened my mout
h, closed it, opened it and closed it.

  She smiled at me.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” she decreed. “And not surprised. When he and I were together, I got in a fight with my sister. Big drama. She was totally in the wrong, by the way,” she shared chattily. “And Coert was pissed about it. To save face, when she reached out to apologize, she wasn’t nice about it even though I knew she was reaching out to apologize and not doing it nice in order to save face. That just pissed Coert off more. He wouldn’t listen to a word I said to explain where she was. To end, he didn’t let me go meet her alone. Flatly refused. He came with me and stared her down the whole time. Weirdly, this didn’t tick her off. She already loved him. It just made her love him more.”

  Something slid over her face, she looked away, gave a slight cough and then looked back.

  “So I get it,” she finished.

  This was a strange opening and I didn’t know where to go with it because there was no missing the something that slid over her face was her missing how protective Coert could be, and I had a bad feeling about that.

  “I screwed up and I know it,” she announced.

  I continued to stare at her, still unable to speak, now because I wasn’t sure precisely which screw up she was referring to and I was entirely taken aback she’d just announce she knew she did it (even though which “it” was in question).

  “I got that text from Coert saying you were sleeping over and I sat on it because I knew it wasn’t smart to reply right away because I was feeling sorry for myself that he found someone, or rather, you came back and I was still alone. But instead of sitting on it and getting my head together, I sat on it and stewed about it and let myself get angry and before I did something smart, like call my mom and talk it through, I did something stupid and sent him a text I knew would set him off.”

  I decided to try to say something.

  “Kim—”

  That was as far as I got.

  She lifted a hand and waved it in my direction.

  “I know this is okay. I know this is right. I know this is healthy. You and Coert, I mean. And not just for Coert, for Janie. And I know this because my mom and dad split up when I was thirteen and it wasn’t good. Not for us kids. Not for them. It was ugly and got uglier. And then my mom got a boyfriend and the weird part about that was, it didn’t get better at first. My dad got pissed and went off and got himself a girlfriend, I think mostly to make her angry like he was. And now, that woman is my stepmom and she’s awesome. They’re happy as clams and have been for years. And mom went through five boyfriends before she found the one who was a keeper and they’re happy as clams too. Mom and Dad get along again. It’s all good and has been for a long time.”

  “I appreciate you sharing all this with me but just so you’re aware, I understood why you’d want to meet me before anything progressed with me spending more time with Janie. Being a bigger part of her life. Communicating on a deeper level who I am to her father.”

  “Glad about that, Cady,” she replied. “But I think it’s important that you understand that I get where this is at. Happy parents, happy kids. That was one of the reasons I was trying to stay cool about it all because I lived through it and I knew the best thing for the kid is to have parents who are where they want to be, including being with someone who makes them happy. Saying that, falling down on that with my text to Coert and what was behind it is actually a bigger issue.”

  Oh no.

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

  I asked anyway because I had to.

  “What’s that?”

  “I was . . .” she trailed off, said no more, looked to the window at our sides, over my head, around the diner, giving the appearance she’d beg for the waitress to show with our drinks, before she finally came back to me. “Nervous as all hell about meeting you.”

  This surprised me.

  “I think you can imagine that was my same feeling,” I told her.

  She couldn’t imagine that and showed me this by openly displaying shock.

  “You’re Janie’s mother, you’re a part of Coert’s life,” I said softly. “I know he shared our story, but in the now, where things are going, it’s important to us both, to all of us, that you and I get along.”

  “You know he shared your story and I don’t know it, but I could guess, he shared our story with you.”

  Fortune wasn’t shining on Kim but it was on me because our waitress took that moment to arrive at our table with our drinks, giving both of us a distraction that would allow me to hide my reaction.

  However, when the waitress left, she pressed the issue.

  “He did, didn’t he?”

  I wasn’t going to tell her about Patrick’s private detective and townsfolk talk. I also wasn’t sure how Coert would feel about me disclosing our private conversations, even if they were about Kim.

  But as she was being honest, I thought it safe to say, “I’m aware of the story.”

  “So you know what I did.”

  I knew what she did.

  Times two.

  I nodded.

  “So, obviously, you being who you are to him, who you’ve always been, and you two finding your way back to each other, I’m cast in the role I created myself, being the evil ex,” she declared.

