Bringing Home the Bad Boy

by Jessica Lemmon

  “Not that many, bud,” Evan corrected.

  He frowned. “The doctor said girls think stitches are cool, so I’m going to say I have more of them. Then I’ll be more cool.”

  Charlie lifted her brows. “Can’t argue with that logic.” She bent and inspected the stitches, only showing her worry when Lyon wasn’t able to see her expression. She exchanged a slightly concerned glance with Evan but when Lyon lifted his head, she promptly plastered a smile on her face.

  Good at handling pressure, good at easing the tension in the room, good at drying his son’s tears. And she hadn’t broken a sweat.

  “Very cool,” she commented after her inspection.

  “Did Terror eat today?” Lyon asked.

  The fish. Evan had totally forgotten about it.

  “He did.” Charlie took the chair by the bed. “I put flakes in his tank before we left and he ate every last one.”

  Saved. Evan sent her a smile of gratitude. He watched her talk, shaking his head at himself. Beneath her faux upbeat chatter, and the happy face she’d put on for Lyon’s benefit, his girl looked beat. Not only from the car ride, but from her not sleeping much last night, which she’d mentioned in passing on the trip here.

  He hadn’t had a chance to consider why she hadn’t slept—he’d absolutely crashed, satisfied and beat—and hadn’t asked her to elaborate, his thoughts firmly on his son’s welfare and not at all on her feelings. His mind went to the mini rant he’d gone on about Rae being right, about how he’d messed up. And, now that he thought back to it, he’d balled Charlie into that group of things he’d regretted doing this week while ignoring his son. The comment about getting into her pants may have been accurate, but wasn’t the least bit charming.

  No good, he thought with a frown.

  The doctor came in a few minutes later to explain the MRI was for peace of mind, but they suspected Lyon hadn’t sustained a concussion or any permanent damage.

  In the waiting room again, Charlie wrung her hands, and Evan dropped his arm around her shoulders. He noted she shied away from him when the Mosleys returned with cups of coffee for themselves. If he had to guess, he’d say it was thirty percent what he’d said in the car and seventy percent the fact she didn’t want Rae’s parents privy to the fact he and Charlie were “together.”

  Both points miffed him.

  The scan came back normal, after an ungodly amount of waiting resulting in Lyon eating a terrible hospital lunch Evan helped him finish. Pat, Cliff, and Charlie went to the cafeteria to have what Charlie assured him was an equally terrible lunch there.

  When Lyon was finally released, Evan had to remind him not to run and endure an argument about why he couldn’t play the iPad for twenty-four hours. “To be safe,” the doctor encouraged. “No television, computer, or any electronics.”

  “It’ll be cool,” Charlie had said. “We can read.”

  Lyon did not think this was cool.

  Pat and Cliff insisted he stay at their house. Pat, somewhat tearfully, apologized again and Cliff and Evan both assured her that accidents happen. As rambunctious as Lyon was, none of them should come down on themselves for him getting hurt.

  This was a lot easier to say now that Lyon was whole and intact, Evan had specific instructions, and his kid was in sight sitting next to him on Patricia and Cliff’s deck, chattering about everything under the sun.

  After dinner—Pat’s pork chops and baked beans and kale salad were legendary—Evan and Charlie stayed on the deck with their drinks and Pat and Cliff excused themselves to go inside. Evan was sure this was to give him and Charlie some time alone. Pat insisted on reading to Lyon and Cliff had bustled off after she’d angled a very pointed glare at her husband.

  “They haven’t changed a bit,” Charlie commented, sipping her iced tea.

  Evan was drinking scotch. Cliff and his dad and their damned horrible liquor. He swallowed the end of it and winced.

  “Not a big fan of scotch, huh?”

  “You had it?” he croaked, throat dry. “Awful. The drink of old men and my oldest brother.”

  “Landon’s a scotch drinker?”

  He made a show out of taking a drink of her iced tea and swishing it around his teeth. She laughed. It was good to hear her laugh. Either she’d forgiven him or was pretending to be okay. Unfortunately, he thought it was the latter.

