by T. S. Joyce
“Who’s your favorite dragon?” Anson asked.
“Dark Kane. He’s the scariest and biggest of them all.”
“He’s interested in the only shifters he thinks are bigger than lions,” Kaylee clarified.
“Dragons are pretty cool,” Anson agreed. “You wanna see what the innards of your Mom’s truck looks like?”
Slowly, Bentley peeked out from behind her again and nodded, his eyes wide and solemn.
“You might get your hands dirty, though, so maybe check with your mom.”
Bentley asked by simply lifting his muddy hands up to her and giving her puppy dog eyes.
“Go on,” she said, trying to control her grin at how freaking cute he was. She was his mother, sure, but she still thought he was the cutest little kid in the world.
Anson showed Bentley how to pop the hood and then told him, “Scramble on up there and tell me what you see.”
“It’s really dirty in here, Mom!”
Anson snickered and pointed to something inside. “What’s wrong with that?”
“It’s all crackly.”
“Yep, that is the belt, and it needs to be replaced asap.”
“What’s asap?”
“As soon as possible.”
“Oh. Mom, we need the belt replaced asap. ’S got crackles in it.”
With a laugh, she sat on the porch stairs and leaned back on her elbows, pirate romance book dangling from one hand as she watched them find a dozen things wrong with her truck. Sounded expensive to fix.
Subtly, she lifted her phone and clicked a picture of the two of them. She couldn’t help it. The sky was all gray and cloudy, and the towering oaks in Mom’s yard set a pretty background. The picture was of the front end of her rust-red and white truck with the hood up, Bentley in front, standing on the fender, bent at a ninety-degree angle staring at something inside, and behind him, Anson was leaned against the front end pointing to something. He wore an easy half-smile as he spoke. Three times she brought the picture back up to look at it because something about it made her heart happy. It was like she could breathe when she saw it. And yeah, she knew that was messed up because she and Anson were nothing, but she was still going to treasure this picture.
True to his word, he and Bentley both had filthy hands by the time they were done poking and pulling under the hood. Anson found a hose on the side of the house, and they cleaned up as best they could with it, and while Bentley was still playing in the water, Anson jogged over to Kaylee, leaned down with both hands on either side of her hips, and kissed her quick. When he eased back, he was wearing a smile that stole her breath away.
“Hey,” he murmured, searching her eyes. “I wanted to do that the second I saw you, but I didn’t know how you felt about that stuff in front of your boy.”
The butterflies were going crazy in her stomach, and now she felt shy with him so close, staring directly at her. She gripped his shirt and leaned into him again, laid a soft peck on his lips. “You did good.”
Anson rolled to the side and sat on the stairs beside her. “The two days you mentioned… Kaylee, I needed them. I was slammed at work, I do road construction, and we get busy before winter starts freezing the streets. I could’ve called you after, but at nights I needed to work through everything.”
“I understand.”
“Nah, I owe you an apology. I should’ve called and told you what I was doing.”
“What were you doing?”
“Uuuum, I’ll explain later. First, I wanted to ask you something.”
“Okay. I’m ready.”
“My crew is meeting up at this burrito place in town.” Anson scrubbed his hand down his whiskers and leaned forward, elbows to his knees. “Kaylee, they’re a bunch of fuckin’ lunatics. Half of them are murderous, the other half are off their rockers, and all of them are annoying as hell, but they’re what I have right now. You already met my sister, and Barret and Jaxon, but do you want to meet the others?”
Kaylee gasped and leaned into him as she whispered, “Are you asking me on a date?”
“What? No! I asked your kid to come along too, and group dates with psychopaths aren’t romantic date material. If I ask you out, woman, you’ll know you’re being dated.”
Whoo, he had played with her emotions right there. First she’d been disappointed because it wasn’t a date, but then he’d made it sound like the man knew how to take care of a woman when he took her out. Sexy Anson. He was teasing her, but in a way she liked. Now he had her attention. She wanted that date with him.