  Oh my God.

  I leaned toward the table and whispered, “Kim—”

  I again got no more words out because she again lifted her hand and waved it at me.

  “It’s the bed I made. I get it.”

  Coert was right.

  She was still feeling guilt.

  Quite a bit of it.

  It could be said she should.

  But then again, we all needed to move on from mistakes we’d made in our lives, and as I’d learned, sometimes even making them, something beautiful comes of it and there was nothing more beautiful in the world than a little girl like Janie.

  Therefore I advised, “I think you need to move on.”

  She wasn’t ready to do that and I knew it when she didn’t do it.

  She explained.

  Thoroughly.

  “I told you about my mom and dad. That’s a bad time for a kid. A girl. Thirteen?” She shook her head. “I was dealing with being a girl at thirteen and all that came with that, and then my mom and dad break up and we have to sell our house because neither of them can afford it on their own and me and my sisters’ and brother’s life was totally changed. Mom told me I was a good kid. I didn’t act out before that. She hates it that what happened with her and Dad was the catalyst for me starting to do stupid stuff. But she gets it. What I didn’t get is that they were miserable before they broke up. They fought, tried to hide it but sometimes we heard. In the end, they weren’t even comfortable being around each other. We felt that. I just chose to ignore it because I wanted what I wanted. I loved them both so I wanted Dad and Mom with me all the time. So in the end, Mom might be right but she’s also wrong, because I was selfish and I had to be that way before it all happened, wanting just what I wanted. Not wanting them to go their separate ways so they could be happy.”

  “I think any child of that age would feel the same way and probably act on it, Kim. You may be being too hard on yourself.”

  “You can say that, but then I poked holes in Coert’s condoms because I knew he was pulling away from me,” she retorted.

  I shut my mouth in an effort not to make a sound at hearing that brutal honesty straight from her lips.

  She caught it and said, “Yeah. One thing to be a kid acting out because your parents have split and another thing to be an adult acting selfishly to hold on to a man who doesn’t want to keep hold on you.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “But I can guess you would understand why I don’t disagree.”

  “You, my mom, my sisters and you can imagine what my brother had to say about it.”

  This surprised me, so I asked, “Sorry?”

  “They lost their minds,” she shared. “At th
at and the time I threatened to move away and take Janie. They loved Coert and they didn’t want me to lose him but they loved him and it was what it was. Then I did what I did and they flipping freaked. After the court thing, Mom eventually said if I didn’t sort myself out, she’d disown me. Coert doesn’t know this, but it was ugly. Things with my brother are still not the same. And that’s what finally got me to take a good look at how I was acting and make a change. Mom told me I’d decided when she and Dad got divorced that even bad attention was attention and I wanted as much of that as I could get to try to make myself feel better about something I couldn’t control. I looked it up. Read some books. And she was right. It was all about attempting to control something I couldn’t control even if I did it in an unhealthy way. Coert pulling away from me, pull him back even if I have to do it in a way he’d despise me. Have a baby that reminds me daily of the stunt I pulled, try to force a reconciliation I know he’s not ever going to go for just to try to force the situation to change, create a family I’ve no hope to create in an attempt to erase what I did.”

  I couldn’t believe she was sharing all this with me.

  I took a sip of my Diet Coke before I asked, “Have you told Coert any of this?”

  She shook her head.

  “Maybe you should,” I advised carefully.

  “What will it matter?” she queried. “What’s done is done.”

  “He says you’re a good mom.”

  She stared at me.

  I kept at her.

  “He says you’re a good mom and there was a reason he spent so much time with you. Until the texting, he was relieved you were being so wonderful about all of this with Janie. He didn’t say he was glad to have the woman back that he enjoyed having a part of his life, but if I’d given it thought, I could read that into what he’s said. He’s grateful you’ve been lovely through our reunion, letting us have that, facilitating things with Janie along the way.” I dropped my voice. “He cares about you, Kim. It might not be what you’d hoped but it’s a beautiful thing regardless, for you and for Janie and for what the three of us can give her if we allow that to be the foundation for us all. He’d want to know how much work went into you finding your way back to you.”

  “I get that he had every reason to be but he was really angry with me after all I did and he didn’t let that go, Cady, not for a long time. So it isn’t super easy to share things with him.”