Back to You

by Lauren Dane

  It seemed that now she was confident—and wary—enough to demand respect. And not all anger was destructive and ugly.

  Which was good because he could make her angry in ways no one else on earth did. But instead of running from it, deferring to him to keep the peace or shying from conflict, she let it come.

  They promised one another honesty so she gave it to him.

  “Oh, I see. So when you decide you’re ready to talk about something you’ve been avoiding for eight years I’m supposed to drop everything. Do I have that right?”

  “We can’t work things out if when I finally talk about them you run off.” Vaughan threw his hands up.

  “It’s really a good thing you’re going to continue to be hot when you get old.”

  His eyebrows rose. “That sounds like an insult.”

  “Smart. Also, self-centered. I’m meeting with a potential new business associate and you really expect me to toss that? Eight years you said nothing. Two weeks of being back in my life doesn’t give you the right to stand there and be hurt or mad or anything but accepting of my saying, yes we need to talk but not right this moment.”

  He froze as the point hit home.

  “I’ll see you later. Make sure everyone has a backpack when they get off the bus.” She walked downstairs, snatching her keys from the hook near the garage door and scooting out.

  She’d had the last word and he needed to chew on that for a while.

  * * *

  THOUGH HER TRIPS to Hood River were usually far less pleasant than the one she undertook that day, the skies above were brilliantly blue. The weather was gorgeous and she was hungry and going to have lunch with a new friend and hopefully a new business contact.

  It wasn’t a city, not even a small city. But Tuesday’s custom frame shop was located in a cute, well-traveled part of town in a busy retail-dense several blocks.

  But when she went inside, Kelly realized this was far more than a place people got art framed. This little shop had the bones and heart of a gallery.

  Tuesday was up front, dealing with a customer, so Kelly strolled through the space, pausing to look here and there.

  Once the customer had left and it was just the two of them, Tuesday smiled and welcomed Kelly with a hug. “Thanks for waiting.”

  “No problem. I run a shop, too. I know what that’s like.” Kelly indicated a glass case. “Is that yours?”

  Tuesday nodded, pulling some trays out.

  Like Tuesday herself, the jewelry was vivid. Bold and beautiful. She liked to work with a variety of stones and findings but everything was crafted incredibly and priced fairly. In fact, Kelly would sell these things in her store for at least twice as much and they’d still be a bargain.

  “Let’s go to lunch so we can talk about what I’ve got in mind.”

  Kelly didn’t have many close friends but when she liked someone she tended to just like them intensely enough to be real friends with them, or they became acquaintances.

  Tuesday was one of those souls Kelly had liked the moment she’d come into Kelly’s house with Ezra at her side. They had lunch, talked about the kids and how they were feeling and the discussion landed on how Kelly felt about Vaughan living with her.

  Kelly hesitated because she had a million different feelings about it.

  Finally, she managed, “It’s complicated.”

  Tuesday laughed, patting Kelly’s hand. “Girl, I bet. I’m around if you want to talk about it. You don’t know me very well, but sometimes that’s a good thing.”

  Maybe it was.

  “I’m so confused right now. To be honest, I couldn’t answer you because I don’t know. Well, no, that’s a lie. I like Vaughan. I mean as a person separate from my ex-husband or as the father of my kids. I’ve always liked him, since the start. And it hasn’t served me well in every circumstance. I have a lot to figure out. Right now I’m just trying to figure out what it is I want.”

  She wanted what it was between them when they were having sex. It wasn’t awkward or uncertain then. Her body trusted his. In the four days since they’d slept together, they’d been together every single night after the girls had gone to sleep.

  She’d gone back to her room, or him to his own, but he chafed at that, she knew. He wanted the girls to understand he was there to get all of them back.

  The truth was, sleeping with him had been a stupid, impulsive mistake. Kelly had wanted to wait, take it slow. But she’d given in and at this point, since the condom was out of the wrapper, she didn’t regret it because it felt so good.

  She never wanted her children to feel what she did when their father lost interest. And though she’d forgiven him and believed his apology was genuine, there was no forgetting.

  And that still loomed between them whether she wanted it to or not.

  Illicit sex was one thing. Mom and Dad sleeping in the same room was something a lot more than, “Dad’s staying with us awhile.”

  They paid for their lunch and began to make their way back the few blocks to Tuesday’s shop. Her new friend was equally skittish it seemed about the Hurley she was with.

  Neither of them seemed to want to talk about it in too much detail but Kelly felt a little better anyway that someone else was trying to work out a complicated-type romantic thing at the same time.

  “Vaughan isn’t a bad man.” Kelly began to speak as she arranged the jewelry she’d asked Tuesday to pull out of the locked cases, taking pictures and sending them to her business partner. “He just didn’t want a life with me and the girls. It took me a really long time to get over that.”

  When Kelly looked up, she caught understanding on Tuesday’s features.

  Tuesday blew out a breath and started to tell Kelly the story of how she’d met and fallen in love with her former husband who’d died five years prior.