Anson leaned into her and murmured against her ear, “And just so you know, if your kid wasn’t here, I’d take you upstairs and fuck the shit out of you right now. You look sexy today, Kaylee.” He sucked gently on her earlobe and held it there between his teeth for two seconds before he released her and stood, dusted off the seat of his pants, and asked innocently, “Are you two up for dinner?”
Uuuuh, currently she was a puddle. She was an unspeaking puddle with a brain smaller than an amoeba because his naughty words had left her utterly dumb. “Wha—? Yes.”
Anson’s grin grew wicked. “You smell good right now. You smell like you want my di—”
“It’s her shampoo,” Bentley called from where he was turning off the hose. Her child was now soaking wet from his blond, shaggy hair to the toes of his little black Converse. “Her shampoo smells like Mema’s flowers. Sometimes I open the lid and squirt some in my hand just so I can sniff it.”
“Is that where all my shampoo has been disappearing to?” she asked. “Bentley Brennan, I don’t have money to be wasting on buying shampoo every week! How much do you use?”
“I cain’t get a good sniff if the blob isn’t at least this big.” Bentley cupped both hands like a bowl.
“Bull Snarky,” Kaylee called him out. “You are a lion, and your nose works just fine. You could smell it from inside the bottle! You’re just wasting it. No more.”
When he crossed his little arms over his chest stubbornly, she gave him the mom face that said she meant business.
“The mom glare looks hot on you—”
“Stop it. You’re not helping,” Kaylee muttered.
Anson zipped his lips, but he was still smiling, the unhelpful brute.
“How about this, little man,” Anson said, as if zipping his lips hadn’t worked at all. “I’m all for taking you out for a burger and shake, but you have to mind your momma. One step out of line tonight, and I’ll be forced to stop the fun and bring you back home.”
“Even if I haven’t got my shake yet?”
“Even if,” Anson said, one blond brow cocked.
“Can it be strawberry mixed with chocolate mixed with vanilla with six cherries on top?” Bentley asked Kaylee.
She laughed despite herself. “Well, that’s very specific, but I’m sure they can do that for you if you behave, ya little monster.”
“I like being a monster,” he chirped.
Anson belted out a laugh that sounded wholly surprised, and then he jerked his chin toward his wrecked bronco. “I did research, and you, little monster, have to ride in a car seat. Your momma’s truck needs some work, so how about y’all ride with me tonight, and I’ll get you home when you’re ready?”
“You drive a monster truck like one of them ones on TV that jump over other cars and spin around in the mud!” Bentley said excitedly.
“Uuuh,” Anson said, frowning at his mud-splattered, jacked-up, demolished ride. “Yeah, it’s kinda like a monster truck.”
“I just have to get his car seat,” Kaylee said, her cheeks still on fire with how damn cute these two were being. Apparently, Anson was good with kids.
When she was strapping the seat in the back, Anson watched her like a hawk.
“What?” she asked, blushing under the scrutiny.
“Nothin’, Snob. I just want to know how to do it, that’s all. The directions online are shit.”
“Mr. Anson said ‘shit.’”
�
��Don’t repeat that,” Anson and Kaylee said in unison.
Anson snorted and ran his hand through his hair, then turned his attention to Bentley sitting on the front seat turning the wheel back and forth and making Nascar noises. With an apologetic look in his eyes, he admitted, “I cuss a lot. So does my crew. Just thought you should have that warning. Your boy will have the mouth of a sailor by midway through dinner.”
“Great,” she muttered, already forming the conversation she would have with Bentley about curse words tonight while she snuggled him to sleep. “Go on, buckle up,” she told Bentley as she settled into the passenger’s seat.
“By himself?” Anson asked with a worried moue to his lips.
“He’s been buckling himself for two years.”
“I’m independent,” Bentley chattered as he crawled into the back seat and began buckling himself into his booster seat. “Mom says that means I like to do everything on my own. I like when she cooks for me, though. Macaroni. Sometimes I get her a yogurt from the fridge and then I’m the chef. And sometimes I make her a juice box after she talks on the phone to Noah. I poke the straw in and everything.”