  “He is. Landon is a millionaire. He could choose any drink he wants.” He gestured to his glass. “And he chooses this.”

  She chuckled again.

  They sat in silence, watching the low light of the summer evening bounce off the pool’s surface. Lyon had been bummed he couldn’t swim anymore. Figures. That kid was fearless sometimes.

  A shiver climbed Evan’s spine.

  Charlie noticed. Turned her head.

  “Coulda lost him, Ace.”

  Her hand closed over his forearm. “But you didn’t.”

  “I lost Rae.” He snapped his fingers. “Like that. Five, six minutes later. Gone.” There was nothing like the feeling of watching someone lose their hold on life.

  He’d witnessed it and to this day didn’t grasp it. She looked like her, felt like her, her body warm and still, her face beautiful. But she was gone.

  Surreal.

  Hot tears burned his eyes, and in a breath, he was back on East Level, frantically shouting into the cell phone on the floor. Shouting at Rae.

  Baby, wake up. Dammit, Rae! Breathe!

  Those shouts would forever be burned in his head. As would the chest-caving sobs that rendered him unable to stand when the paramedics got there.

  Charlie’s hand squeezed his arm, bringing him back to present.

  He blinked back the tears. “Thank God for Pat and Cliff acting fast. What I said earlier about them having a pool…”

  “I know.”

  “This isn’t their fault.”

  Her grip tightened. “I know.”

  He turned to her to find her giving him a tender smile, tears trailing down her face.

  “Ace.” He lifted a hand and brushed her tears aside.

  “I remember that phone call, Ev.”

  She meant the phone call when he’d told her about Rae. He remembered he’d called her, but didn’t remember what he’d said. Not even a little.

  “You sounded like that today over Lyon,” she said in a whisper. “Scared me.”

  “Baby.” He turned his body toward her, moving his hand from her face to her neck, but she backed away before he could get a firm hold, her eyes cutting to the kitchen window.

  He clenched his jaw. He knew it. She was worried about Rae’s parents seeing them together.

  Dropping his hand to his lap, he said, “Guess now’s not a good time to tell you I didn’t mean to be insulting when I said I wanted to get into your—”

  “Evan!” She sought the window again, lowered her voice. “It’s fine. Everything’s fine. The important thing is that Lyon is okay. And that you realize you are not a bad father because you needed a break to paint.” Conveniently, she’d left herself out of the equation.

  He felt his eyes narrow and steam began to build behind his ears. Everything wasn’t fine. They had entered some sort of alternate universe where she didn’t want him touching her. That was new.

  He didn’t like it.

  “You are capable of being both a talented, amazing artist and an incredibly loving father.” She smiled. Her words may be true, but the practiced sentiment was fake. Or, if not fake, at least reined in. He didn’t like her reined in. He liked her wild. He liked her honest. Honest and cheeky like she was in his studio. At her computer. On her bed. But this… this pseudo, false friendship bullshit she was peddling wasn’t cutting it.

  “Ace—”

  “You’ve been through a lot,” she continued. “Both of you. I lost my mother when I was young, but it still hurts. I never talk about her. I don’t want to. You want to pretend you’ve moved on, and I so get that.”

  Pretend? He felt his brows pull
. The hell was she talking about?

  She stood, taking her glass with her. “It’s okay. I know you think you have. You’re working on it. You’ve committed to Evergreen Cove. You got a tattoo of it on your arm, for goodness’ sake.”

  He glanced at the pines climbing his left arm. What the hell was she—

  “Grief takes years. A lot of years. I understand the need to bury it, and to hide behind things because of it. I’ll always be your friend, no matter what’s happened between us,” she said after another perfunctory look to the blank kitchen window. “I’ll always be here for Lyon. You don’t have to worry about me being strange because of what happened between us. Take your time to grieve and feel those things for Rae. And take your time with your son.”

  “Ace, you’re starting to piss me off.”

  But this fact didn’t erase her soft, patronizing smile. His lip curled.

  “Take the time you need, Evan. And don’t worry about me at all.” She smiled again, turned, and walked inside.

