by Malcom, Anne
Of course I hadn’t drunk two bottles by myself, no matter how tempting it became after Robert’s phone call. Eliza and Karen had helped, eyes widening when they saw the label, even though it was red.
My five-dollar bottles personally offended them.
Rosie and the rest drank margaritas. An impressive amount for women their sizes, and none of them seemed even the least bit tipsy as they left with their husbands and children.
I was definitely a lot tipsy, having gone over my two-glass limit. Nathan had stayed up well past his bedtime, but I managed to get him to bed at a time that would hopefully afford him enough sleep.
The refrigerator was stocked with plenty of leftovers, even though I’d sent a lot home with everyone I could. I knew that Nathan and I physically couldn’t eat that much food before it went bad and I had a bit of a weird thing with throwing food out.
I had all but had to kick Eliza and Karen out of the house, them being the last to leave because they had the shortest distance to go. Eliza had tried to insist on staying the night, but I had managed to lie convincingly and tell her I was okay. I doubted she believed the lie, but she knew that the Greenstone Security guys had installed the fancy new security system—that Luke taught me how to use before my second glass of wine—and that I had Duke down the street.
I hadn’t thought about Lance, not properly at least, until Eliza and Karen had left, making me promise to shout out my window if anything went down.
Because of course I didn’t have a phone now.
I couldn’t afford to buy a new one, but I needed one since we didn’t have a landline. Fury ran through my veins at the fact Lance had smashed my crappy, third-hand phone because he heard the tail end of something that shouldn’t have even meant anything to him.
Sure, decent guys—if that’s what Lance was—hearing the horrible stuff men like Robert could spurt at women likely were going to have a reaction. But a reaction like smashing my phone and storming off without a word?
Not cool.
Infuriating.
And really frickin’ confusing.
Lance didn’t strike me as someone who lost his temper and smashed things. Everything about him was controlled, cold. I had only seen glimpses of what might be emotion from the man. Might.
He definitely made it clear that I was nothing but a job to him. He made it clear he was a man who controlled every situation and that he wasn’t shaken by anything.
If the pieces of my phone on my back step were anything to go by, he was shaken by that phone call.
Which was what made all this confusing.
He had to feel something about me in order to lose it like that. He had to feel something beyond the indifference that leaked from his pores.
I tortured myself with that truth. I tortured myself with that remaining bottle of fancy wine, with the food that filled up my fridge, with the lack of cell phone.
While I tortured myself, I waited. Because surely he was coming back. He couldn’t just smash my phone and walk off, never to be seen again. There had to be an explanation, or at the very least his cold presence informing me he was back to do his job.
Or that he’d killed my husband and the father of my child.
The look I’d glimpsed on his face just before he’d disappeared from sight had punctured the numb state I’d been in. At the time, I didn’t process it. But with all my crazy replaying, I realized what that expression was.
It was death.
He was capable of killing someone, I knew that deep down. I’d known it all along. Heck, he’d offered to kill Robert the first frickin’ day I met him. And I’d let him around my child. I’d berate myself for that bad parenting a lot later, when this was all a memory. When Lance was a memory.
I ignored the stab that came with that thought and focused on a particular memory. A fresher one.
That look on Lance’s face.
The one that had me pacing the house, half expecting someone to knock on my door and tell me Robert was dead. I was half hoping for that. What was wrong with me? That wasn’t who I was, wishing people dead because of how they’d wronged me. But that wasn’t it. I didn’t care how Robert had hit me, abused me, defiled me. I cared that he posed a threat to my son. And it was the mother in me that called for the blood of anyone who harmed my child.
So I waited for news.
For Lance.
Neither one came.
Chapter Ten
When my alarm buzzed, I was awake.
Luckily, I still had an actual alarm clock unlike many people that relied purely on their phones. I bought it at a garage sale because it was kitschy and a faded gold that went with the rest of the décor in my room. My purple velvet comforter, the mishmash of throw pillows I’d collected over the years. Photos in gold frames all over my restored nightstands that I’d painted white and put gold accents on. There was an old armchair in the corner which had a furry ottoman in front of it, I’d sit there sometimes, just looking at the moon when it was full.
I’d sat at that chair for most of the night before I moved to my bed and tried to sleep.
It wasn’t my lack of phone that kept me up all night. Though that was a contributing factor.
It wasn’t even Robert’s phone call, as it should have been. It was Lance.
He was haunting me, torturing me and he’d never even spoken more than a handful of sentences to me.
My lack of sleep was a punishment I deserved for letting two different men penetrate my consciousness, my sanity.
I resolved as I sucked down the strongest coffee I could possibly make, that I would have a new strength when it came to Lance. That I would be professional with him as he was with me. I’d have a meeting with Keltan and inform him as much as I appreciated their services, I wouldn’t need Greenstone Security anymore. Though I didn’t know how effective that was going to sound since last night’s phone call kind of showed everyone that Robert wasn’t going to back away quietly.
I hadn’t expected him to.
