by Malcom, Anne
Shut up! I screamed at myself.
I was not a babbler. Sure, I liked to talk a lot, you kind of had to when you had a kid that never shut up and when you were a waitress who relied almost entirely on tips.
But I considered myself reasonably articulate for someone without a college education, and I managed not to sound like a blithering idiot for almost my entire life.
And here I was.
Blithering. Idiot.
I was still riding off the adrenaline that the past day had pumped into my system. I felt wired. Manic almost, my body unsure of what to do with the undiluted cocktail of emotions that was coursing through my cells at the moment.
Lance shook his head.
Okay, so I was lost for words. I took a breath. “Um, okay, then. I’m not really sure how this works, do we meet up tomorrow? Do I call you every hour to tell you all is quiet on the Eastern Front?”
I really needed him out of my house. But then, I really didn’t. Because I was rather terrified at what would happen when I forced to decompress everything that happened. When I finally allowed myself to feel what I’d gone through.
I’d promised myself that I could cry, and I was scared I might never stop.
Lance was working as a distraction. A dam to the onslaught of saltwater that I’d be expelling through my tear ducts.
“I’m stayin’ here.”
It wasn’t a question. A request. It was a statement.
“Here? As in, in this house?” I clarified.
He nodded once.
I digested this. I hadn’t even become accustomed to him existing in this house, or on planet earth at all—because he had to be otherworldly for all his aura and power he seemed to have—and now he was trying to say he was going to be staying at the house? No freaking way.
Not because I worried about a strange man sleeping in the same house as my five-year-old son. I had a weird kind of feeling knowing that he would never hurt him. He’d just fricking saved him. Nathan was attached to him in a different way than I was of course, but that kid was a special judge of character.
It wasn’t Nathan I was worried about, he’d be thrilled to hear about this sleepover.
I could not handle this male energy in the house.
I wouldn’t sleep a wink.
But I’d feel safe.
And that couldn’t be. Just like I promised myself I’d never let a man make me feel unsafe again, I didn’t want my safety to be defined by a man. My anything to be defined.
“We don’t have a guest bedroom,” I said, though it was obvious since he’d already done a ‘walk through’ of the house that took about thirty seconds.
“You’ve got a sofa,” he said in way of reply.
I bit my lip. And looked from the sofa to him. “That sofa is too short for you. You’d be uncomfortable. Kink your neck. Then you couldn’t do your job, which I’m sure requires a fully mobile neck.”
What in the fresh hell was I even saying right now?
He watched me, or more accurately, it seemed like he was watching my mouth, and me capturing the lip between my teeth.
An unexpected and not entirely unpleasant heat shot in between my legs.
I ignored it. And stopped biting my lip.
“Slept on worse,” he said after a beat.
Seriously, did this man only speak in three syllables?
“I get up to pee a lot at night,” I blurted, desperate to find a reason he couldn’t stay. And it seemed I wasn’t above informing him of my bladder habits. My mouth kept moving. “I drink a lot of water, because no one ever drinks enough water and it’s super good for you. But I have a really small bladder and I pee a lot.”
Oh my god, why am I still talking about pee?
“It’s only gotten worse after Nathan,” I continued, seemingly possessed by someone with no social boundaries. “You know, childbirth kind of wreaks havoc... down there.”
Stop. Stop right now. You just referred to childbirth and the fact your vagina is effectively ruined to possibly the hottest man you’ve ever seen up close.
“I mean, it all still works, I don’t pee myself or anything,” I said quickly.
For the love of God. You’re done now. Just done.
Nothing in his face moved. No amusement, he didn’t find me endearing in a dorky way. No, that much was apparent.
I sucked in a breath. What else could I do? I think talking about my pee and my vagina after the birth of my son was a good moment to tap out and hide in my room for the rest of time.
“Right,” I whispered. “I’ll just go and get you some blankets and...” I didn’t finish my sentence. I escaped the room.
I definitely took my sweet ass time retrieving the blankets from our linen cupboard. I was trying to calm myself down until I focused on the blankets I’d buried my face in and let out a little scream into.
It was a worn Barney comforter that Nathan had banished away because he decided purple dinosaurs were too ‘common.’ I shit you not, he said that.
I kept it because I didn’t throw anything away, especially in case Nathan had an accident in the middle of the night and I had to change his sheets.
But now I was going to have to walk back into the room I’d talked about my bathroom habits in and give the baddest of all badasses a fucking Barney blanket.
“Well, it is what it is,” I muttered to myself.
I walked back into the living room, Lance was standing in the exact same spot, eyes moving from his inspection of the room to focus on me.
I wanted to shrink under his gaze.
Instead, I placed the folded blanket on the sofa.
“Thank you,” I whispered, straightening, all my mortification and shame melting and I stared at that Barney blanket.
It was very possible that I could have been in an empty house surrounded by memories of my son right now if it weren’t for this man. Or I could have been in a very different house, getting the shit beaten out of me.
