The Slow Burn (Moonlight and Motor Oil Series Book 2)

by Kristen Ashley

  “That’s not going to happen,” I shared carefully. “But I need to get some things straightened out before I pick up the payment again, so when I say a few months, it might be on the broad side of that.”

  “He won’t mind,” she repeated.

  “And I’m gonna be asking Margot to look after Brooks a couple of days a week.”

  Again, Izzy just stared at me.

  And again, I didn’t know where this was coming from.

  Even though I did.

  Toby.

  My mouth kept moving.

  “I think he needs socialization and they have a wait list to get in the center now, so I don’t want to pull him out entirely because if Margot doesn’t work out, I couldn’t get him back in. But maybe two or three days a week, if she’s still up for it. I just . . .” I hesitated then since it was out there, really, I put it all out there, “need a break on the fees.”

  “She’d love that,” Izzy said softly. “You know she would. She’s been hoping you’d take her up on her offer since she met Brooks.”

  I knew she would. And when my baby got kidnapped, I’d wished he’d been with Margot because she would have cut an asshole for even looking at Brooklyn funny.

  But after that drama died down, I’d gone back to what I’d been doing before.

  Pretending I had it together and could manage everything.

  “I can’t afford your mortgage,” I blurted.

  Izzy’s eyes got big.

  Shit.

  In for a penny . . .

  “Perry isn’t paying child support, but even if he was, I couldn’t afford it, Iz. It takes my entire monthly paycheck.”

  “Oh my God, Addie,” she said in horror. “Why didn’t you say?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. I just . . .” more head shaking, “don’t know.”

  I knew.

  Because I was vain.

  Because I was proud.

  Because I wanted to be my mother, the best mother in the world, the mother who, no matter who kicked dirt in her face after she was down, she just got up and kept on keeping on, and somehow with her unique brand of magic (in other words, a lot of hard work and sacrifice) she made it all work out.

  “I need a different job,” I told Iz. “I need to make a lot more. And to find it, I might have to go into the city.”

  “Okay, then let me pay the mortgage for a few months to take the stress off and you look for something in the city.”

  More shaking of my head.

  “It’ll probably be serving, and to make the good money I’ll have to work the dinner shift and that means I’ll have to live there and find some arrangement for Brooks close to home.”

  “Johnny and I can look after him,” she offered instantly.

  “Iz, baby, lovely, my darling, beautiful sister,” I whispered, leaning so deeply toward her, I put my stomach to my thighs. “No way in hell am I gonna let you find your perfect hot guy, have him put a ring on it, and strap the two of you with my baby boy when you’re first starting out.”

  “I don’t care, and Johnny won’t either.”

  The crazy part of this was, neither of them would.

  But I did.

  “I know. I’m still not gonna ask, and you know why I won’t.” She opened her mouth, but I spoke before she could say anything. “And it doesn’t matter what you say, Iz. I just cannot let that happen.”

  “The city isn’t far away, but I love having you guys close.”

  I sat back. “I know you do, and I love it too, and so does Brooks. But sometimes in life you don’t get what you want, honey.”

  My big sister looked down at her joyful Christmas card paraphernalia all over my—no her—cute, squat, white coffee table.

  I knew why she did this.

  Because we both knew that sometimes life didn’t give you what you wanted.

  We knew that well.

  But in the end, she’d gotten what she wanted, she worked hard and found it, not only in Johnny, but in having a degree, a good job that paid well, good friends and a beautiful life.

  And even though I didn’t have the degree, but I’d worked hard, I hadn’t found it.

  And she hated that for me.

  “Iz,” I called.

  She turned to me.

  “I still have a cushion from the stuff I sold and what I’d saved when I was in Tennessee,” I shared. “It’s dwindling. But Margot helping out and Johnny being cool about me taking some time off the loan will mean I can push it out further. I’m not gonna ask you to pay the mortgage, and for a while, with those changes I won’t have to move, and I’ll be able to cover it. But I’ll need to find something in the next three or four months, and once Christmas is over, I’m gonna have to be all about that.”

