by Malcom, Anne
Cupcake?
I pursed my lips. Not just because my breath was not minty fresh, or delightful.
Because his presence was doing all sorts of things to me, despite my lack of sleep, despite my smoke inhalation, the house behind me.
There was a challenge in his eyes. A dare. A hunger, mischief that hadn’t been there a week ago.
Something had changed.
Really changed.
Before I could inspect this, say anything, or kiss him, morning breath and all, an SUV pulled up, and the Greenstone Security pulled up.
Shortly after that, my landlord arrived.
It was safe to say, he was not happy about the fire. He wasn’t a bad landlord and I had been an excellent tenant, that was until I’d burned the house down.
But the second he started to speak to me with his bushy brows furrowed and splotched cheeks reddened, Lance was there. Duke was pulling me back, telling me that they’d take care of it.
I should have argued him on that. Told him that this was my house, my life, I needed to take care of it. I needed to make an example for my son, myself.
But I didn’t do that.
I let him lead me back into Karen and Eliza’s, where I had two donuts, a shower, and when I came back out, my landlord was gone.
Logan, Esther, and Bobby were there instead, looking at my house in horror. Then they each looked at me in horror, each hugged me, demanded to know if I was okay, then to see Nathan. As predicted, Logan and Esther offered up their place for Nathan and me to stay for as long as we needed.
Of course, Lance interrupted this by telling them that Nathan and I were already “sorted.”
Esther rose her brow at this, looking back and forth between us with a knowing gaze.
Bobby went murderous again. Logan was contemplative.
But again, there wasn’t time for this interaction to continue, as this was the point my insurance agent arrived. Again, Lance took over talking to him. Or grunting at him. Peppering him with death threats. Again, I let him.
There were visitors, calls, barked orders for me to “get the fuck off my feet”—from Lance—for the rest of the day.
Nathan was a dream, excited about having a day off school, with adults everywhere, treats for every meal—Bobby brought half the diner with him at lunch—and movies that he was never allowed to watch in the daytime.
But then the time came.
The time of the day where Nathan was getting tired, I was beyond tired and we were both yearning for a home that didn’t exist anymore.
It was at this point Lance walked in the door to Karen and Eliza’s, narrowed his eyes to where I was cleaning dishes in the kitchen and declared it was “time to go.”
I had already explained the temporary living arrangements with Nathan, to say he was excited was an understatement. He all but sprinted out the door once Lance had made his commands. First thanking Karen and Eliza for letting us have a sleepover.
My kid had some manners at least.
I did not sprint. Not just because I physically couldn’t.
But because I’d been alternately dreading and looking forward to this moment all day.
An enclosed space.
With Lance.
The man I’d seen a week ago with his tongue inside my mouth, giving me the best kiss of my life, cementing his place under my skin, in my bones.
My mind should not have been consumed with that all day. It should have been consumed with my son’s possible psychological trauma. The fact we didn’t have a home or belongings. Wondering if my insurance would payout, even with Lance going full badass on them. Figuring out how we would rebuild, with the Greenstone Security bill still looming on the horizon. And then, of course, Robert.
So yeah, any one of those things would have been appropriate to settle on. Dwell on. Instead, it went to wondering how in the heck things would go with Lance, once we were alone.
And now, I wouldn’t have to wonder.
Chapter Eighteen
Despite Nathan being so excited at the prospect of having “sleepovers with Captain” he crashed pretty darn fast. He would have gone headfirst into his Happy Meal—something saved for very special occasions or when I was too tired to cook—if I hadn’t carried him to his new bedroom.
His new kick-ass bedroom.
Rosie had been to visit.
That much was obvious as soon as we walked in the door and there were seven bottles of wine on the dining room table.
‘One for every day of the first week you have to co-habitate with the only caveman left from the ice age’ was the accompanying note.
It did not stop there.
The fridge was stocked.
With everything you could think of. Snacks. Sodas—all diet, and I knew this was a woman because all women knew that sodas had to be diet, no matter how much sugar you consumed in other forms—fruit, fancy looking salad containers.
The pantry was the same.
There was a bowl of crystals on the coffee table. I knew this came from Polly.
When Lance showed me to ‘my’ room—right frickin’ beside his room—there was a comforter that I knew he did not pick out. It was like my old one. But so much better. It was the deepest purple that it looked like you could dive into it. The fabric was so soft I was surprised it didn’t melt under my fingertips. There were throw pillows.
Scented candles.
The bathroom off this room—I had the master, which I was sure was Lance’s doing—was filled with products.
Glass containers of moisturizers that I had only gazed at longingly in department stores. Makeup I didn’t even recognize. Perfume. It was like a counter at a department store.
The drawers in the bedroom weren’t full, but they had things in them.
Beautiful silk things in the top drawer. Beautiful, sexy things I’d never owned.
Cashmere frickin’ socks.
Sweats.
Lululemon leggings.
I’d cried. Right there, in front of the leggings, after the shower Lance insisted I take right after I’d put Nathan to bed.
Then, I’d called Rosie, sobbing, making no sense, babbling about Lululemon leggings.
