The Slow Burn ~ Kristen Ashley

by Ashley, Kristen

  Feeling me.

  I’d forgotten an important lesson my mother taught me.

  Shit worked out and you lived while it did.

  I wasn’t beating myself up that I got stuck where I was. I’d taken a hit from life, I had responsibilities and I was caught up in seeing to them.

  But it was an awakening as well as a reminder.

  I had to have this for me, but I had to teach this to Brooks.

  And now, give it to Toby.

  This was a day that would eventually be just a trace in our lives.

  While we had it, we had to be all in. Cherish it.

  It was important.

  Two, with us going out all together, it wasn’t just Toby claiming me and Brooks.

  It was me and Brooklyn claiming Toby.

  I loved it after all the time we spent dancing around each other he wanted to execute a very public act that we were now official. That said everything about where he was at with my son and me, and what it said meant the world to me.

  I just hadn’t realized that while he did that, I got to do it too.

  I was in the best mood I’d been in since well before I left Tennessee when we finally made it to the nut clusters tent.

  I noted right off that Deanna and Charlie were there.

  I also noted right off that the line for the clusters was long.

  Fortunately, Deanna and Charlie were standing right in the middle of it.

  “Hey!” I called in greeting as they both smiled when they caught sight of us.

  “Hey,” Deanna called back.

  “Hiya, sweetheart,” Charlie replied. “Hey, kid,” he said, looking down to Brooklyn.

  “Deedee! Chacha!” Toby squealed.

  “Hiya, Tobe,” Deanna greeted as we stopped at them. She bent right into Brooks’s stroller and muttered, “I need my hands on this bundle o’ goodness.”

  “Tobe,” Charlie nodded to Toby. “How’s things?”

  “Good, man. You?” Toby responded.

  “We got four pounds of cashew nut clusters, I’m set,” Charlie told him.

  “Since we already got ours,” Deanna said to me, lifting Brooklyn up into her arms, “and the line was long, we got in it again for you.”

  “Thanks, Deanna,” I murmured, watching Brooklyn give her a baby hug around her neck while she gave him a big smackeroo on his check, after which Brooks totally dismissed her, grunting and pushing off with his work boots in her stomach to launch himself at Charlie.

  Charlie caught him, and the minute he did, Brooklyn looked in his face and shared earnestly, “Chacha, sissis, leepy, loona, Dodo.”

  “Well, heck, boy, that’s serious,” Charlie replied somberly.

  Brooklyn nodded then dug his boots in and launched himself back toward Deanna.

  Charlie chuckled and gave him up to his wife.

  “Izzy and Johnny here yet?” Deanna asked, attaching my son to her hip.

  “They’re coming later,” I told her and felt Toby’s beard on my chin.

  “Saturday morning fuck-a-thon,” he whispered.

  I turned my head and grinned at him because my sister was a prude, but when Johnny was done with her, even she couldn’t hide the glow.

  And she glowed often.

  “Dodo!” Brooklyn yelled, reaching to him.

  “He’s feelin’ antsy,” Toby declared, pulling out his wallet. “We’ll go somewhere he can motor around,” he went on, yanking some bills out and handing them to me. “Get four pounds, babe.”

  I took the bills.

  He shoved his wallet back in his pocket and took my son.

  “I’ll grab the stroller and go with you,” Charlie muttered.

  He did that, and they took off.

  Deanna and I shuffled forward in line.

  “So how’s that going?” she asked, her gaze on Toby and Charlie strolling away.

  “We fit. We match. We have our shit tight,” I answered, and her attention turned to me. “He’s open. Honest. Communicative. Wise. Protective. He loves my kid. He’s totally into me and doesn’t hide it. And he’s mind-bogglingly good in bed. Macho-man lunacy raises its head on occasion, but I’ve decided if I didn’t have that, I wouldn’t have caveman sex that is out . . . of . . . this . . . world. But also, it seems like when he gets like that, it’s about something that runs deep with him, so I shouldn’t push it. To sum up, it’s going great.”

  “Well, damn, baby girl,” she hooted, “Sounds like it is.”

