Love on the Outskirts of Town

by Zoe York

  “Stop swearing, Natasha. It’s not necessary.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not fucking sure it’s not. Will you just be straight with me? What’s going on?”

  “Sable wants a family.”

  That knocked the wind out of her. “What?”

  “I mean, she wants a baby. Of her own. Our own.”

  “Oh.”

  “She doesn’t want to take Emily from you. Neither of us do. But you’ve been right all along. I don’t know how to be a single dad. She’s had to push me to step up, and…”

  He trailed off. But she could see it now. If he had a child with Sable, she would do all the parenting.

  Good lord, Natasha had dodged a bullet.

  She took a deep breath. “Are you sure…It is none of my business what you and Sable decide to do as a couple. But you cannot use Emily as a trial run. You cannot use her to prove to Sable that you’re Dad of the Year when you aren’t.”

  “That’s not what I’m doing.” But his cheeks darkened.

  “Maybe it’s not the whole thing, but it’s part of it.”

  “I shouldn’t have said anything.” His jaw flexed. Great, now he was defensive.

  “I like Sable,” Natasha offered more softly. “She is genuinely kind and good with Emily. If you are serious about having a full-time family with her, take some time to think about what that would mean. She deserves a full-time partner who wants the same things she does.”

  “I’m doing my best, which you may not think much of, but—” He cut himself off this time, more decisively. “I’m not going to sic my lawyers on you. You’re right.”

  She took a long, wary inhale. She knew this stage in a David argument well. He’d try to save face by doing something reasonable, in the hopes of sweeping his offensive behavior under the carpet. “Good.”

  “I’m going to offer them up instead. Let’s craft a clear custody agreement about Emily. All in writing, so there’s no doubt about how much Sable and I respect you as a mother.” He stumbled on those words, and she wasn’t sure he meant them. “I’ll foot the bill, of course.”

  That wasn’t how good legal representation worked. She shook her head. “I’ll have my own lawyer work on it, too.” Dignity was damn expensive, but she’d make it work.

  After David got home he would surely send a silky email, using all the right words, and pretend he hadn’t threatened her with a custody battle.

  Pure bullshit.

  But she didn’t care, because she’d stuck up for herself and her daughter. She was slaying dragons left and right.

  The day after her furnace was installed, Emily went back to daycare and Tasha went to work at the lumber store.

  The Patels were happy to hear she’d be open to more hours, and told her to use any of the contractor connections through the store to get a good deal on the bathroom installs she needed. So she told herself she’d ask the next contractor who walked through the door about their availability.

  She was not expecting that person to be Jake Foster. Apparently the universe was committed to throwing a third dragon in her path this week to slay.

  Everything happens in threes, she thought.

  “Hey,” he said, stopping a few feet short of the counter. He looked older than the last time she’d seen him, but happier. The few lines on his face looked good on him.

  She smiled, because she could. She’d wondered what this moment would be like, seeing him again, and it turned out it was almost nothing. A whisper of regret from her past, that was all. And now that he was in front of her, the sharp contrast between him and Matt—and the intense connection she’d only ever had with Matt, from day one—was so stark it physically pained her that she’d let Jake ever be an issue. “Hi,” she said softly. “Long time no see.”

  “Yeah. I didn’t realize you were working here.”

  “Started earlier this month.”

  “I don’t come in that often, I guess. I’m usually further up the peninsula.”

  “Makes sense.” She suddenly remembered the Christmas decorations. “Hey, I should say thank you for the Christmas tree. That was a fun surprise. It meant a lot to Matt.”

  He shrugged. “It was a fun assignment. Sean took the lead. He even stole my fruitcake.”

  “Ah, that was yours?” She grinned. “It was delicious.”

  He laughed and rubbed his jaw. “I guess I deserve that.”

  She shook her head. “No. Nothing like that. Anyway, what can I do for you?”

  “I’m here to pick up an order. I called it in first thing this morning and spoke to Raj.”

  She pulled out the stack of contractor orders, and there was Jake’s, third from the bottom. “Got it. Here you go.” He handed over his credit card, and she swiped it, then handed over the invoice and stamped it as paid. “It’s palleted up for you, just pull around to the side and give them this order number.”

  “Thanks.” He stopped, then glanced around.

  They were alone, but this was her job. Whatever he wanted to say could probably wait. She searched for a non-rude way to push the conversation to a close. “I’ll see you soon, maybe?”

  “That would be good. Dani has been bugging Matt for your number.”

  Natasha laughed. “He’d said something about that. He gave me cookies she baked, but I didn’t know if she was just being nice.”

  His eyes went soft. “Dani doesn’t do anything just to be nice. She, uh, has some thoughts about how I could have been kinder to you. Back when you were pregnant.”

  That was not what Natasha had been expecting to hear. “Really?”

  “Yeah. I think…” Okay, they were doing this now.

  She took a deep breath, bracing herself.

  But he shook his head. “No, never mind. Now is not the time or place, but just know, she’s definitely Team Natasha. Womanhood and sticking together, that sort of thing. Which of course, I’m fully supportive of.”

