The Slow Burn

by Kristen Ashley

“He never gave me that, what you two had in that moment,” Addie told the woman who had to be her sister, they looked so much alike. “I could have walked right up to you and neither of you would have seen me. I didn’t exist, nothing existed. Nothing but him for you and you for him. He never gave me that, Iz. How did I never see that?”

  That made Toby look to his brother.

  With relief.

  Shandra had torn him apart.

  Apparently, town talk was right, and this Eliza had put him back together.

  His brother had that. And Tobe was glad he did.

  And he was glad even thinking he wanted the same.

  His eyes moved back to Addie as Eliza whispered, “Addie, sweetie.”

  “He gave me this.” She cuddled Brooks closer. “That’s all he ever gave me. But he gave it to me getting himself an orgasm and honest to God, that was all he was thinking about.”

  “Addie, please, baby, let’s go upstairs,” her sister coaxed.

  Addie reared her head like a stubborn mare, and it was inappropriate as hell in that moment, but that didn’t change the fact that move was hot, before she snapped, “No. This is a party. We’re having a party.”

  She forged past her sister, Johnny, straight to the door where Toby was standing.

  Yeah.

  Totally gorgeous.

  But holding that baby and doing everything in her power not to fly apart . . .

  The most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

  “Out of the way, Talon,” she ordered.

  “Name’s Toby,” he replied gently, but he didn’t move.

  Her head jerked back, and her tortured blue eyes caught his.

  Christ, yeah.

  Spectacular.

  “You’re his brother, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “Yeah, darlin’,” he replied.

  “Of course. You’re perfect, so of course. You’re probably taken too, aren’t you?”

  If he was taken, which he wasn’t, he wouldn’t be in about half an hour.

  Fortunately, he wasn’t.

  “I—” he started to tell her that.

  “Not for me,” she cut him off. “Man like you. Man like Johnny. Man like Charlie. Not for me.”

  Right.

  She’d been holding it together.

  But he sensed she was about to fall apart.

  “Honey,” Toby whispered. “How ’bout we get you—?”

  She tossed her hair and looked over her shoulder at her sister. “I did it, Iz. I did it. What I swore to myself I’d never do. Not the same, but a version. I found Dad. I found a man who was good for nothin’ except to break my heart.”

  And that was when her face melted, and she started to go down.

  “Tobe,” Johnny growled, on the move.

  But Toby was all over it.

  He caught her in his arms and sank down to the floor with her. Addie’s ass hit his inner thigh with Toby’s leg at a bad angle and that didn’t feel too hot.

  He winced, but ignored it, putting his arms around her and tucking her and her kid close to his chest.

  She shoved her face in his neck and started sobbing.

  All he could think was she felt good, especially her hair against his skin, so fucking soft.

  Also, she smelled great.

  Her baby started fretting.

  Right.

  Time to get her to a safe place.

  Toby lifted his gaze to her sister. “Where you want her, babe?”

  “My bedroom,” she whispered. “Upstairs. I’ll show you the way.”

  Toby nodded, got his feet under him and with great care lifted Addie and her baby cradled safe in his arms, walking behind the sister as she hurried into a hall.

  He walked them up the stairs as Addie cried in his neck.

  And he walked her down the hall into a bedroom where he placed her in the bed while she kept crying in his neck.

  Eliza moved in the minute she was in bed, so Toby took a step back.

  Another step.

  Then he stopped and watched.

  Eliza soothed Addie, and with the two sisters’ heads so close, Toby thought another man might not be able to tell their hair apart.

  But he could.

  Already.

  Because Jesus Christ, fuck . . . shit . . .

  He’d fallen in love.

  Fallen in love with a spitfire with a baby and a cheat of an asshole husband she was trying to make her ex . . .

  A spitfire who just happened to be the sister of his brother’s new woman.

  Something Toby could not fuck with.

  Johnny, who had retreated from life when the love of his had torn his heart from his chest, was back. Healed. Moving on with a pretty woman with a cute-as-fuck house who obviously loved her sister, and who his brother connected with so much, someone had seen him fucking his girl and he hadn’t even noticed.

  So yeah.

  Toby could not fuck with this.

  And again yeah.

  To put it simply . . .

  Fuck.

  On that thought, reluctantly, Toby walked out.

  Snow in The Moonlight

  Addie

  Seven Months Later . . .

  BROOKLYN AND ME rolled up to the house in the dark.

  But even in the dark, I could see someone had showed after the light fall of snow we’d had that afternoon in order to brush it off the steps.

  It wasn’t even half an inch.

  But while I was working at the store and Brooks was in daycare, either Johnny, Dave or Toby had come to make sure I could get from the car to the door without incident, even if, through a quarter inch of light, fluffy snow, there would be no incident.

  I shook my head, putting my little yellow Ford Focus in park, switching it off and saying to my thirteen-month-old, “Looks like we don’t have to brave a dusting of fluff, baby boy. So much for our evening’s adventure.”

  “Mama, Dada, Dodo, baba,” Brooks replied, banging his chubby hands and legs against his car seat.

  This was his favorite time of the day, coming home to Dapper Dan, the floppy-eared ridgeback mix Toby had rescued and given us a few months ago.