  We shuffled forward in line.

  “Caveman sex?” she asked.

  “If he dragged me by my hair to bed I one, would not care because two, it’d rock my world what he did to me there.”

  She smiled and repeated with added emphasis, “Well, damn, baby girl.”

  I smiled back. “Unh-hunh.”

  She tipped her head to the side. “Macho-man lunacy?”

  “He refuses to ride in a car driven by a woman,” I explained.

  Her eyes got big.

  “Now, he also isn’t a fan of riding shotgun with another dude,” I continued. “But he puts his foot down if it’s a woman.”

  “You been in a car with Margot?” she asked.

  I shook my head.

  “I have . . . once,” she told me as we shuffled forward in line. “The woman is a menace.”

  I turned to face the line, murmuring, “This could explain things.”

  “Trust me, you ride with her, it would. A kid rode with her often, he might swear off women drivers for life.”

  Hmm . . .

  Maybe this did explain things.

  Also, something to note when she started to look after Brooks next week.

  “You seem really good, Addie.”

  At her quiet words, my attention went back to her.

  “Today, for the first time since maybe before I had Brooks, I’m back to me.”

  Deanna’s pretty face got soft.

  “I love that for you, honey,” she whispered.

  “Not more than me.”

  We smiled like goofs at each other until we had to shuffle forward in line again.

  I learned four pounds of caramel cashew nut clusters was a stupid amount, as well as stupidly expensive, and it was not lost on me that I didn’t care even a little bit because they looked so good, I wanted to shove my face in the bag the minute it was handed to me.

  We wandered to Toby and Charlie, who’d found a small stretch of snow-packed space that had a couple of picnic tables set up for folks to hang and some open area where right then I saw Toby had Brooklyn by both hands.

  Brooks’s pudgy little fingers were wrapped around Toby’s. Tobe was bent forward slightly, head tipped back to talk to Charlie, but Brooks was on his feet in front of Toby, and Toby was following as he let my boy wobble around to have an adventure and burn some energy.

  But my kid was doing it holding the fingers of a man he loved, and Toby was controlling it so Brooks couldn’t get away or fall down in the cold snow.

  Yeah.

  The man was a natural.

  And I was falling crazy in love with him.

  “I’d been right,” I whispered as I walked to them, eyes locked to Tobe and my boy.

  “Sorry?” Deanna asked.

  “The first time I saw him I’d been right,” I said. “He’s perfect.”

  “Looks that way to me,” Deanna agreed.

  God, I wished Mom was there right then.

  And Izzy.

  I’d eventually get Izzy (after Johnny was done with her).

  But I really wanted my mom.

  When we made it to them, Deanna went to Charlie and I headed to Toby and Brooklyn.

  When Tobe caught sight of us, he wrapped his hands around Brooks’s and lifted him up by his arms. He swung Brooks in the air, Brooklyn squealing with glee, then Toby swung him back, caught him, twisted him to hold him to his chest, his baby, jean-clad legs straddling Tobe’s flat abs, Toby’s eyes still on me.

  “Cluster,” he demanded.


  I opened the bag and handed him one.

  He bit off most of it and shoved the little bite he left in Brooklyn’s mouth.

  It took a beat before Brooklyn’s eyes got huge. He patted his mouth happily, squirmed in Toby’s hold with chocolate excitement, and as Tobe chewed, he grinned down at my boy.

  Yep.

  Perfect.

  I ate a cluster like Toby did, giving a bit to my son, and as I tasted it, I saw what all the fuss was about.

  I’d stowed the clusters in the net of the stroller and straightened when Toby claimed me.

  Me and my son held to his chest, he bent his head to kiss me.

  It was a hint of open-mouth and more than a hint of caramel, cashew, chocolate cluster kiss.

  And it was divine.

  “Mama! Dodo! Sissis!” Brooks yelled, banging on both of us with his hands.

  Toby shuffled me to his side opposite Brooklyn as Deanna announced, “Addie, we gotta hit this tent down the way. Charlie and I already had a ramble and there is this wreath that would be perfect for your door. You have to see.”