“For getting my son back to me, for holding his hand, for taking time out of your life to come all the way out here to sleep on a shitty couch and use a Barney blanket,” I continued when he was silent.
One single tear landed on the fabric.
“Don’t have to thank me,” he said, voice hard and not affected by the emotion in my own. “Doin’ my job. Nothing more.”
I swallowed roughly. Looked up at him. “Well, to me, it’s a lot more. It’s everything.” I weathered his stare for a few beats longer. “I’ll leave you to it,” I said, unable to stand here for a second longer, I felt the tears pressing at the backs of my eyes and I couldn’t cry in front of this man.
He nodded. Didn’t say anything.
What did I expect, ‘sweet dreams?’
I turned on my heel and walked out.
Lance
He watched her disappear with his fists clenched to his sides. His entire body was shaking with the effort it took him to stand in that exact spot. To keep his face a mask as she spoke in that gentle, tortured voice. As one tear dropped from her face onto that blanket. That stupid fucking blanket he was glad as hell would be covering his body because it had her tear on it.
He was a sick motherfucker.
But she was fucking with him. Making him want to want to laugh as she spoke shit about peeing and childbirth like she had no cares in the world, to staring at a kid’s blanket with every single emotion a human being was capable of possessing. All of the ones that were foreign to him.
He had to stay still and silent because he didn’t trust himself.
Not to move.
Not to take advantage of her fragility. To utilize the moments of her weakness and selfishly take parts of her for himself.
He told her it was a job because he was trying to convince himself that’s exactly what this was.
So why the fuck was he here? In this warm, shitty house that didn’t seem at all shitty the second you stepped foot inside. With all the colors, patterns, photos, hippy shit on the walls.
It was a home, it was something that Elena had put effort into making it more than what it was.
He shouldn’t know what the inside of her house felt like. He should have only known the possible security weak points. He should not be sleeping here. That’s the whole reason why Keltan got the house down the street, so they didn’t invade on the privacy of a single mother who had just gone through major trauma.
It would have been right of him to leave her and the kid to have some kind of normalcy. For her to have a moment alone to deal with this.
He didn’t do the right thing.
Because he didn’t want her alone in the house, even if he was just down the street and they had eyes on Hudson. He would have sat outside on the bike if it weren’t so fucking visible. They weren’t meant to be drawing attention. He didn’t want Elena to have to answer questions about shit when he didn’t even know what she was gonna tell people about this.
If she would.
He didn’t want to take that choice from her. A man had already taken a lot from this woman.
She shouldn’t have anything stolen from her again. Lance was trying to remind himself of that as he lay down on a sofa he shouldn’t have and covered himself in a Barney blanket.
Chapter Six
Elena
I woke up suddenly and with something wrapped around my throat, strangling me.
Panic rushed through me as I opened my eyes, until I realized that it was a tiny arm of a tiny human who I was all tangled up in. For a small boy, with small limbs, he sure managed to position one of them just perfectly so it laid across my throat, obstructing my airway.
I moved it, gulping air in as Nathan continued to sleep as if he hadn’t just tried to kill his mother in his sleep.
The early morning light was peeking through his blinds. I reached across the bed to snatch my phone from his bedside table, squinting at it.
It was just after six.
We had time to get showered, fed and dressed for school and work. I’d have to put some extra effort into my makeup to try and cover the angry bruise on my face. It throbbed dully after sleeping with it pressed against a pillow in Nathan’s small bed.
I’d snuck in here after tossing and turning in my own bed, my pillow soaked in tears that had swallowed my fractured sobs.
After I’d drained myself dry, I decided I couldn’t sleep in that bed, even with Nathan only next door, not with the memories of the day before still so close.
I snuck into his room, not before I chanced a peek into the living room, where I saw a large shape on our sofa. The urge to move closer to get a good look at a sleeping Lance was squashed when the shape moved, as if sensing me—I wouldn’t put it past him to sense being stared at in his sleep—and I darted into Nathan’s room.
As it was, I didn’t get much sleep even with my warm, safe and healthy little boy beside me. Not just because he hogged the bed. And not just because I was torturing myself with all the other ways this could have gone wrong, or worrying about how in the heck I was even going to start a payment plan to Keltan. Money was the main thing that had me staring at the ceiling with a pounding heart and overarching sense of panic routinely. Despite my strict budget that accounted for every cent of my earnings and expenses, I still went over it all, terrified I was missing some expense, worrying about the future, figuring out how the heck I was going to keep going like this.
In the morning, it all seemed manageable. It all seemed okay. Nighttime was the worst, that’s when the darkness coaxed all your worst fears out and tortured you with them.
That took up a good chunk of the hours creeping toward midnight.
Then there was Robert. The fear of him coming back, but for some reason, I didn’t hold onto that fear as I should have. Keltan had taken that from me. Though it was terrible of me to dump that on a stranger, to rely on one to protect me from things I should have been taking care of myself, I couldn’t bring myself to dwell on it.
The thing that had me moving past midnight, no closer to sleep was not a thing at all.