  He watched her go, then groused at the pool, thinking. He thought until the sun set, until Patricia poked her head outside to say good night and let him know there were fresh towels in the bathroom for his morning shower. He’d nodded vacantly, growing more and more pissed as he put together what his girl had done.

  She’d dumped him.

  He stood and stalked to the house, aiming for her bedroom. Little did she know…

  Not gonna happen.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  That conversation went well.

  Kind of.

  Charlie felt like her heart had splintered, but quickly shoved the pieces aside and thought of anything but what would happen when she got home. Right now, she was in Rae’s old bedroom, decorated in beige with a pale green and soft blue floral print comforter and curtains with wide, vertical stripes in the same colors. The Mosleys hadn’t kept the bedroom the same as it was when she moved out and married Evan. They had promptly redecorated, which Rae hadn’t liked at all. She smiled remembering the conversation between the Mosleys and their only daughter. Charlie had taken the afternoon and driven out with Rae, shortly after Rae’s engagement.

  “I can’t believe you scrubbed me from this house like I never lived here!” Rae had stood in the kitchen, one hand on her hip, and argued.

  Patricia had clucked her tongue. “Drama mama!” Pat’s nickname for Rae was scarily accurate. “I always wanted a sewing room. You know that.”

  Charlie’s eyes wandered to the compact desk and drawers on the other side of the room where a sewing machine sat. She slid the closet door open to find square cubbies filled with various materials, boxes of organized threads, needles, and a shelf holding craft books. She brushed her fingers along a pile of material—striped beige, cream, soft blue, and pale green. Her eyes went to the curtains.

  Patricia had sewn the curtains.

  Charlie’s smile stayed intact.

  Thoughts like this—thoughts not on Evan or the way she’d been forced to lay down the way things were with him—would get her through tonight. Tomorrow when she got back home, everything would gradually get better. They were going to be busy in the coming weeks. She had work to do, and Evan would be getting Lyon ready for school, which she assumed involved supplies shopping and buying him some clothes.

  Poor kid was going to have to start school with stitches, or at least a scar, and without the haircut he wanted.

  Then there were school pictures.

  She wished she could make this easier for him. For both of them.

  Maybe her staying out of their way was the best way to do that.

  A soft knock at the door came and she looked down at her short pair of pink-and-yellow-flowered pajama shorts and a pale pink tank. In case it was Cliff, she opened the door only a fraction. She found Evan through the gap instead.

  She pressed her face to the crack and studied the long, dark hallway. The Mosleys’ bedroom was on the other end of the house, but Lyon was in the spare room with a pull-out sofa across the hall, and Evan was supposed to be sleeping on the couch in the family room.

  He wasn’t ready for bed, still in jeans and the T-shirt he’d frantically pulled on this morning.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  He answered her question with a question. “Why are you awake?”

  Because she’d tried to sleep but her mind was too filled with Evan. So she’d gotten out of bed and clicked on the small bedside lamp and proceeded to distract herself with the contents of Patricia’s sewing closet. “Drank too much tea.”

  “Bullshit.” He pushed the door wider, and her out of the way with it, and came inside. Here, in Rae’s old bedroom, in a very skimpy pajama outfit with Rae’s husband…

  Oh Lord.

  This was bad.

  Like, bad bad.

  He shut the door until it clicked, making bad worse.

  Her heart pounded and she covered it, along with her nipples, with crossed arms. “Lyon is across the hall,” she pointed out.

  “We’re not sneaking around behind his back, Ace.”

  Well. Evidently, he had no intention of wrapping up their affair, or sneaking around once Lyon came home. News to her.

  She took a step away from him and tried a new tactic. “Pat and Cliff are light sleepers.”

  He shook his head, his gaze intent and focused on her.

  “Yes, they are,” she argued, though she doubted the headshake was Evan denying that factoid.

  “You and I are gonna talk.”

  “Not tonight we aren’t.” She put her arms down and walked for the door, only to be stopped. He pulled her back to stand in front of him, gripping her upper arms firmly in both hands. She tipped her chin to look up at him. “Let me go. I have to sleep.”