  Natasha burst out laughing. “Okay. That’s the weirdest pitch for me to hang out with your wife, but it worked. I’ll get in touch with her. Matt says she likes girls’ nights.”

  “Yeah.” He grinned widely. “She does. Even more so since becoming a mom.”

  “You have a boy, right?”

  “Calvin.” He pulled out his phone. “He just turned one before Christmas.”

  “Cute.”

  She grabbed her phone. “Here’s Emily. She’ll be four in June.”

  “She’s adorable.”

  And that was that. He headed back outside to pick up his order. She didn’t realize until after he left that there was zero weirdness for her about him having a child with another woman. He’d never been hers to lose, and she’d known that for ages, but it still felt good to have it confirmed.

  Third and final dragon slayed, and it wasn’t even lunch yet.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  On the first parade night after the holiday break, Matt got to the armouries early, because he only had to drive four blocks. He’d been at Natasha’s house for dinner first, and headed out when she marched Emily upstairs to have a post-spaghetti bath before bed.

  He’d go back to her place tonight after the Army got their pound of flesh from him for weekly training.

  He wasn’t the only one in early. Some of the most senior NCOs—including his brother Dean and Ryan Howard—were in for an O-group meeting before training began.

  Matt checked in with his officer and gave a verbal report of how many members of their platoon he was expecting to show and explained the absences reported so far. Then he decided to go and grab a coffee because he had time, but Ryan stopped him on the way out.

  “Matt,” the DSM said, holding out his hand.

  “Sir.”

  “Shit, you know I hate that.” Of all the non-commissioned officers, only the sergeants major were called sir. And the rest of them enjoyed doing it a bit to get the ribbing in.

  “That’s why I remember to do it every time.” Matt grinned. “What can I do for you?
”

  “I know I covered it last time, but we’ve got another Mental Resiliency session tonight and I’m going to be in and out of exercise planning meetings all night. You don’t get to dodge it this time, sorry.”

  “Actually, that’s fine.” He didn’t miss the look of surprise on Ryan’s face. “I’ve had some, uh, stuff come up at the day job. Owen Kincaid’s got me thinking about how a lot of this is more relevant to me than I wanted to admit.”

  “Owen’s a smart guy.”

  “He is.”

  “Listen, you know my door is always open on that score—or any matter.”

  “I do, sir. Thank you.”

  It had been a while since Matt had taken the course for leading the professional development sessions on mental readiness, so after the training night started and his troops were tasked off, he grabbed the notes from online and got himself squared away in a classroom upstairs.

  Like the book on male depression, the teaching slides described Matt—and his brothers—on every page. He also saw his issues at work.

  He was a pro at compartmentalizing his stress.

  He just couldn’t ignore the boxed-up shit for too long.

  When the troops filed in, he shoved away those personal reflections and took them through the slides. It was a textbook perfect lesson, but one that was not connecting with them. He could see it in their blank stares and shifting body language.

  He could see himself, and his resistance to all of this until it was almost too late.

  His throat tightened up, and he firmed up his jaw. Damn.

  “All right. Let’s set aside the slides with the canned language, and get real.” He turned off the projector and paced back and forth, waiting until he had everyone’s attention.

  He made eye contact with every troop in the room before continuing.

  “Here’s the thing,” he said thickly. “All of you are going to need this shit at one point or another. Every single one of you will be in a place where your emotions run high or you’re blindsided by conflict, trauma, injury, or stress. And you know how I know that? Because it happened to me. I want to tell you a story. And I want you to know before I start that this is a hard thing for me to share, because I don’t like to think of myself as being weak. But the thing is, it’s not weak to recognize stress inside your body. It’s strong.”

  As he said those two words, everyone shifted. It wasn’t what they had expected him to say. Maybe someone else. Maybe Sgt. Major Howard, but not Sgt. Foster. They were listening now because he was shocking the hell out of them.

  “As I’m sure you are aware, a year ago my younger brother was injured in Iraq. We are all grateful that he survived, that he is home again and doing well. What none of you know is that the same day I found out Captain Foster had been hurt, I lost a patient at work. And I didn’t have a chance to deal with that death. He was a soldier, too. Retired guy, long history of service. Did three peacekeeping tours overseas. Kosovo, Bosnia. Life-long smoker, had chronic bronchitis. And a couple times a month, I’d be called out and we’d take him to the hospital.

  “I know that COPD kills people. I knew he was sick. But he was as alive as you or me when we picked him up. When we arrived at the hospital, I joked with him about picking up women. And in the half-hour or so it took us to do our paperwork before we headed out, he had a massive heart attack and died in the emergency room.

  “I didn’t see it coming. That’s the shit that will fuck you up, boys. Something in your life will blindside you. Your woman will cheat on you. You’ll be in a bad car accident. You’ll lose a job and slide into debt. You will lose a loved one, a friend, a neighbour. Have a house fire. And in our line of work, you will see people get hurt, see people die, or worse.”

  “Nothing’s worse than seeing someone die,” a young corporal interjected.

  Matt didn’t bother to jack him up for interrupting. This was too important. “It’s not about better or worse. It’s all about what gets under your skin, what gets in your head. And that’s going to be different for each of us.”

  “So what happened to you?” Another corporal asked.