  Tuesday leaned against the counter. “Things were fast with us. We clicked. He had dreadlocks back then. We were nineteen.” Tuesday laughed.

  “The next year we all decided to move into a big house together. Natalie and me and our other roommates. And Eric. We all went to school together, some of us worked together, we lived in the same house and we were a family. As we neared graduation, Eric asked me to marry him. Or I guess I should say he and I had this talk about life and the future and we decided to get married. He and I had plans. A path, and we were on it together. It was a really great time in my life. I’m telling you this stuff so you can understand what I’m going to say next a little better.”

  Kelly stilled, putting her phone down. The heat of a blush overtook her neck and face. Tuesday knew about the cheating. Kelly wasn’t sure who’d told her, but it was pretty easy to tell where the story was heading.

  “I found a letter. Not a love letter,” Tuesday amended quickly. “It was a discussion about this thing they’d had while studying in Central America. It was like, hey I get it, I’d never say anything to her, I know you love her and I hope it works out.”

  A sick feeling washed through Kelly on her friend’s behalf.

  “I was planning our wedding, getting ready to move away from my hometown to Seattle, where Eric had a job. Boxing stuff up. I confronted him as he walked in the door. He confessed immediately. He begged my forgiveness. He said he loved me and wanted to be with me. He’d chosen me, deliberately, every single day of his life since he returned from that program he’d been in over two years before. I went home, because that’s what you do. Anyway, my mom was awesome. She said love can start a marriage, but a commitment is what kept it together. Did I think Eric would do it again or did I think if I forgave him I could have a really wonderful life with a man who wasn’t perfect but one who loved me? You listen to me, Kelly. Lots of people will say if he or she ever cheated I’d break up with them forever. And maybe you should, given the circumstances. Hell, you did. B
ut it’s how long ago now?”

  There was no denying her fear of not only being left behind again, but also of people seeing it from the outside and thinking she was a doormat or stupid. She had left then, not so much because of that one incident, but that one last incident being all she could take, and his reaction only underlined why she left.

  “Eight years. I served him with papers eight years ago.”

  “You’re a different person now. Maybe he is, too.” Tuesday shrugged. “Maybe not. But you get to think about it if you want to. Screw what anyone else says about it.”

  Kelly had come a long way in her life, but she wasn’t quite sure she had that not-caring-about-what-anyone-else-thought part down yet.

  “You were glad, then? That you gave him another chance?”

  Tuesday nodded. “Yes. I never regretted it.”

  It had been a risk for her new friend to expose herself with that story and it had been exactly what Kelly had needed to hear. “Thanks for that. I needed to hear it. Can I say something else? Not about men or marriage.”

  Tuesday’s expression turned curious. “Sure.”

  “I wasn’t sure what I expected when you said you owned and ran a custom framing shop. But, Tuesday, this is so much more than that. This is a gallery. You should call it that.” Tuesday had art living in her veins, that much was clear. It seemed a crime to call the shop anything but a gallery.

  “I guess you weren’t the only one who needed to hear something today. Thank you.”

  Kelly hugged her and left a few minutes later with a new piece of jewelry, so very glad she’d stopped by that day.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “TOMORROW NIGHT IS the end-of-the-year festival at the elementary school. Are you ready for that?” Kelly asked Vaughan.

  “Okay. Yeah.” He smiled. “Yeah. Like what happens? What do we do?”

  “There’ll be a cakewalk and games and stuff to waste money on. Their teachers are there for the dunk tank and the pie-in-the-face stuff.”

  “Ah, okay. A carnival, then. We had those in school, too, back in the day. Didn’t you?”

  “No. I went to other types of festivals, though. Stuff at the base and then later, as I traveled for work, I did amusement parks and merry-go-rounds and Ferris wheels.”

  He stood next to her at the kitchen counter, looking out into the backyard where the girls played. He thought about a night a decade before where they’d taken a ride on the Eye in London.

  “Remember London?”

  Her laugh told him she did. “Hard to forget. I was hugely pregnant with Maddie. It was the last trip I took until after she was born.”

  That night they’d been alone in the carriage and he’d wedged in behind her, his hands on her belly as his daughter kicked and moved.

  Their entire future had stretched out that night. He hadn’t been terrified of it yet. Parenthood was still at the easy part when the baby was still inside Mom.

  Silence hung between them for several long seconds. Not uncomfortable, but weighty. Important.

  She dried her hands, clearing her throat. “Anyway. I bought you a ticket. It comes with a cookie and a juice box. Bring all your one-dollar bills. For all the games, not for your usual reason to carry a lot of small bills.”

  She had a smile that made him turn toward her to look better.

  He cupped her cheek. “I missed being teased by you.” He kissed her quickly, without thinking, and then remembered they stood in front of the window. Part of him hoped the girls had seen it.

  Once he’d broken the kiss, they just looked at one another. Thank God Kelly didn’t freeze up or push him away, but then the oven timer dinged and she went over to turn it off and take dinner out.