  “I understand.”

  I knew she would.

  I knew she didn’t like it. She’d bleed and fight and die for me.

  But she’d done her time taking care of her baby sister. Latchkey kids so Mom could work, and without Mom having anyone to help out, Eliza had looked after me since I could remember.

  I was going to ask for help, because Toby was right. For my son, and for myself, I had to.

  But I wasn’t going to ask it of Izzy.

  Though, that said, she was sitting in a house that was not her home doing her Christmas cards without music or TV, looking out for me.

  If I let it, that could crush me.

  But that was about pride, I now understood, because she wanted to do it for me, and if the roles were reversed I’d be pissed as hell she didn’t turn to me.

  God, it freaking sucked that Toby was right, and more, just how right he was.

  I really should tell him.

  However, that wasn’t something you said in a text, and I was beat.

  I needed a hot bath, and if I rallied, I needed to get down to making a few cards, and then I needed to sleep, not have the kind of phone chat with Tobe I needed to have, that being sharing I’d been a bitch, he’d been right, and then apologizing.

  He’d be around tomorrow, and fortunately he was coming when no one was going to be around, so I could tell him then.

  Fun.

  Ugh.

  “I know you don’t want to ask, but I want to make sure you know it’s always out there,” Izzy said, gaining my attention, “I’m here for you, Addie.”

  “I know, honey,” I replied.

  We held each other’s gazes.

  I saw my beautiful big sister, but I also saw Mom.

  And that was the only thing that made me able to endure losing her as we had, so fucking young—having my sister, being able to look her in the eyes and have a part of our mom staring back at me.

  I wondered if she thought the same thing.

  It was Iz who ended us gazing at each other.

  “You probably wanna relax,” she said, turning back to her Christmas card spread. “So I’ll gather this up and let you get to it.”

  What I wanted was some hang time with my sister like we used to do. Margaritas or martinis or mojitos or whatever we fancied, good food, and shooting the breeze about any topic under the sun that struck us, gabbing about it for as long as we felt necessary.

  Or more, talking to her about Toby.

  But I needed a bath, and I’d promised Macy a ton of cards on Monday (this before I’d taken overtime) and I had to clean the house tomorrow before everyone came, and of course talk to Toby. So even though I’d have some time to do some, I needed to get a few out of the way. This meant I couldn’t ask my big sis to stay.

  Also, I didn’t have very much food.

  Not to mention, my sister probably wanted to get home to her hot guy.

  I walked her to the door, gave her a hug and stood in the cold of the open door with Dapper Dan sitting beside me, waving as the burgundy Murano pulled out of the drive.

  Then I locked the door and went up to check on my sleeping son.

  After that, I took a bath.

  And I fell asleep at the d
esk in Izzy’s office, waking up sometime in the middle of the night with a snowman I’d cut out stuck to my cheek.

  I peeled the snowman off.

  And then I moved to my room, fell in bed and let myself sleep.

  The Storm

  Addie

  GOTTA BE THERE around 10:00, if that’s cool.

  I stood in my kitchen, looking down at the text from Toby on my phone.

  It was eight thirty Sunday morning.

  I’d already fed my kid, my dog, myself, cleaned up after that, put the clean dishes in the dishwasher away, done a load of laundry, wiped down all the countertops and buffed Izzy’s stainless-steel fridge and stove.

  When you had a baby, you didn’t get the luxury of sleeping in. And even though I wasn’t putting on an amazing spread for all the Usual Suspects, so I didn’t have a lot of cooking to do (or any at all at that point), they were not going to come over to a house that hadn’t been vacuumed, dusted, and the bathrooms and kitchen hadn’t been cleaned.

  I also had to pull all the Christmas stuff out so we could actually decorate.

  And in between, do up some cards.

  Michael had scheduled me for extra hours on a couple of shifts the next week as well as asked if he could schedule me for a full shift on one of my days off.

  To all this, obviously, I’d said yes.

