by Malcom, Anne
Me, because I was totally pissed off and couldn’t trust myself not to yell at Lance and say things that I might regret later.
I didn’t get angry often, and when I did, I made a concerted effort not to speak to people from a place of anger. Because anger was only temporary, but words born from it were not. I was well versed in how words could cut, carve, and destroy parts of people that even fists couldn’t do.
Though I doubted that whatever I could say to Lance would really affect him.
Then again, I hadn’t thought that I’d affected him at all until my phone was smashed at my feet.
“Where were you last night?” I asked as we stopped at the last set of traffic lights before we’d pull into the diner’s parking lot.
“Your ex’s place,” he answered, looking straight ahead.
I turned so I could gape at him. It wasn’t like I’d half expected him to have gone there, I just didn’t expect him to offer up the information so readily.
“Why?”
He still didn’t look at me. Nor did he answer.
“What did you do to him?” I asked, glancing up at the light, knowing this conversation had a time limit.
“Educated him on how it would be in the best interests of his health if he stayed away from you and Nathan. Showed him the consequences of what would happen if he didn’t.”
I swallowed as the light turned and we started moving. My eyes focused on his hands, and they widened when I saw the reddish bruising and scabs covering his knuckles. I didn’t know how I hadn’t noticed them before. Well, I did know. I’d been distracted first being pissed off about the car thing and then the phone thing. Then my kid being super cute, then staring out the window at anywhere but Lance while trying to get a hold of my anger.
“You hurt yourself,” I whispered as he pulled into the parking lot. I had to clench my fists on my knees to stop myself from reaching over to touch the skin.
This time he did look over at me. “You’re concerned over a couple of scrapes when I know you’re smart enough to read between the lines of what they mean?”
He still had his sunglasses on so I couldn’t read his expression. No doubt it would be blank, as always.
I nodded. “Robert’s had those scrapes plenty on his fists,” I replied. “I’m not concerned about him experiencing just how hard someone has to be hit for that to happen.”
This time I didn’t need to see his eyes in order to see his reaction. Lance’s entire body stiffened, the cords in his neck pulsated with my words. Another violent, confusing and kind of hot reaction.
“I’m more concerned about you hurting yourself for me,” I continued, my voice raspier than before. “I don’t want you doing that.”
His entire energy focused on me, and the force of it hit my lungs, constricting them, making it difficult to breathe.
Lance lifted his hands, turned them, regarded them so I could see their large span, the bruises and marks. So I could imagine them on me.
Wait, no, that wasn’t what this was supposed to be.
“This isn’t pain,” he said, gaze now directed at his hands. “If anything, this is a remedy to the pain I live with every day.” He paused, lowering his hands and focusing his shades back on me. “I don’t hurt myself for you. I don’t hurt with you. And that’s the problem.”
On that, he opened the door and slammed it in my face once he got out, leaving me blinking, struggling for breath, confused and turned on all at the same time.
If I had wondered whether I affected him at all before, I didn’t need to know.
Chapter Eleven
Three days have passed since the exchange with Lance in the SUV. Since something cracked in his steely façade and I saw something. Something ugly. Something beautiful. Something that showed me I was more than a job to him.
We were more than a job to him.
I held onto those bruises on his knuckles, the bruises on my soul from the words he’d spoken for the three days he went back to cold, detached, almost cruel. I held on tightly. As he drove Nathan and me to school for the next three days, as he responded to everything Nathan asked him with less coldness, and even when he didn’t speak to me at all in the car.
I don’t know why I was holding onto it. No. I knew exactly why. Because it was a distraction. From the silence I’d heard from Robert since the phone call. From the growing dread at the bottom of my stomach, that this wasn’t done. Wasn’t over.
I couldn’t do anything about that dread. Or even Lance. There was no use pushing, trying to get him to talk, to open up to me. I knew that. So I controlled what I could control. Working. My son. Our routine.
Which was why I was in a demure—for me—dress and cork wedges with my hair delicately curled and makeup covering up the angry bruise on my face. My dress had long sleeves, which were wide and loose, it was tight at the chest and the flowed down to just past my knees.
Nathan was in his little navy button-up and tan shorts. Tennis shoes I’d scrubbed so they weren’t covered in whatever dirt a five-year-old managed to discover.
I knew Lance was inside because I heard the door open and close and the security system disable. He did that. Let himself in. To bring coffee for me in the mornings. Not donuts, not every morning. Just on weekends now. But he ensured our interactions were brisk, silent if possible. Silent interactions with Nathan were impossible, but he humored my son, making him fall even more in love with him.
I braced, hearing that beeping, the air in the room changing. But I didn’t stop what I was doing, I was determined not to show Lance just how much he affected me.
The low thump of boots against the carpet told me he was moving closer.
As did my son’s scream of “Captain!!”
I assumed he greeted my son with his usual forehead lift and lack of verbal response, which Nathan inexplicably loved.
The boots stopped thumping against the carpet.
The air smelled of him.
Still, I didn’t look up.