  Since I didn’t buy the clusters, depending on the cost, my give-myself-a-treat-at-the-Fair splurge might be transferred to a Christmas wreath.

  If it was retro.

  And OTT.

  I was about to say, “Lead the way,” when I felt something funny.

  I did half a scan of our surroundings and that was all I had to do before I caught sight of her.

  Jocelyn, standing in a narrow open path between a tent that sold hot apple cider and one that sold wineglasses painted as Santa’s belt and snowmen, penguin, reindeer and Grinch faces.

  She was glaring at me.

  And there I was, my son and I held close to Tobias Gamble.

  What else could I do?

  Slowly, I shot her a cat’s-got-her-cream smile.

  And nearly instantly felt Toby go solid against me.

  Uh-oh.

  I tipped my head to look up at him.

  Oh shit.

  He didn’t delay.

  “What’s that about?”

  “Nothing,” I said quickly, making a mental note that at all times, especially around Toby, even when I was in the enjoyable pursuit of getting in the face of a Mean Girl (even if I was at a distance), to have spatial awareness.

  He glanced Jocelyn’s way, then back to me. “You know her?”

  “Not really.”

  “So what was that about?”

  “Well . . .” I said slowly.

  He jostled me.

  “Addie,” he growled.

  The pissed-off growl.

  Crap.

  “She comes through my line and either ignores me or messes with me. Demanding price checks she knows she doesn’t need and stuff like that,” I explained. “I don’t know her. I just know she’s . . . not nice.”

  “Right. But that doesn’t explain you sending her a fuck-you-very-sweetly smile just now,” he pointed out.

  Okay.

  He’d been out with her, I’d just sent her the smile exactly as he described, and he was not dumb.

  “Right, Tobe, after our fight on the street she came through my line and had a few digs at me about you,” I shared.

  Slowly, his head turned Jocelyn’s way.

  Uh-oh!

  I pressed into him. “It wasn’t a big deal. I know what kind of woman she is and why she was warning me off you was not about the sisterho—”

  I cut myself off when, slowly, his head turned back to me.

  Uh-oh!

  Before I knew it, or could do anything to control the damage, Brooks was dumped in my arms and Toby was stalking toward Jocelyn.

  Okay, dancing around each other for seven months, a week of our shit being tight, me getting there were reasons behind his macho-man lunacy, all of that did not make me an expert in Tobias Gamble.

  I was seeing this now.

  But what I knew right then was I had to act fast.

  So I turned to Deanna, holding Brooklyn out to her and muttering, “Do you mind?”

  She took my son and muttered back, “Lock that down, girl, whatever it is.”

  “Dodo! Mama!” Brooklyn yelled as I hoofed it behind Toby.

  He stopped two feet away from Jocelyn about three seconds before I made it to his back and put a hand on the small under his jacket.

  “Tobe—” I started.

  “Considering the fact, the one time I fucked you, you acted like we were makin’ a sex tape and you had to have hair and face camera ready, I pretty much figured you were seriously up your own ass . . .” Toby started at Jocelyn.

  Good God.

  “But that was just me makin’ a poor decision about a woman I’d fuck,” he continued. “You go after Addie, that’s somethin’ else.”

  “Toby,” I whispered, pressing in at his back with my hand and my body, but looking at her to see the color had drained from her face.

  This might be because of his words.

  It was also because there were people around, they weren’t far, they could totally hear, and knowing the folk of Matlock, they were probably listening.

  “You givin’ me a mediocre piece of ass once does not buy you a role in my life or the right to open your smart mouth about me to anyone, but especially not to someone I care about,” Toby told her.

  The pale was going away and red was seeping into Jocelyn’s cheeks.

  Not embarrassment.

  From the flash in her eyes, anger.

  “You’re nothing to me but a bad choice that didn’t mean enough even to regret,” he carried on. “But you drag someone important to me into your nasty, you’re gonna get my attention.”

  “I don’t want your attention,” she snapped.

  “Bullshit,” he bit. “Newsflash, that attention isn’t the good kind. I just thought you were conceited. Now I think you’re a bitch.”