  “The girls need to come in and wash up,” she said as she turned back to him.

  “How’re we doing?” He’d told himself to wait for her to bring it up but he couldn’t resist. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to pressure you but I’d like to be more open about us around the girls. Around everyone. I want to take you on dates. I want to hold your hand when we’re out.” He’d been there three weeks and every moment it got more difficult not to touch her anytime he wanted—which turned out to be often—or kiss her, take her hand, whatever.

  She opened her mouth to answer but instead a child came in, interrupting the moment. Instead of stepping in to tell Maddie what to do, Kelly turned and got back to work dealing with the food, leaving it to him.

  “Maddie, wash up and get your sister inside, too, please.”

  Maddie turned around and screamed her sister’s name, making him jump a few feet.

  “Madeline!” Kelly’s voice wasn’t loud, but had that mom-command in it. “We’ve had a talk about that before. Daddy could have yelled for your sister, too. But he asked you to get your sister inside and you know what he meant.”

  Maddie’s mouth turned down. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. Your uncles and I still do that.” Vaughan winked as Kensey came running in.

  “You don’t haveta yell,” she told her big sister.

  Dinner went well but as they were cleaning up, they hit another snag.

  “Don’t I need to sign something?” Kelly asked Maddie.

  “I only have a few math problems left. I’ll do them on the bus tomorrow morning.”

  “No, you won’t. You’ll go bring your homework down and do it here at the table. Then I’ll go over it and sign it.”

  “It’s two questions. They’re easy. I still have to shower.”

  “None of those things you said are an answer to anything I told you to do.”

  “Daddy said it was okay.”

  Vaughan sat back in his chair. “I did?”

  “Today. I showed you my work and said I had some left and would do them tomorrow and you said that was fine.”

  “Do you think I’m ever going to find that an acceptable excuse?” Kelly shook her head.

  “Aren’t we supposed to obey our parents? He’s my parent.”

  Vaughan knew his kids were strong-willed. It wasn’t that they were always angels with him, either. But this day-to-day stuff was unexpected. Kelly seemed far more at ease dealing with it than he was.

  Kelly sighed. “I’m so disappointed in you, Madeline. He didn’t know the rules and you used that to get the answer you wanted. Now go get your homework and bring it down immediately. I’m seriously wondering if an end-of-school party is the best idea for you if this is your attitude.”

  Maddie burst into tears and threw her arms around Vaughan, babbling at him that she was sorry. He patted her shoulder, feeling like an ogre.

  “It’s okay, sweetheart. I did say that.”

  Kelly’s posture went stiff and then she narrowed her gaze at him enough he knew he was in trouble.

  “You do still need to obey your mother right now.”

  He kissed the top of Maddie’s head before she left the room.

  “I didn’t know she wasn’t allowed to do that.”

  Kelly’s eyes went wide and then narrowed. “Wrong thing to apologize for. She knew you didn’t know the rules. That’s why she asked you instead of me. And then I called her out and told her it was disappointing. And you said hey no big, I said that thing you manipulated me into saying.”

  “I just wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. We don’t need to be so harsh.”

  “Oh, we don’t? Your nearly three weeks of full-time parenting has made you a big enough expert to tell me the years I’ve put into helping them be better people is harsh?”

  “That’s not fair. I’m trying.”

  “I just gave you a gold star. It’s invisible but I promise it’s there. Now to the actual point instead of your hurt feelings. I’m trying to teach them how to understand that what they do imp
acts other people. It’s a big-picture thing, Vaughan. She’s in fifth grade, of course she doesn’t want to do her homework. But she used someone else’s ignorance to get away with breaking a rule. It’s not the homework, it’s the way she needs to have empathy. That’s not harsh, that’s our job as parents. They need to be adults someday. Adults who can stand by their words and deeds.”

  Like he hadn’t. She didn’t say it aloud, but he heard it anyway. And she’d been right.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”

  “You don’t need to be sorry.” Kelly shook her head. “We’ll talk about this in private later.”

  He wanted to hash it out right then, but the girls were hovering, he knew. They’d get back to it that night.

  * * *

  ONCE KELLY HAD gotten all the homework handled, the showers done and the clothes laid out for the next day, it was time to put the girls down. Then Kensey got up because she needed a drink of water. The next time, ten minutes later, Kelly’d been walking down the hall toward her room when she caught Kensey with her headphones on, playing a video game.

  It was after taking away the video game and headphones and tucking them into the time-out drawer that she realized something pretty important. Enough that it brought her to a complete stop.

  Vaughan had been in their house for three weeks. And until very recently they’d treated him like a guest. But over the past several days there’d been a return to their usual behavior. On the whole, great kids, but they could act up like anyone else. And they did.

  The girls were getting used to him being there. They’d stopped using their company manners and were giving their dad a taste of what day-to-day parenting felt like.

  She walked to his room and tapped.

  He opened up, holding the neck of his guitar. Then he got that grin and impossibly enough she wanted to kiss him and kick him in the junk at exactly the same time and in equal measure.