  This meant my next day off would be Saturday, and Michael had asked if I could do a half-shift that day too. The morning one, when daycare was open.

  I did not want to do that.

  But I kinda had to do that.

  Though I also kinda needed the time off.

  The Annual Matlock Christmas Fair was happening in the town square next Saturday and Sunday.

  Matlock did events like this often (for instance, the Memorial Day Food Festival, the June Craft Fayre, the 4th of July Jubilee, the four-play, August-Long Matlock Shakespeare Festival, the Labor Day Barbeque and Carnival, the Pumpkin Harvest Gala, with open-air concerts, weekly farmer’s markets, marching band competitions and the like horned in between).

  These were fun, but they served another purpose: summoning out-of-towners to experience the joys of the quaint Kentucky town of Matlock. Out-of-towners who not only hit the events, but also shopped at the shops, ate at the restaurants and essentially dropped cash in businesses that would not survive on their take from the townies alone.

  Onward from that, the Kentucky town of Matlock was quaint. Gift shops. Jewelry shops. Boutiques. Homemade-candy stores with fudge marbles in the window. Ice cream parlors. The place was out of a freaking movie.

  Come once, come again, even if there wasn’t a festival, because the shops were cute, and the restaurants were good, so if you had a weekend to blow, you’d consider doing it in Matlock.

  This meant Macy didn’t just sell flowers, she had gifts and cards and other stuff, which was one of the reasons why she wanted a load of my cards ready in time for the Christmas Fair.

  And if I wanted to up my take on that, I needed to get them to her.

  Obviously, I didn’t want to up my take, I needed to.

  Though how I’d do that if I didn’t even have a day off next week, I had no idea.

  Except I had to get more of them done that day.

  But even with all that, most important of all, I had to smooth things out with Toby.

  That’s cool, I typed in.

  But after I did, I stared at it, wondering if I should say, That’s cool. Drop in first. I’ll make us a coffee. Or, That’s cool. But come on in, we need to talk. Or, That’s cool, but come in first since I have to share I was out of line and a total bitch and I feel like shit I was, and I have no way to make it up to you except apologize to your face.

  I added, See you then! and sent it, hoping the exclamation mark would say all the rest.

  Then I decided it wouldn’t matter because when he got there, he’d knock on the door like he always did, and then I’d be able to ask him in and share what I needed to share.

  The thing was, between vacuuming and dusting and cleaning the downstairs powder room, and looking after my kid and my dog, and dragging out Christmas decorations and inventorying my stock of craft stuff to plan out my cards and finding Lora on Facebook and friending her, the two hours since he texted came and went and it was ten thirty before I knew it.

  “Shit,” I whispered when I saw the time on my computer.

  I looked at my phone, and the screen was blank (outside of a picture of Brooks giggling)

  He hadn’t texted to say he was running late.

  And Toby (nor Johnny) were ever late to anything.

  I looked to my kid, who was alternately sucking on and throwing the balls he should be dumping into the tubes in the big tower that was beside him on the floor in the office. Balls Dapper Dan was retrieving for him, so Brooks was essentially sucking up Dapper Dan’s spit.

  Great.

  I nabbed my phone, got up and grabbed my boy. He squealed because he was having fun playing with Dapper Dan and consuming dog drool, so he wasn’t feeling Mom putting an end to his good time, and I headed downstairs.

  I went to the front door, just to check, not expecting I’d see anything, and looked out to note, to my shock, Toby’s kickass old red Chevy truck with the silver panels parked by my Focus.

  I stared at it.

  He was there.

  He was there and he hadn’t knocked on the door.

  I was so stunned by this, kid, dog and I walked right out (well Dapper Dan and I did, I carried Brooklyn out). We went across the porch and down the steps. I looked right then turned right when I saw Tobe up on a tall ladder, staple-gunning some fat, retro Christmas lights to the eaves.

  He’d shown and started work.

  And he didn’t knock on the door.

  “Hey,” I called.