I was still waiting for his father to get involved somehow, as he always had throughout our marriage, reminding me how powerful he was and how weak I was.
It was surprising to me that he hadn’t tried to use that power when I ran, taking his grandson with him. Jeffery Hudson was a lot of things, much like his son. Robert’s mother had died before I met him, breast cancer, so I never knew if she suffered like I had. I’d seen photos of her, beautiful, regal, always put together in a way suiting who she was. It was impossible to discern whether years of abuse hidden behind the picture-perfect smile.
But the fact that Jeffery knew what his son was doing to me, saw the bruises, and did nothing, told me all I needed to know. The way he treated me, looked at me and dismissed me told me more.
But he was different with Nathan. Almost warm. But not quite. It was clear he loved his grandson, and that scared me too. Because he loved Robert. And his love had nurtured a monster.
My son wouldn’t get that kind of love.
Not ever.
Jeffery had never tried to find us, with the tools at his disposal, he could have, showed me he loved his grandson in all the wrong kind of ways.
It was that wrong love that terrified me as I got Nathan breakfast, packed his lunch, making sure to put the last piece of pie in it.
Would he make an effort now? Now that his prized son had lost his battle to take Nathan from me?
I knew that Jeffery would use a lot more civilized means to steal my son from me. He was smarter than Robert. He’d use the law. He’d use his money and power to try and get me painted us an unfit mother, snatch my boy away from me in every way he could.
I wasn’t sure which one scared me more.
But I made sure none of that fear leaked onto my face the entire morning Nathan chatted to me through his oatmeal about what a great night he’d had last night and how he was going to tell all his friends and they’d be jealous.
I let my son’s simple happiness chase away the surface
fear. It worked better than coffee to wake me up, strengthen my resolve.
Robert might have brute strength and a badge. Jeffery might have money, power, influence. But there was nothing stronger than a mother’s love. Her determination.
Getting out of the house was somewhat of a production, making sure that Nathan had everything he needed, that he hadn’t decided to get changed into his Superman costume at the last minute, or gotten into my lipstick or any food item. Making sure I turned off all appliances—I was paranoid about setting the house on fire, we had renter’s insurance but still, it would destroy me—making sure that I didn’t have toothpaste on my mouth, that my clothes weren’t on inside out—that had happened multiple times—I had my keys, my purse, some semblance of sanity.
It wasn’t until we were out the door did I start looking for my keys to unlock my car. My keys weren’t there.
“Shit,” I hissed, pissed at myself for letting Lance’s presence, lingering or not, distract me to make me have to go back into the house and find them. For the hundredth time, I cursed myself for not taking the two seconds it would take to attach my house keys to my car keys.
When I looked up, I saw that my car wasn’t there.
“Fuck,” I said louder this time.
“I thought you said we weren’t allowed to say fuck, Mommy. Because our teeth will fall out if we do.” Nathan said. He squinted at me. “Your teeth aren’t falling out.”
I tried to focus on my kid and not the fact that someone had stolen my shitty car right out of the driveway. Who even does that? If you were going to put yourself at risk of going to prison for stealing a car, wouldn’t you make it worth it?
“Because adults are allowed to say it three times a year, if something really annoying happens,” I said, staring at the empty space where my car used to be, trying to figure out what the heck to do here. I had insurance, but I was sure that would take an age to come through and we needed a car like yesterday. I still had my new car fund, but that was allotted to going toward paying Keltan back.
“Annoying like our car driving away without us in it?” Nathan asked, following my stare.
“Yeah, just like that, buddy,” I said.
It was then that a black SUV pulled up at the curb.
Lance emerged.
I watched his entire journey from the curb to us, the troubles attached to my stolen car a memory. I was too busy thinking about how good his walk was. Like really great. Did he practice it? Or was it just a natural thing?
“Hey Captain! Our car drove off and we’re allowed to say fuck without our teeth falling out because it’s annoying,” my little bundle of joy greeted.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “We are not allowed to say it, only Mommy is, and you say it again then you’ll be having your hamburgers through straws because you won’t be able to chew with your bare gums.”
Nathan’s eyes widened. “I can eat my hamburgers with a straw?”
Okay, that didn’t work.
“Can you make sure he doesn’t like run into traffic or something while I call the police?” I asked Lance.
“Why you calling the police?” he asked, entire body wired.
“Um, if you hadn’t noticed, there’s an empty space where the car used to be. I didn’t figure out how to make it invisible like Ron did in Harry Potter. Someone decided to put a cherry on top of my sundae by stealing it.”
“Can I eat a sundae through a straw too?” Nathan piped in.
“No one stole it,” Lance said.
I stilled. “What?”
“The AC is broken,” he said as if that was an answer.
I put my hand on my hip and pushed my glasses to the top of my head so he could see my narrowed eyes. Something in me told me what was coming next.
“I took it into the shop.”
“You took it into the shop,” I repeated, this time not sounding all dreamy and idiotic repeating his words. My voice was sharp holding warning. “And you didn’t think that this was something to consult me, the owner of the car?”