  I was a woman who put a lot into the back of my mind to sort out later. This happened because this was me, and it happened more now because I was the single mother of a thirteen-month-old precious baby boy and I had a lot of other stuff to think about.

  Though I was a woman who took it out and sorted it later.

  But Tobias Gamble was something I put in the back of my mind in a way I wasn’t going to sort it out later.

  He was my sister’s fiancé’s brother.

  He had become a friend.

  Due to the way the Gamble men were, as well as nearly everyone in Matlock, Kentucky, most especially after what had happened with Brooks, he felt it was his duty to look out for me.

  And seeing as I’d be family by marriage come next August, for the Gamble men as they were, I just came with the territory.

  Yep.

  That would be nope.

  Not thinking about Toby.

  Push him right to the back of my mind.

  I did that, got out and started the drill.

  Get my son out of his seat in the back of the car and get us inside the house.

  Let Dapper Dan out after giving him a few pets and letting Brooklyn squeal at him.

  Hit the thermostat and jack it up from the fifty-eight I set it to during the day to save on utilities, to sixty-nine (the temperature I picked because I thought it was funny, but it still wouldn’t give me high heating bills) so my kid and I didn’t freeze.

  Put Brooks in his playpen and dump my purse so I could go back out and grab the five bags of groceries I’d got from work before picking up my kid.

  Cart those in, put away frozen stuff and perishables, go back to the front door to Izzy’s metal mailbox at its side, the box with the hummingbird and flowers stamped in it, to get the mail.

  Thank the town of Matlock for having a
postal service, which even outside the city limits had postal workers who drove up to your house, walked up to your porch, and delivered your mail so I didn’t have to walk the thirty yards to the road to get my mail when my kid was alone in the house in a playpen, or drag him out there with me in the cold.

  Call Dapper Dan, who, after doing his business and checking out the dusting of snow, rushed inside to be with his people.

  Close the door, lock up, throw the post on the little bench at the side of the hall with its blue and white striped padded seat and take off my coat and hat to hang the coat on one of the hooks and shove my hat in one of the cubbies of the shelf above it.

  Give Dapper Dan a proper “hey boy, missed you” rubdown.

  Go into the living room and get my kid out of his coat, hat and gloves so he didn’t roast now that the furnace was heating up the house.

  Put Brooks’s stuff away then take him with me to the kitchen to put him in his highchair, with enough toys he had plenty of choice of what to bang on the tray and toss on the ground.

  Give Dapper Dan his evening kibble and freshen up his water.

  Retrieve toys from the floor and give them back to my son.

  Put groceries away.

  Retrieve toys from the floor again and give them to my son.

  Put a bib on Brooks, leave him with some crackers and start on his dinner.

  Monitor him eating while making myself a sandwich, consuming said sandwich, going back to the hall to get the mail, opening the mail, then setting it aside and deciding to put the amounts owed on the utility bills into the back of my mind until I was ready to deal with them.

  Clean up my kid’s face, hands and the tray on the highchair, unsnap the bib and take him out of his chair to put him on the floor to motor around, with Dapper Dan keeping an eye on him while I took the bib to the laundry room.

  Come back to the kitchen and clean up after my sandwich while keeping track of my son and my dog so they didn’t get each other into trouble, as they’d become apt to do.

  Notice through the window over the kitchen sink that it had started snowing again.

  And then taking a detour of the night’s planned activities. Thus not giving my boy some time with his dog and going to the laundry room to fold the load I’d put in the dryer that morning and put a load into the washer for that evening before giving my baby a bath and getting him ready for bed.

  Instead, I again trussed myself and my son in our jackets, gloves and hats and walked out the front door with Dapper Dan dancing around us.

  Then I stood in the front drive with my son held to my chest in both my arms.

  “Snow,” I told him as it drifted light all around us.

  Brooklyn stared in my face, put a hand to my cheek and giggled.

  I smiled at my beautiful bundle, held him tight and tipped my head back to the heavens.

  The clouds obscured the stars, diffused the moonlight, but the soft fall of flakes was crazy amazing.

  They touched my forehead, my cheeks, my chin, a barely-there trace of cold before it disappeared.

  That was life.

  That was each and every experience.

  That was what I had of my son before he’d be driving, dating, off to college or to live his life.

  Every instant was a trace.

  And then it was gone.

  So when it snowed, instead of going through the motions to get him settled down and ready for bed, I had to take him out, hold him tight, and even though he’d never remember this, I would. And I’d treasure standing there and holding my baby close in the gently falling snow.

  That was something my mom would do.

  That was something my mom had done.

  Countless times, she’d taken me and Eliza out in the snow, or the rain, and we’d accept God’s offering, His simple gifts of pure beauty just as they were meant to be.

  I opened my mouth.

  Brooks giggled.

  I felt a flake melt on my tongue, and having taken my offering, I closed my mouth and looked at my boy.

  “Mama,” he said.

  I hoped I never forgot that.

  I had hoped it every time I got it from the first time.

  That trace.

  My thirteen-month-old baby boy saying my name.