  “Not until we talk.”

  “Evan.” Suddenly, she was fatigued.

  “You think I need to grieve, Charlie? You kidding me?”

  Uh-oh. This was what he wanted to discuss? She thought he’d come in here to talk about them staying together, which she would have argued against. Then again, it hurt he’d so readily accepted that part, arguing instead about his denial over his grieving Rae. Shifting mental gears, she shrugged out of his grip.

  “Fine.” She plunked down on the tiny twin bed by the window. “Have a seat.” She gestured to the chair at the sewing table.

  He ignored her suggestion and sat next to her on the bed.

  But of course.

  “You need time to yourself to mourn her.”

  “Mourn her.” He sounded as angry as he was this morning—or at least close. “You gotta be kidding me,” he said again.

  She softened her voice. “I’m not kidding.” She put a hand on his arm and offered a gentle smile like she had on the deck. Connected by touch, but her mind disconnected from what he was to her. This was for him, for Lyon. Charlie knew how to console someone who’d lost someone close.

  After the loss of her mother, she’d experienced plenty of consolation: grief counselors, pastors, and friends of the family. She’d help him through this. This was what she had mentally promised after Rae passed, wasn’t it? She’d vowed to watch out for Rae’s boys.

  Better late than never.

  “You don’t take the time to be quiet long enough to miss her,” she observed. His brows went from angry to furious. Swallowing back her trepidation, she pressed on. “You’ve been running the tattoo shop, running a household, playing the role of two parents since she died. You lost your mother a few years back; another woman in Lyon’s life. Gone. What did you do? You kept working at the shop, parenting for two, and then you jumped into your artwork with both feet and pursued publication. It’s been a wild ride, honey.” She patted his arm, hoping he was getting what she was telling him. He needed a break, and now that he lived in Evergreen Cove, she could help him take a break. “You need to take some time to really feel this.”

  His nostrils flared, teeth clenched as he continued seething.

  She tore her e
yes from his, unable to take that furious gaze locked on hers and regarded the room instead. “This was Rae’s room.”

  His sharp laugh cut into the tension between them. It wasn’t jovial or pleasant, just a dry huff of air scratching his throat.

  She wasn’t sure if this was part of his process or if he was ticked at her.

  “I know this was Rae’s room, Charlie,” he stated. “We made love on this bed.” He slapped the mattress.

  She felt an ice-cold blade of regret slice into her chest.

  “Well, not this one. It was bigger. But it was in this room.”

  The pain radiated to her limbs.

  “Ace.”

  She didn’t want to look at him. Didn’t want to hear any more about Rae, her lost best friend and Lyon’s mother, or any reminder that she and Evan had been intimate in the past. Silly, she knew, but she was too fragile right now to—

  “You’re full of crap.”

  She blinked up at him. Most definitely, he was ticked.

  “You don’t know what I’ve done to grieve Rae.”

  She blinked again, a new sensation fanning across her chest. Still painful, but hot, not cold. A warning she’d overstepped her boundaries. Angered him in a way he wouldn’t brush aside.

  “You weren’t there in bed with me after she was gone,” he said. “Didn’t see me wake up in the middle of the night, pain like an anvil crushing my chest. A fear so palpable I couldn’t breathe. Pain so powerful it kept me from expanding my lungs.”

  He leaned into her and she froze.

  “Know what happens when you don’t breathe, Ace?” He didn’t wait for her response. “Your body freaks out. Your diaphragm”—he poked her below her rib cage, where, she guessed, her diaphragm was—“seizes up. Adrenaline dumps into your system. Then you hyperventilate; have a panic attack.”

  He’d had panic attacks? Her heart hammered, feeling like she might have one now.

  “I’d wake up, reach for her only to find her side of the bed empty. Took me two years before I could sleep anywhere but on my half. Replaced two worn-out pillows because I refused to use hers.”

  Her chest constricted. Oh, she’d had this so very wrong. He had grieved. And she’d been trying to extricate herself from the picture, latching on to what she thought would be the easiest way out… She couldn’t have been more incorrect with her assumption.