  “I got nightmares. Panic so real it felt like my chest would crush in on itself. I stopped hanging out with friends and my brothers. I poured myself into work so I wouldn’t need to be alone with my thoughts. I, uh… conflated what happened to my brother and what happened to my patient. I felt guilt so ugly, so deep, I couldn’t name it. I still do, I gotta be honest with you. This is some fucked up shit.”

  “You don’t look fucked up.”

  Matt looked at the young woman’s name tag. “No, Barro, I don’t. I look like I’ve got my shit together, don’t I? And most days I do. But my supervisor—he’s ex-infantry too—he saw some subtle shifts in my personality. He called me on it, and gave me a good book to read about depression.”

  Every spine in the room straightened.

  He nodded. “Yeah. That’s not a word we talk about a lot. There are other ones, too. Anxiety. PTSD. You’re going to hear people talk about mental injuries, and that’s what these all are, but I dunno…I think it’s good to talk about depression the way we do everything else. To use the word and name it. I’m struggling with depression. And it completely blindsided me.”

  “So…” Another troop started and then stopped his question.

  “What am I going to do?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Go see a doctor at some point. Talk to my girlfriend about it—a lot. Talk to my EMS partner and boss about it, especially when I feel it affecting me at work. Focus on a good work-sleep-exercise balance. And I’m going to talk to a professional about it as well. The key takeaway for you guys is that I ignored all of the early warning signs. So don’t be like me. Don’t be stupid. Treat your minds like they’re any other part of your body and don’t hurt them.”

  His truck hadn’t even had a chance to warm up, that’s how close the armouries was to Natasha’s house. That’s how quickly he could get back to her after a night of work.

  Natasha was in the living room, staring at her idea wall when he pulled up. He watched her through the window as he parked, hopped out, and headed up her front walk.

  She was working so hard to get everything done and watching that—this late at night—did something weird to him inside.

  Stopping, he turned around and jumped back in his truck. He drove around the block and hit the drive-thru at Tim Hortons. He got two different herbal teas and a twenty-pack of Timbits, fuel for a late-night planning session.

  When he arrived back at her house, she was in exactly the same position, still wracking her brain for how to best tackle her mile-long to-do list.

  He jogged up the steps and knocked quietly.

  It wasn’t until she opened the door that he realized his heart was pounding and his chest was tight.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, her eyes wide as she looked at his face.

  “Nothing.” He stepped inside and stopped. “I mean, I didn’t think anything…”

  She took the tea and donut holes from him and set them aside. Then she closed right in up against him and kissed him. Warm caresses to his wintery cold skin. A sweet balm to his broken soul.

  “I was fine,” he said, his voice cracking. “I was. I am. I just… Something snuck up on me and I didn’t realize it.” He barked a laugh that sounded weird to his own ear. “I came straight here, and I saw you in the window. You are so beautiful. So fierce. Focused and gorgeous and strong. So I thought, I should go and get you tea, because I know you like that.”

  “Thank you.” She whispered it against his skin. Soft and sweet.

  His hands clenched on her hips and he closed his eyes. “I told a room of young guys about my shit tonight.”

  “Oh, wow.” She breathed in, and he tried to match her inhale and exhale. He failed. “How did that feel?”

  “I thought it was good.” But she was looking at him like he’d seen a ghost and his chest was doing that fucking thing it did wher
e it screamed like a canary in a coal mine that he was not fine, not good, not okay. “But maybe it was scarier and harder than I thought.”

  She nodded. “Maybe. And then you got me tea?”

  It wasn’t possible to hold her tight enough. He wanted to get her anything and everything she needed to make her dreams come true. Tea was nothing.

  She unzipped his coat and he hung it on one of the hooks just inside the door. He’d installed them two days earlier. A row up high, where he put his coat. And a little row down low, for Emily.

  He hauled Natasha against him again and kissed her.

  “It’s okay,” she whispered, her lips not leaving his. “I’m right here.”

  “I don’t want to talk about the Army.” He took a ragged breath, then another, this one smoother. “Not tonight. I did a thing, it had a delayed effect on me, but now that I’ve got you in my arms, it’s better.”

  “Okay.” She squeezed her arms around his neck. “Hugs are always good, though.”

  “Always. And now I want to talk about why you’re up late staring at your idea wall.”

  She sighed and stepped out of his arms. “I was actually trying to distract myself. My current problem isn’t reno-related.”

  “What happened?”

  She shrugged, but she didn’t meet his eyes. “Tea first?”

  “Tasha.” He stopped again and bent down enough to meet her eyes. “What happened?”

  Screwing up her face, she took a deep breath, then gave him a small, sad smile. “David sent me an email blowing off his next weekend with Emily.”

  “What?”

  “Said something work-related came up, but I don’t know.” Her mouth tightened up, and he could see the pain in her eyes.

  Fuck. “I’m sorry.”

  The corners of her mouth turned down. “Yeah, me too. I really am, because…” She dragged in a breath. “For Emily, first of all. He had a nice run there of being dependable. And this doesn’t mean he isn’t necessarily dependable—”

  Matt begged to differ.

  She caught his expression and gave him a look.