Anson had been sliding in behind the wheel but froze and locked his eyes on Bentley in the back seat, who was grunting with the effort to buckle himself. “You call your dad Noah?”
“He’s not my dad,” Bentley said softly. “Tommy at school said dads aren’t supposed to make moms cry. Noah does that, so he’s not my dad.”
Kaylee gasped at the sting of his little words, spoken effortlessly as he concentrated on tightening his seat belt over his lap. He’d always called his father Noah, but she hadn’t understood why, and he’d never explained when she asked. She stared straight ahead and clamped her teeth closed to keep her emotions shoved deep down inside.
But Anson just about undid her when he buckled up and slid his hand over her thigh, then intertwined their fingers. “He ain’t no good?” he asked her low.
How to explain all the hurt Noah had blanketed her with. All the insecurity, all the blame, all the guilt, all the feeling that she was never good enough. She couldn’t. So she shook her head and said simply, “No good for Bentley and no good for me.”
Anson hesitated starting the engine. He sat there staring out the window too, while Bentley talked on and on about a measuring tape he’d found in the back of the Bronco.
“Is he the one who stole your smile?” Anson asked, finally breaking the silence that had formed a canyon between them.
She didn’t want to admit she’d let a man do that to her, so instead, she danced around the question. “I used to have a lot. Everything maybe, I don’t know. I was spoiled when I lived here.”
“Bullsh—bullcrap,” Anson said low. “You never acted spoiled around me.”
“But I was. I had a nice, warm bed in a big house and plenty of food and stability, and I never wanted for anything. I worked for my grades, sure, but when I got out into the real world, I got stomped. Maybe you are the lucky one, Anson Carter. Maybe your struggles prepared you for this world. I was naïve, green, and expected everything to fall into place because that’s what had always happened.” She swallowed hard. “And then it didn’t, and sometimes I think I’m still spiraling and can’t get a good enough grip anywhere to stop myself. My smile went slowly.”
“Spiraling means like when you flush a bug down the toilet and it goes round and round,” Bentley explained from the back. “Mom said so.”
The engine roared to life as Anson turned the key and slid her a quick glance. “Why didn’t you ask your mom for help? You could’ve come back here at any time. I know you don’t like Covington, but there’s plenty of places to grip here to stop that fall.”
“You’re wrong.” She dared a look at him. “There’s only one thing here that can do that.”
“The lions aren’t a solution,” he growled as he spun out of Mom’s fancy circle drive.
“I wasn’t talking about the lions.”
“Then what? What can stop you from spinning out?”
You. She wanted to say it so bad. It was right there, on the tip of her tongue, waiting to spill from her lips. But it was selfish of her to declare things like that to a man like Anson. He was different than she remembered in so many ways, but same in others. His protective instincts were still just as big as when he was a boy, maybe bigger, and she couldn’t come to him all pathetic and in need of shelter. He would give it to her without her ever knowing if it was because he pitied her or because he loved her.
And someday, she really, really wished he would let down his guard enough to love her. And if that moment ever happened, she wanted to know without a doubt he was here for the right reasons.
She’d messed up that part with Noah.
With Anson, she wanted to do things right this time.
Instead of answering him, she turned up the radio to a country song. She loved this one. It was by the Beck Brothers called “I Belong In You.” It was a song about home—one of those slow country crooners she’d always identified with because she wanted to feel that sense of belonging so bad her soul had a hole in it that couldn’t be filled.
Bentley was nailing every word in the back, and she didn’t miss that Anson looked up again and again in the rearview mirror with an awed smile on his face. Kaylee curled her legs up and turned to face him, just so she could watch the boys better.
“Hey, Bent, you like this song?” Anson asked.
“You called me Bent,” Bentley said, pulling out the measuring tape as far as his arms could stretch.
“You don’t want me to?”
“No one else does. But I like Bent. It’s like when I do this.” Bentley angled his head hard so his cheek leaned on his shoulder. “I like all the songs Mom plays in her truck.”
“I have this one on a lot of my CDs that I burned.”
“You listen to CDs?” Anson asked. “You’re like a dinosaur.”