“Babe, you’re welcome, I’m guessing with all the crying and babble, it’s a thank you,” she interrupted somewhere. “But you don’t need to thank me. That’s the most fun I’ve had since I tortured human traffickers in Venezuela.”
I couldn’t decide whether she was joking or not, and she didn’t give me time.
“I can tell by your tears, you’re sober,” she said. “Drink some of that wine and cry drunk tears instead. I’ll call you in the morning.” A pause. “Everything is gonna be okay.”
On that, I made an embarrassing sob into the phone.
“My cue to go,” she said, smile in her voice. “Wine, now.”
I nodded and went to do what she said, wearing some of the most beautiful silk pajamas I had ever put on my body.
Lance was in the living room when I limped in.
His eyes went to me immediately.
And then all over the pajamas, that covered me head to toe, but his gaze melted them right off. My entire body responded.
We stared at each other.
For a long time.
Too long.
“You need to sit down,” he said, his voice thick, not empty. Not by a long shot.
But it was still a command, despite the desire it was cloaked in.
So that was what made me straighten my spine and remember the events of the day. Of the week.
“I do not need to sit down,” I snapped. “I need to get some things straight.”
He stood, jaw hard, fists at his sides. “You’ve got a cut on your foot that you’ve barely rested all day,” he clipped. “So yes, you need to sit the fuck down.”
The last sentence was a growl.
A growl.
It hit me right at the bottom of my stomach. Right in between my frickin’ thighs.
But someh
ow, I managed not to let that show, let any one of it show.
“Firstly, I need to thank you,” I said, my voice still a rough rasp. It hurt to speak. But then again, it hurt to breathe, so it wasn’t like I could stop the pain. I focused on Lance. “You saved my life. Risked your own. So thank you.”
He was gritting his teeth. I could see that by the way he was holding his jaw, it was something I was coming to recognize being connected to one of Lance’s highest levels of fury. Gritting his teeth so tightly his entire chiseled jaw shook.
“Don’t thank me,” he ground out. “Just don’t ever fuckin’ do shit like that again. And sit the fuck down.”
“I also need to tell you, that pulling that crap ever again won’t go down with me,” I continued, ignoring his words. “I get you’re a dangerous badass who even Chuck Norris is afraid of, but I swear to every god that’s worshipped on this planet, you try to keep me from my son when my last memory is of him coughing smoke from his lungs, I will fuck you up. In whatever way I can. You may have experience with some bad dudes, scary dudes, but you haven’t dealt with a mother being kept from her son. So straight up, you pull that shit ever again, I’ll end you.”
Lance stared at me for the longest time, a complex cocktail of emotion that I didn’t know if I had the emotional intelligence to decipher. It was jarring, seeing it all on the surface like this, when only a week ago, I could only guess at his depths.
“You went back into a burning building for a fucking toy,” he said, voice quiet, barely audible. But the velvet threat in the tone shook the air.
“It was an important toy,” I argued, voice small.
The eyes I’d been unable to stop staring at turned stormy.
In a blink, he was around the coffee table that had nothing on it but a bowl of crystals and right in front of me. Right there.
He gripped my shoulders. Still not gentle.
I didn’t think he knew gentle.
“More important than your fucking life?” he roared in my face.
I flinched, but I didn’t flinch back as I should’ve. I didn’t run like I should’ve.
“Are you fucking dumb?” he hissed, still in a shout, still in my face. “You could’ve fucking died! You almost fucking did. You bled. For a toy.” He slung the words at me like punches, not pulling a single one because I was hurt, scared or physically, mentally, and spiritually exhausted.
No. He did not stop to spare my feelings. To treat me with care.
He kept going.
“You have a son,” he accused. “A son that almost lost his mother for a toy.” The single word was hurled at me like a weapon.
It hit true.
“It’s not just a toy,” I screamed. Or I tried to. My voice was still husky, raw, barely audible. Every word was agony. But I kept speaking, because anger, fury bubbled up in my veins. “That motherfucking toy is the only thing that has stayed constant in my son’s life. He believes that toy protects him. That it will not let anyone take him away from his mother again. He’s been taking that thing everywhere since...” I trailed off, partly because I needed a break from talking but mostly because I couldn’t verbalize it. I didn’t need to. “So yes, I risked my life for a toy. A toy that makes my little boy feel safe. Protected. And maybe it was fucking dumb. I was just trying to do the best I could for my fucking child. Now can you get out of my face because I just almost burned to death. My son almost burned to death.” My voice broke on the end. Broke like a glass on marble. Shattered.
All bravado, anger, determination, or whatever had been holding me together gave way.
And the tears started. My body shook with the force of my first sob.
Lance’s eyes flared. I waited for him to flinch away, to tell me to stop crying, stop being weak. Or to just leave me there to cry it out on my own. This wasn’t his job after all, to console a hysterical woman.
He did none of those things. He did the thing that I would never expect him to do in a hundred years. He took me in his arms and let me sob into his chest.
He held me.
For a long time.
He was the one to finally break me apart.
But he kept me together too.
* * *
I woke up in an unfamiliar bed the next morning with no memory of how I got there.