  He didn’t look down at me when he replied, “Yo.”

  I stood there staring up at him, speechless, because yes, I was again in shock.

  Yo?

  Just . . . yo?

  This was so un-Toby it was Anti-Toby.

  “Dodo!” Brooklyn yelled, clearly having seen Toby, “Dodo” being what he called his Uncle Tobe (“Zee” was Izzy, “Jaja” was Johnny, “GoGo,” Margot, and Dave had to share “Dada” with Dapper Dan).

  Toby looked down then.

  “Hey, bud,” he called to my son. Then, without the barest pause to shoot my kid a smile, his eyes moved to me and he declared, “He isn’t in a jacket, Adeline, and it’s cold.”

  That was what he said.

  He didn’t climb down to give my son a cuddle (he pretty much was always about Brooklyn, especially when he first saw him).

  He didn’t acknowledge Dapper Dan, who was excitedly cruising the bottom of the ladder, waiting for attention, something else Toby gave with only the delay of giving it to my boy.

  He didn’t ask if I liked the lights, of which he seemed to have a lot done, which meant he’d been there awhile.

  He didn’t even mention I wasn’t in a jacket.

  He just told me Brooks didn’t have one, something, by the way, I knew.

  “You should get inside,” he advised, and turned back to the lights.

  “Dodo!” Brooklyn shrieked.

  I waited.

  Tobe stapled some chord to the eaves.

  Cold stung my cheeks.

  Woodenly, I walked my son and dog back into the house.

  I closed the door.

  “Dodo!” Brooks screeched at the closed door.

  Dapper Dan barked at it.

  “He’s working, baby,” I whispered, put my lips to his head, felt his skin was chill and mentally kicked myself in the ass and rubbed his head warm with my hand while Brooklyn angrily jerked it away.

  I put him down and stared at the door.

  Okay, so that fight on the sidewalk had been bad.

  But things, clearly, were worse than I’d thought.

  The Gamble Men were raised by Margot. This meant, even if they didn’t kno
w you well, they were gracious and polite. If they knew you, they were open and friendly, and depending on your gender, affectionate.

  But if they didn’t like you a whole lot, they weren’t assholes, but they weren’t about bullshit.

  So you might get a “Yo,” but that was all.

  I’d just gotten a “Yo.”

  And that was (mostly) all.

  And okay, Toby was right in all he’d said on that sidewalk, and I was wrong in fighting my corner, and maybe I stepped over the line with that last dismissive comment, accusing him of being dramatic.

  And okay, I knew him, but even if I didn’t, one could sense simply from the magnificence of his beard that he was an alpha and perhaps accusing him of being dramatic, something that might be a nasty prick to a normal male’s pride, was a poke to a man like Toby’s bear.

  But he’d gotten in my face too.

  He’d started the whole thing pissed and aggressive.

  Innocently walking back to work, I was confronted on the street and I didn’t handle my reaction well.

  But he’d started it.

  And as weak and immature as that sounded, well . . .

  He’d started it.

  And he was now at my house putting up fucking Christmas lights without knocking on my door first to say “Hey” and “I’m here,” and then give my kid a snuggle and my dog a pat, and I go outside to say hey and all I get was a yo?

  “Hell no,” I said to the door.

  So, I was out of line.

  When he wasn’t being a dick, I would share I was out of line and apologize.

  But I wasn’t going out of my way to do it.

  I had company coming over and cards to make.

  To hell with Toby Gamble.

  I got my kid, who screeched again, not quite over Toby’s snub (which pissed me off even more) and took him back upstairs to the office.

  Dapper Dan followed.

  My head no longer involved with all I had to do, I heard it when, forty-five minutes later, Toby’s truck took off.

  Without a goodbye.

  I put Brooks in his playpen and walked outside.

  Then I walked around the house.

  Lights at the eaves all around the house and winding down the posts of the front porch. It was way more than a few strings and when it was lit up it’d be bright and cheerful and vintage and awesome, and on that old farmhouse, it didn’t look ugly.