“Where are you going?” he demanded. And that’s what it was. He didn’t ask questions, he demanded answers.
I brushed crumbs off Nathan’s shirt. Somehow, even though I’d cleaned his hands immediately after his breakfast, he had managed to get oatmeal on his shorts. I didn’t worry about it, you could barely notice, we didn’t have time to change, and he was a kid, they were always gonna get dirty. Messy. Trying to get his clothes clean was a losing battle.
His hair was combed, his teeth were brushed, he didn’t have anything sticky on his face. That was winning.
“To church,” I replied, squeezing Nathan’s cheek and winking at him.
He grinned back and my heart skipped. My child was grinning with no shadows behind his eyes. Maybe those twenty-four hours wouldn’t haunt him.
They would haunt me. For every day of my life.
But I could be okay with haunting memories if my child was unscathed from them. Gladly I’d take them.
Granted, he was holding his stuffed bunny, Feebo, in his right hand, by the ear so he dangled almost to the floor. I couldn’t separate him from it. I’d explained to Hannah, who was kind and understanding. Perhaps because she felt bad about giving him to his father in the first place.
But it wasn’t her fault.
I hadn’t told her to watch out for him, hadn’t thought I’d needed to. He had proof, a badge, a friendly face. They were fooled, just like the rest of the world.
I wondered how long the friendly face had stayed with my son, the lack of shadows told me most of the time, but the clutching of the bunny worried me.
I didn’t let the worry show—no parent did—and I let him take the bunny wherever he wanted.
It was his way of dealing with complex emotions and situations that no child should have to process.
“Church?” Lance repeated.
I focused on him. He was standing in the middle of the living room, still looking absolutely comical amongst all of my things.
“Yes,�
�� I replied, snatching my purse from the coffee table and putting it over my shoulder. “You’re most welcome to come.”
His eyes widened only slightly on his granite face, communicating a nonverbal ‘no way in hell’ response to me without cursing in front of Nathan.
I noticed that he was very careful with his words in front of my son. He still didn’t speak much, I was sure he had some kind of daily quota of words he couldn’t go past or something, but the words he did speak were at least seventy percent curse words.
When you had a kid, and slammed your finger in the door and let out one muttered “shit, bastard, motherfucker,” under your breath and then had to deal with your three-year-old singing it like his new favorite tune for the next week straight, you learned to curse only in your head. Most of the time.
That and my parents had cursed and spewed vile, bigoted views out, regardless of whether I was in the room or not. Granted, they barely actually noticed when I was in the room.
But my son would never be exposed to that.
He could curse when he was old enough to know what the words meant and didn’t do it in unacceptable places.
I did not expect Lance, the big, bad, scary man who seemed to command violence just by breathing to watch his Ps and Qs around my son, but he did.
He didn’t change much else about himself but I got the idea that this was not a man to bend or even flex a little for anyone, so what he was doing for Nathan was big.
I appreciated it in a way I couldn’t explain.
“You should come with us, Captain,” Nathan piped in. “It’s pretty boring but we always go out for pancakes afterward. I am even allowed chocolate chips in mine,” he whispered as if it were the secret to a great treasure. “And maple syrup,” he added with a wink.
My face stretched from smiling so wide. Nathan had taken to winking at people when he communicated important things. He had a way of soaking up little gestures and expressions adults did that usually went unnoticed by children. Not only that, he used them correctly.
And it was some of the most adorable and heartwarming things to watch.
I was surely biased.
But Lance’s reaction told me that even though he seemed to be hardened to most things, he was not immune to a wink about pancakes from an adorable five-year-old. His hard edges softened, only slightly, but a slight change in such a granite face seemed huge.
The corners of his eyes crinkled slightly in what I was learning was his version of a smile. They only did that when they were focused on my son.
I was darkly jealous that only Nathan got that. But that was insane and terrible, being jealous of the way a hot guy looked at my child.
“Pancakes are pretty good,” he conceded.
Nathan’s eyes lit up and his grin spread across his face, across the room. My kid’s smile always had a way of leaking into the air around him. “So you’ll come?”
There was no way to say no to that, to him. I wasn’t sure about going to church with Lance, about having to share an enclosed space with him, having eyes stare at us, assume things. I’d been going to the same church since we moved here and it was well known I was the ‘single mother.’ I wasn’t treated differently because of that in this church, which was why I picked it. They were good people. The priest was younger, his sermons a little more interesting and new age than others I’d experienced.
But without fail, I was always approached by older ladies, trying to match me up with their sons, nephews, grandsons.
They all meant well, of course, but no matter how many times I told them I wasn’t interested in dating and only wanted to focus on my son, the matchmaking continued.
Lance being with us would provide them with month’s worth of gossip. And having to explain what he was, or more precisely, what he wasn’t, would not be a fun time.
Especially because the thought of vocalizing such things filled me with an inexplicable sadness, hurt.
So, no, I did not want Lance to come with us. But I would not be the one to burst my son’s bubble. Not with that smile. No one with a heart could do that.