  “Yes, baby, isn’t the snow gorgeous?” I let him go with one arm and pointed up to the sky. “Look, Brooks. There’s nothing like snow in the moonlight.”

  He didn’t look.

  He pitched down, reached his arms out and called, “Dada.”

  He wanted to play with Dapper Dan.

  Okay.

  If that’s what Brooklyn wanted, that was what he was going to get.

  So I took him inside, unwrapped him, put him on the floor in the family room, went back to the hall, unwrapped myself, locked the door and went back to the family room to hang with my kid and my dog for a few minutes before bath time.

  “We’ll be there, what do you want us to bring?” Deanna asked.

  It was an hour and a half later.

  Brooklyn was asleep in his crib upstairs.

  I was in the little laundry room downstairs, moving laundry from washer to dryer, with Dapper Dan doing his bit by snoozing flat out on his side with his head hidden under the open dryer door.

  Since it was the week after Thanksgiving, earlier I’d texted the group string, that group being the Usual Suspects, with an invite for Sunday to come over and decorate for Christmas.

  The Usual Suspects, by the way, included my sister Eliza (or Izzy), her man Johnny, her friends who were my friends too, Deanna and her husband Charlie, Johnny’s people (the man and woman who helped raise him and his brother Toby when their mom took off), Margot and Dave . . .

  And Toby.

  Even if I wanted to (and I wanted to), I could not let pride stand in the way of Deanna’s offering, or the ones that had also come via text from Margot and Izzy.

  I could not put on a spread for my peeps after I invited them over to start the year’s holiday cheer.

  I couldn’t afford it.

  I was living in Izzy’s house and paying her mortgage now that she was moved in with Johnny at the mill.

  Izzy made way more than me and could afford that mortgage.

  It was crippling me.

  I did not share this with my sister.

  It probably wouldn’t be so bad if Brooks’s daycare wasn’t so much. But there was one whole daycare center in Matlock. It was clean and fun and nice and the staff was awesome. He loved it there.

  But the bottom line was, I had no choice. I had to work and someone had to look after my kid when I did.

  It also probably wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t owe Johnny for the attorney’s fees he’d paid so I could get my divorce.

  But I did, and I didn’t share with him either that even the very low monthly payment we’d set for me to pay it back was breaking me.

  And it probably wouldn’t be so bad if Perry, my ex-husband, paid the child support the court had ordered him to pay.

  That support wasn’t so much. It certainly wasn’t totally crippling.

  Though for Perry, who had an aversion to working, it was.

  But it would help. It’d pay the utilities, car payment and insurance and some food.

  That would leave me with mortgage, clothes, gas, internet, daycare and the rest of the food.

  But at least I wouldn’t have to worry about heat, water, sewage, trash collection, electricity and God forbid, if something happened to my car.

  I had no idea what Perry was doing. If he was working. Actually anything about him.

  What I knew was he didn’t send child support and he didn’t show the one weekend a month he got to see Brooks. He’d done both for a couple of months after the decree was finalized, and then nothing.

  What I also knew was how to handle this.

  Throughout my life, my mom had shown me the way.

  I had internet, but I didn’t have cable because I didn’t have time to wa
tch TV and anyway, TV was a luxury. I also didn’t have a house phone because I had a cell phone and I didn’t need two phones. I jacked the heat down when we weren’t in the house. I did not have lights on in any room but the one we were in. I did not do laundry unless I had a full load. I clipped coupons. I bought off-brand, discounted and in bulk when I could. I took overtime when it was offered, any time it was offered, no matter if I had to do it when the daycare was closed and lean on Izzy, Margot, sometimes Deanna, and even Toby on occasion to look after my baby while I worked. I got mine and Brooks’s clothes at garage sales.

  I did not buy myself fancy coffees.

  I did not stream movies.

  I did not download music.

  And when summer rolled around again, I’d plant a garden to get my veggies and herbs, and the ones we didn’t eat, I’d can and dry those mothers to help me get through the winter.

  Daphne Forrester, my bodacious mom, the goddess of everything, had shown me the way.

  We’d lived that every day since she saved the three of us from my dad when we were little.

  I knew the drill.

  And it included having the people you cared about around when you decorated your house for Christmas using the secondhand stuff you’d scored at a fantastic estate sale the year before when your son was only a couple of months old and your husband had already taken a mental hike from your marriage. You did this even if your kid wouldn’t remember the get-together you threw. And you made it a good one.

  You also made it a potluck.

  “Margot’s gonna roast a couple of chickens and Iz is gonna make a dessert. So whatever you wanna add to that, it’d be awesome,” I told Deanna.

  “I’ll do some hors d’oeuvre thing,” Deanna told me.

  Fantastic.

  That left potatoes, veg and rolls to me and that was the cheap stuff.

  And some hors d’oeuvre thing would make it a real celebration.

  I didn’t think about the booze because they’d all bring whatever they wanted to drink without me asking and bring something for me as a hostess gift besides.

  And Toby would stock me up. He’d cart in enough beer and wine to sous up a party of twenty and he wouldn’t hear of taking it with him when he left.

  God’s honest truth?

  This stung.

  I hated it.

  It was embarrassing.

  But I shoved it in the back of my mind.