My last memory was of Lance’s smell. Of his arms around me. Of his tee, how it dried my tears and smelled like fresh laundry and safety.
I had no idea of how I got into the most exquisite sheets I’d ever lain my body in. If I had no memory, then I must have been carried here.
By Lance.
Lance held me in his arms as I cried.
Lance carried me to bed.
The thoughts hit me before the reality of my house—or lack thereof—set in. It showed me where my priorities lay. Or what rocked me to the core most, not the house fire I almost died in, but the cruel kindness of the man that pulled me out of it.
That epiphany was cut short when I blinked at the time on my phone.
It was nine-thirty in the morning.
I hadn’t slept that late in... recorded memory.
Sleeping in is nothing but a fantasy as a single mother.
Nathan didn’t let me sleep in.
I was looking forward to his teenage years, when I’d have to yank him out of bed by his ankles at noon. I’d been resigned to the fact I wouldn’t get any kind of sleep-in for at least another ten years.
But it was almost ten.
I’d missed the shift at work Esther had forbidden me from turning up to.
Nathan was beyond late for school, and no way had I planned on giving him two days off in a row.
I’d planned on getting him back into a routine, to a semblance of normalcy. I could get him dressed because in addition to outfitting me with everything a woman could want, Rosie had made Nathan’s dreams come true, right down to a Captain America comforter on his twin bed in the room down the hall.
No way was he in that bed.
The sounds of life coming from the kitchen had me jerking up. It was the smell of coffee that got me fully out of bed and limping down the unfamiliar hall that didn’t have a single photo on the walls.
I expected Lance.
Nathan.
I got neither of two of my favorite men.
I got one of my favorite human beings instead.
She was in the kitchen, the one with a familiar setup to mine, but with no cool knick-knacks, or personality like mine had.
A pang hit my stomach.
Like mine used to have.
“What’s up, sleepyhead?” Karen asked, grinning, handing me a coffee cup, leaning on the breakfast bar.
I took the cup without thinking. Then I looked around for my son.
“He’s at school,” Karen said the second panic started to rise in my throat.
I focused back on her. “Eliza arrived early this morning, planning on trying to stop him from pouncing on you and getting him ready so you could sleep,” she explained, sipping at her own cup. “Lo and behold, he was up, eating oatmeal and barbeque sauce.” She screwed up her nose. “Something that is super fucked up, by the way. He was dressed. Talking to Lance, who was grunting at the appropriate moments.”
I gaped. “Lance got Nathan up, dressed and made him his crazy oatmeal?”
She nodded. “That he did. I want to hate that guy, I really fucking do. But then he keeps turning shit around.”
“That he does,” I murmured, wondering if I was mad that Lance got my kid up and ready and took him to school, without waking me or giving me a chance to say goodbye or smell his hair or anything.
“Nathan went in and kissed you goodbye,” Karen said as if she could read my mind. “But you were sleeping like a zombie, or so he said. We really need to get that kid into the Walking Dead, educate him on the fact that zombies do not sleep.”
I raised my brow at her. “Nathan is five years old, Karen,” I reminded her. “A little young to watch the dead come back to li
fe and eat the living.”
She shrugged.
“He was okay?” I asked, sipping coffee and worrying about my little buddy.
Her eyes turned kind. “Yeah, babe. He was fine. Resilient kid. I dropped him plenty of times when he was younger, he got right back up.”
I narrowed my eyes at her but couldn’t help from grinning.
Karen regarded me with a raised brow, skepticism and worry mixing on her face. “How are you still holding it together?” she asked, her routinely strong voice cracking slightly. “With all of this happening, things that would bring down anyone, you’re still...” She trailed off.
I smiled wider. “Still somewhat sane? Walking around?” I finished for her.
She nodded.
“I’m a mom,” I said by response. “It’s what we do. In times of crisis, we handle, we get through it, for our kids. And then, when it’s all over, when everything is as close to okay as it’s gonna be, I’m surely going to crumble.” I thought fondly of that moment where this constant state of fear and adrenaline would stop keeping me going and I’d curl up in a ball in the bottom of a shower. “But not now, not when Nathan needs his mother. I’ll get us through this.”
Karen’s eyes shimmered. “You’re such a fucking badass,” she whispered.
I shrugged, uncomfortable with the respect and admiration in her eyes. It definitely didn’t feel deserved. “I’m a mom,” I said by response. “It’s what any mom would do.”
She shook her head. “No, babe. Not any mom would do everything you do and continue to do for that kid. Not every mom would be strong or brave enough to walk out that door three years ago. To make a life for her kid with almost nothing. And not every mom would be strong enough to handle all the crap you’ve handled and still play, laugh with her son. You know that. I hate how well you know exactly what a bad parent would do in this situation, but you do. And instead of taking that trauma they put onto you, injected into you and resuming the cycle, you broke it.”
Tears started to drip into my coffee, so I glared at Karen. “You’re not allowed to make me break down yet,” I scolded.
Karen gave me one more look that threatened to chip at my resolve before her expression changed into something more familiar and light. “Okay, but, you’ve got to promise that you’ll call me when you have your breakdown. When this is all over.”