A muscle in his jaw ticked. He seemed irritated. Good for him. I was pissed. “You can’t be drivin’ in a car with broken AC in the middle of summer,” was his response.
I took a breath. Another one. And then I looked to my kid who was standing there patiently eavesdropping like the little sponge he was.
“Nathan, please go sit in Mr. Lance’s car. That’s what we’ll be taking to school for today.”
Nathan’s eyes lit up with happiness that I was so not frickin’ feeling. “Groovy!” he declared. I had no clue where he learned that word, but he was Nathan so it made sense. He turned and ran across the yard to the car.
“Don’t touch anything,” I yelled after him.
Lance and I both watched Nathan until he’d safely climbed into the car.
I snapped my gaze back to his. “You cannot just take my frickin’ car from me without saying anything,” I hissed.
“The AC was broken,” he said as if repeating it made it something that worked as an excuse.
“I get that you’re a big badass who gets more badass points for the fewer words he speaks but that is not gonna fly right at this moment, dude. I know the AC is broken, considering I’m the one sweating her ass off driving in it.”
“It needs to be fixed.”
I told myself not to stomp my foot or scream or anything that would prove as setting a bad example to my son. “I know that,” I said through gritted teeth. “But I also need it to drive my son to school, drive myself to work and I also need the money to get it fixed. Which I won’t have for a long time because I’ve got more important shit to cover.”
Namely the service he was currently providing.
I think the pissing me off came free.
“You’re not paying for it,” he said by answer.
“Considering it’s my car, yes I am,” I snapped.
“Nathan is gonna be late to school,” Lance said by response.
I wanted to keep arguing with him until I was blue in the face our until he understood how out of line he was, I had the feeling it would be the former. But the dick was right, Nathan would be late if I kept doing that.
I hated that he was using my son against me like that.
“This isn’t over,” I said, pointing him and stomping to the SUV.
I was right.
It wasn’t over.
Because sitting in the passenger seat of the SUV was a small rectangular box.
“What is this?” I demanded as Lance situated himself in the driver’s seat.
“New phone,” he answered, though it was obvious what it was.
I clenched the box. “Whose?”
He regarded me. “Yours.”
“You are not buying me a new phone,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Already did,” he commented.
“Well take it back,” I demanded.
“Get in the car,” he countered.
I tried to take some long, cleansing breaths so my son, watching raptly from the back seat, did not see his mother lose her shit right before he went to school.
It was that thought that had me getting in the car. Not because Lance told me to in that cold, authoritative sexy voice, but because my son needed to get to school.
That’s what I told myself anyway.
Lance didn’t pull the car from the curb until I had checked Nathan’s seatbelt inside his car seat—which had been put in at an earlier date—and buckled my own.
I pretended that didn’t affect me in the slightest.
“I’m not accepting this,” I said, shaking the phone at him while he drove.
“You are.”
“I can buy my own phone,” I lied through gritted teeth.
He looked sideways at me as he pulled up to a stop sign. He waited the full three seconds before he went, even though the coast was clear. He didn’t strike me as a three-second man—in any sense of the expression—so I reasoned it was because me and Nathan were i
n the car.
I pretended that didn’t affect me either.
“I smashed your phone,” he said by answer.
“He did, Mom,” Nathan chimed in, making sure that we both knew he was following the conversation. “Why did you do that, Captain?” he asked, curiously. He hadn’t asked me that question last night or this morning. I’d honestly thought he’d forgotten about it.
But no, my kid didn’t forget about anything. He just held onto things and waited for the perfect moment.
Lance glanced in the rearview mirror to make fleeting eye contact with Nathan before his eyes went back to the road. “I did it because I lost control of my temper.”
I did not expect Lance to answer honestly, but then again, I didn’t expect him to lie to my son either.
“What does temper mean?” Nathan asked.
Lance glanced back again. “It means you get angry in front of people you shouldn’t and do things you shouldn’t. Good men never lose control of their temper. Especially not in front of women.”
I blinked rapidly as he spoke, my stomach swirling. Because he was talking to Nathan, but the words were for me.
Was this some kind of distorted apology?
“Momma, I’ll never lose my temper with you,” Nathan said. “I promise I’ll always remember where I put it.”
I choked out a laugh and turned in my seat to regard my little boy.
“I could never be angry with you anyway,” he continued. “You’re the best mom ever. You play games with me outside, you let me watch movies and never yell at me like my friend’s moms do. Plus, you’re gonna let me eat my hamburgers through strawers.”
I tried to swallow both my laughter and tears at this. “You’re the best son ever,” I responded, my voice kind of thick.
He grinned wide. “Duh.”
I turned back in my seat so Nathan didn’t see the single tear that escaped from the corner of my eye.
Lance saw, of course.
Because he saw everything.
Even things I didn’t even know I was showing him.
* * *
Neither of us spoke after we’d dropped Nathan off. Not until we’d almost made it to the diner.