“Have you seen my truck? The nicest thing about it is the CD player I had installed last year. I saved up for that thing. Heck yeah, I listen to CDs.”
“Hmm,” Anson said, looking at her like she was a little more interesting. “Hey, Bent, did you know the man who sings this song is a shifter? And the one who plays guitar is also a shifter who can’t talk.”
Bentley gave a wide-eyed look at Kaylee and looked concerned. She’d done that to him—made him paranoid about talking about his animal side. More guilt, more wishing things had gone differently. “You can talk about shifter stuff with Mr. Anson all you want.”
“W-what kind of animals?” Bentley asked hesitantly.
“The Beck Brothers are both big grizzly bear shifters. They live in Damon’s Mountains in the Ashe Crew.”
“I know who Damon is. He’s a big dragon like Dark Kane. Mom got me a poster with all the dragons. Bears are scary, but lions can beat them in a fight if they want to. When I get all growed up, I’ll be big as a grizzly. Nobody’s gonna mess with me or Mom.”
Anson chuckled and eased his ride onto the main drag in Covington. “I have no doubt you will be a brawler, Bent. Means you have to learn how to control that big old beast inside of you, though.”
Bentley thumped himself on the chest. “I’m the boss of my cat.”
Kaylee could’ve sworn Anson’s smile was proud, but she’d been wrong about proud smiles before, like on Noah’s face.
The next song came on—this one with a fast beat about not stopping until becoming a legend. Bentley loved this one and started nodding his head in the back as he sang. He’d always been good with memorizing lyrics, her smart boy. Anson laughed and pulled to a stop in the parking lot of Barkey’s Burritos, then started belting it out, too. Kaylee couldn’t help her peel of giggles as Anson and Bentley pretended to beat the drums during the solo. Both were off-key and flubbed the words a little and laughed at the hard-hitting parts of the song. It was perfect. She wished she could take a video of that one minute so she could go back and look at it later when things w
ere hard again. No matter the uncertainty of her future, this right here was a beautiful moment. Like in the Beck Brothers’ song, and she was a lucky one.
She’d never declared anyone her best friend, but maybe Anson had always been. The Year of Anson, he surely had been, and she’d never moved on, never opened up to a friendship like that, and here they were, like nothing had changed and like her mistakes and his mistakes hadn’t burned the bridge between them.
“I like you,” she blurted out the second his dancing blue eyes landed on her.
His smile grew wicked. “Good.” He shoved the door open and turned to her before he closed it behind him. “But not good enough.” He flashed his white teeth at her and left her heart pounding against her rib cage while he opened the back door and waited for Bentley to unbuckle himself.
Not good enough? Did that mean he wanted more? God, she hoped so. The butterflies in her stomach were ridiculous right now, but she loved it. Loved this. She wasn’t even nervous about meeting the rest of his crew because he’d just teased about wanting her back.
“I like you, too,” Bentley said, then leaped off the Bronco like a deranged flying squirrel and landed hard in Anson’s arms.
Thank God Anson had been semi-ready for that and not dropped her son on the gravel parking lot. Anson set him on his feet and squished his finger and thumb together. “I like you this much.”
“That’s not very much,” Bentley complained. He pulled out the measuring tape he was apparently thinking about stealing. He opened it up as short as he could and showed Anson a millimeter. “I like you this much.” And then he peeled into high-pitched giggles and danced away from Anson, who acted like he was going to get him.
“Food,” Anson demanded as Bentley got too close to the busy lane running through the lot. “Hey Bent, in here, with these people? They are shifters, too. You can talk about your lion if your momma says it’s okay.”
Bentley went still and serious and lifted those big blue eyes to Kaylee, who nodded. “It’s okay here. We’re safe.”
“Race you!” Bentley yelled and took off toward the restaurant.
But something awful happened. In that second, a black SUV was speeding down the lane that separated them from the eatery. “Bentley!” she screamed, but Anson was already moving. No, not moving, blurring. He hooked an arm around Bentley’s middle as the skidding tires slung gravel, and he spun them both out of the way, missing the front end of the car by inches.