“I think I’d burst into flames if I walked into a church, buddy,” Lance said as response in his attempt to burst Nathan’s bubble.
I wouldn’t be convinced the man didn’t have a heart.
Nathan’s bubble would not burst that easily. His brows furrowed. “Burst into flames?” he repeated. “Why would you do that? It’s not that hot outside.”
I smirked.
Lance stared at Nathan, probably trying to figure out how to respond. “I don’t really go to church, kid.”
“Yes, but it’s not about church, it’s about pancakes,” Nathan said as if such a thing should have been glaringly obvious.
I rolled my eyes. There went my attempt to teach my son about a higher power. To him, a higher power was IHOP.
“Kid, we’re gonna be late,” I cut in, saving Lance. “You know how I explained how everyone in this world is so beautifully different and that means all their versions of church are different?”
Nathan nodded dutifully.
I ruffled his hair, pointedly not looking upward to the man I was talking about. “Well, Lance doesn’t have the same version of church as us. And that’s okay. Remember that?”
Nathan nodded again, though he was frowning still. He moved to look at Lance. “What’s your version of church?”
Oh shit.
I didn’t know Lance’s version of church, or even if he had one, but if he did, it would not be appropriate for five-year-olds.
Something moved in Lance’s face.
Please let him not say tying up his enemies and waterboarding them.
“Fishing,” he said, eyes not leaving Nathan’s.
My own eyes widened, not that Lance noticed, his focus was on my son.
“A calm lake, a cold beer, radio on,” Lance continued, expanding when I knew he didn’t need to. When I didn’t expect him to.
“Fishing?” Nathan replied on a low whisper.
Lance nodded once, jerky, almost dismissive, but there was a slight softness to his face that I was coming to understand he only had with Nathan.
I liked it.
I was also jealous as all hell I didn’t get my own soft look.
Good thing I was going to church, coveting the look my security guard gave my son was definitely some kind of sin.
“Will you take me with you?” Nathan asked. He looked over to me before Lance could answer. “Mom, can we go fishing today instead of church?”
“No, sweetie, we can’t. We’re dressed for church, we’re already late and I think the whole point of Lance going fishing is for solitude,” I said. I cupped his face. “You, my darling boy, are a lot of wonderful and amazing things. And you can give people many wonderful and amazing things just by being you. But you cannot give Lance solitude. Sometimes people just have to do things on their own, ‘kay?”
Nathan frowned at me, I wasn’t sure if it was because he didn’t understand what the heck I was saying, or if it was because, despite my best efforts, I’d hurt his feelings.
“Like go potty on their own?” he asked after a beat.
Okay, so the frown was not due to either of those things.
I sighed. “We’ve got to go, dude.”
“But you’ll come for pancakes after?” Nathan asked Lance, his face all cute and eyes all wide in the expression that got him pretty much anything he wanted with me.
Though the expression was ridiculously cute and would have worked on most of the human race, I didn’t think it would work on a man who was almost certainly made of stone.
Lance’s expression surely communicated that.
“Sure, bud,” he said.
I would have gaped in utter and complete shock and my boy being able to put some cracks in Lance’s façade, but we were really frickin’ late.
“Okay, cool, so you can meet us at IHOP in like an hour?” I said, glancing at my shitty watch. I swear I was one of the last
people my age who actually wore them. Everyone used the phones that were attached to their hands as a timekeeper as well as a life raft. I was constantly running late, thanks to the crumb ridden cutie and my crappy phone was usually somewhere in my purse, underneath baby wipes and tampons. Watches were easier.
Even if the leather on mine wasn’t real and the face was kind of scratched.
One day I would buy myself a nice watch, when I had a house, land, a life that seemed so far away and too tauntingly close at the same time.
“I’ll drive,” Lance said by answer.
I paused all of my hustling out the door. “You said you don’t go to church.”
“I don’t. You do.”
It took everything I had in me not to gape at the simple yet infinitely complicated answer. “Lance, you don’t have to come with us, everything will be—”
“Didn’t you say you were late?” he interrupted. “Better get in the car.”
I gritted my teeth, took a breath and hated that he was frickin’ right.
So we got in the car.
Lance drove us to church.
Sat next to us on the pews, ignoring all the looks and whispers.
Then, he went to IHOP and had pancakes. Blueberry pancakes to be specific.
And it was probably one of the best Sundays I’d had in a while.
Maybe ever.
* * *
One Week Later
“Mom?” Nathan asked, not looking up from his coloring.
I knew it was a question because every mother knew there were thousands of different kinds of ‘moms’ uttered by children who wanted different things. There was the high-pitched whine when they were told no and weren’t ready to take it for an answer—luckily I didn’t have much experience in that. There was the low whisper that told you your kid was sad and needed a hug but didn’t want to ask for it outright because he was a ‘big boy.’ There was the shout when your kid was doing something he decided was awesome and needed a cheerful and encouraging audience to show off to.
And a lot more.
This one was spoken in a rather regular tone but with an inflection at the end and a question on its way.