  “You aren’t all that, Toby,” she bit back and did a lame toss of her hair. “Newsflash, big man, I faked it with you.”

  “No kidding?” Toby asked. “That wasn’t lost on me. You were bad at doin’ that too. I just didn’t care. After putting up with half an hour of you preening and arranging your hair instead of paying even a little bit of attention to me, all I wanted was to get outta there,” he shared.

  Yikes.

  Ouch.

  “And just so you know,” he went on, “you aren’t the only one’s got a mouth they can use to share shit they shouldn’t, and it’s known wide you can’t let go enough, not to get it good, but to give it good, and you fake it with everybody. And I’m not only talking about orgasms. That’s the reason you can’t get laid unless you go to the city to find some dupe who doesn’t know all about you and the fact, in a lot of ways, you aren’t worth the effort.”

  He’d hit a nerve with that, and she wasn’t smart enough to hide it.

  This was why she leaned forward and hissed, “Fuck you, Toby.”

  “You wish, and that’s why you screwed with Addie. That’s another thing you’re poor at faking, Jocelyn. You know what you want but you’re mistaken that all you gotta do is crook your finger and you can lead a man around by his dick. It takes more than being an expert at applying lip gloss to get a guy to like you.”

  “Well, that’s obvious.” Her eyes came to me peeking around Toby’s shoulder.

  “Christ, Jocelyn, you’re even bad at hiding how fuckin’ jealous you are,” Toby muttered. Then he spoke clearly, “Her line at the store doesn’t exist for you. You with me?”

  “I’ll use whatever line I want,” she snapped. “You can’t tell me what to do.”

  “You’re right,” he replied. “And honest to God, standin’ here wasting my time on you, I’m wondering again why I did it.”

  He then stopped doing that immediately, turning to me, hooking me around the neck with his arm, and leading me away.

  I didn’t look back.

  I just glided my arm around his waist and moved with him.

  “Well,
you kinda seriously annihilated her,” I stated carefully.

  “I have zero tolerance for stuck-up bitches,” he rumbled.

  I could get on board with that.

  However . . .

  “You still did that rather publicly.”

  He stopped us and looked down at me.

  “What’d she say to you?”

  “Um . . .”

  “Adeline, what did she say to you?”

  “Do you, uh, known that some folks refer to you as—?”

  “Take ’Em and Leave ’Em Toby,” he finished for me.

  He knew.

  Eek!

  “Yeah,” I whispered.

  “She go at you in a line at the grocery store I don’t know about that’s private, so it was just you and her who got to hear her have a go at you, and incidentally, babe, do it havin’ a go at me?”

  “No,” I told him something he knew, though I didn’t share that was how I met Lora who heard it all. “But that’s you stooping to her level, honey. And I hesitate to say this in your current mood, but you shouldn’t let her take you to a place where you do that.”

  “I knew exactly what I was doin’ and I knew I was getting into the ugly with her to do it, and I don’t give a fuck,” he retorted.

  I blinked up at him.

  “Sometimes, Addie, you take the higher road. Sometimes, it’s worth getting down in the mud. She fucked with you, at work, where you couldn’t fuck back, and she knew it. That was why she played it that way. And that is not okay. I am not gonna let that go without payback. So I got up in her shit at the Christmas Fair so anyone close could hear she’s a bad lay and a malicious bitch. They think I’m a dick I did that, I don’t care. Though most know Jocelyn, so they probably think something like that was a long time coming. I’m just glad, she went at you when you were defenseless, it was me who got to get up in her shit.”

  One could say that wasn’t your usual knight in shining armor behavior.

  But I’d take it.

  “Another thing, babe, and the reason I did that,” he carried on. “She is not gonna go through your line again. She could say that she will to save face, but it’s not gonna happen. She’s an adult bully. That means either consciously or unconsciously she knows she’s lacking. She isn’t hard to look at, but it doesn’t take spending much time with her to know that’s all she has going for her. And every time a man scrapes her off or a friend drifts away, she’s reminded of that.”