It was a man under my roof, on my sofa, sleeping under a Barney blanket.
How could I sleep knowing how close he was?
I troubled myself with his stare, with his flat voice for far too long. They were thoughts that I wasn’t entitled to, since Lance had given me no reason to dwell on him. No signs to show me that he even thought of me beyond anything other than a job.
No, he’d explicitly said that’s exactly what I was to him.
Still, he kept me up.
Until there was nothing, not even money troubles, an abusive husband, and a really hot dude could do to keep my tired eyes awake.
I’d probably got about three hours of sleep all together.
Not ideal, considering the fact I got none the night before. But I was a mom, sleep wasn’t something considered essential to our productivity. It didn’t matter how little you had, if you had a hungry kid up at five, there was no one else to feed him, you figured it out.
I’d operated off less.
No amount of sleep could prepare me for what awaited me after I’d snuggled with Nathan for a little longer then dragged myself toward the kitchen in the direction of caffeine.
Lance.
Shirtless.
Naked, actually.
Well, apart from the towel wrapped around his waist.
His hair was dripping.
Droplets of water trailed down his abs.
His six-pack.
No, I counted. Eight.
Eight abs. I didn’t even know people actually had the ability to acquire eight abs.
But here it was, evidence. And the ‘V’. I could see it all, because the towel was slung low. Way low.
Then I realized what I was doing.
Staring at Lance’s junk at six in the morning, likely with a mess of hair, wearing an old Ramones tee that only just covered my ass.
Fuck.
My eyes snapped up.
Met his.
Red bloomed in my cheeks and suddenly I didn’t need coffee right now. Or ever again. I was pretty sure that I was alert enough to go the whole day. And the next three hundred and sixty-five after this.
“I-um-the coffee...” I pointed down the hall. “I was going to get the coffee. I didn’t mean to... ah.” I cleared my throat. “Well, I’ll let you get naked... I mean dressed. I’m going to go to my room. And close the door. I’ll count to two hundred. Then I’ll go and get coffee and I will pretend this never happened.”
On that, I darted to the room, closed the door and started banging my head against the wall.
What a start to the day.
I did as I promised, I counted to two hundred, well, I got to about eighty-nine, because after that, I heard the front door open and close, and in a handful of seconds, the roar of a bike starting then driving off.
Shit.
I scared him off.
My eyes went to the mirror.
I flinched.
Of course I scared him off. I resembled some kind of swamp creature, and I stared at his junk, babbled about who knew what, and then scampered off into my room.
We’d probably never see him again.
* * *
It was as I was emerging from the shower that I realized I shouldn’t have used the word never.
I also should have brought my clothes into the bathroom with me, and I certainly shouldn’t have left all of my clean underwear in the laundry basket in the living room.
That became apparent when I entered the living room that was no longer empty.
Some time between shaving my legs and deciding that I was no longer allowed to talk to hot men without an adult present, Lance had arrived back, entered the house with the water of my shower somehow drowning out the noise.
And he was sitting on my sofa.
And I was standing in the middle of the living room.
Naked.
Except for a towel.
But that was just details, because in order to get dress
ed, I had to walk toward him, to snatch a pair of underwear from the hamper almost directly in front of him. Not only would he see that, but there was no way to hide the fact I was planning on grabbing a pair of boy shorts with prints of hamburgers on them.
How in the holy hell had I managed to show him my entire underwear collection in the space of twelve hours?
And why did all of my underwear have to be so frickin’ embarrassing?
“Oh, so we’ve both seen each other almost naked, so we’re even now I guess,” I said as a greeting, blinking at him, clutching the towel to my body and dripping water all over the place.
What the heck was wrong with me?
His gaze was blank, and he seemed unaffected by the fact that I was standing in front of him naked. His fists were clenched on top of his knees but I couldn’t tell if that was his resting posture, rigid, taut, as if he were ready for an attack from an inappropriately horny, naked single mother.
He obviously didn’t respond to my idiotic opening sentence.
“I didn’t think you were coming back. I thought the lumpy sofa, the Barney blanket and the whole me seeing you naked thing kind of scared you the heck off,” I continued, realizing that a man like this had likely been through a lot scarier shit than this and I was thinking a lot of myself if I thought I was puncturing through whatever his badass professional shield.
Again, no answer, he just moved his eyes from where they were locked to mine—they did not stray any lower than my small towel, in a strangely chivalrous gesture—to my coffee table.
I followed his gaze.
Amongst my books, a couple of Nathan’s coloring books and crystals, was a box of donuts.
The good kind too. From the best bakery in town, owned by a woman who seemed totally trendy, awesome and all-around nice. And from what I heard, she could bake. I’d tried her stuff once or twice when we had brunch at my or Karen and Eliza’s and they bought pastries and muffins that seemed to be the baked goods version of crack.
I actually dreamed about them for the week after.
As good as they were, they were out of my price range. I baked for Nathan and myself mostly because it was cheapest and also made sure I knew what I was putting in the food.