by Malcom, Anne
I let the words hang there in the air, heavy, horrible. I felt empty now I’d uttered them. No matter how necessary they were, I wanted to take them all back, swallow them all just so we could have more time with Lance.
But I had to be brave.
“There’s another thing,” I whispered. This time I wasn’t strong enough to maintain eye contact, so I looked at my awesome new shoes that Rosie had bought me. “I’ve been getting used to you being here. To having another adult in the house, even if conversations are limited to a series of grunts and withering looks.” I paused as my lame attempt at humor failed horribly. “I’m forgetting what you’re here for. No, I’m not forgetting, I’m pretending, which is worse. I’m pretending you’re here because this is more than your job, protecting Nathan and I. I’m pretending that we mean more to you than a mission, a paycheck, whatever. I’m pretending that you... care about us.”
There it was. All of it. Spewed out onto the unfamiliar carpet in a foreign house. I wanted to empty my stomach onto this carpet, that’s how sick I felt saying all of this.
I still didn’t have the courage to look up at Lance, to see his face shutting down, body closing off in disgust at my delusions, at my obvious attachment to him.
So I kept staring at my feet, waiting for him to dismiss me, break my heart, or just walk right out of the house, never to be seen again.
The low thump of his boots against the carpet told me he was walking. I braced for the sound of the door, the emptiness of his exit.
But boots toed my shoes. A hand grasped my chin tightly. Almost painfully. It jerked upward, forcing my face to move, forcing my eyes to focus on Lance’s face.
My stomach dropped at the intensity in his eyes. At his closeness. His touch. He hadn’t been this close to me since the night I cried in his arms. Neither of us mentioned this. Or the two kisses we’d had before the fire.
Even then after those kisses, he hadn’t looked at me the way he was gazing at me right now.
This was not an invisible reaction, the twitching of a finger, tightening of a jaw, the jerk of an eyebrow.
No, this was everything. This was Lance taking off his mask. Or at the very least, lifting it enough for me to see the man underneath.
“This is not pretend,” he rasped, voice a razor, cutting at my emotional skin. “We are not pretend. I fuckin’ wish it was pretend. Way I feel about you. That kid. The fact I want to rip my own skin off thinking of you hurt. Of you in danger. The fact that I can’t go a fuckin’ second without thinking about you when I’m not with you. The fact I can’t be without either of you for more than is absolutely necessary.” The hand tightened. Expression deepened. “I wish to fuck, for your sake, that it’s pretend. But it’s not.”
The words, the admission hit every bone in my body with the force of a bus crashing into me. There was an ugliness to it all that punctured me. Hurt me. Worse than Robert ever did. And it made me feel warm and wanted in a way that Robert never had, even in his most charming of episodes.
Lance’s hand jerked, moving my face closer to his, making it so my body pressed into his. His lips were inches from mine, breath hot and minty on my face. My knees wobbled with my body’s visceral reaction. As if he sensed I was about to collapse merely from his closeness, knowing that he favored minty toothpaste and that he felt something for me was a combination ruthless and beautiful enough to make me fall, his other hand fastened on my hip.
The area burned. Ached in a place to the right and south. My body wasn’t just waking up from a coma. It was being resurrected from the dead, and he hadn’t even frickin’ kissed me yet.
He was going to kiss me. I knew that, I felt it, the thickness, the sex in the air.
Lance wasn’t going to ask for permission to kiss me again. This was not a man who asked for things like this. He knew that he already owned the right to them.
Just as his lips brushed mine and my inner thighs clenched, the back door crashed open.
“I’ve got the worms!” a voice declared.
I jerked my head back and tried to scuttle away from Lance. He didn’t let me. He let go of my chin, but his hand stayed firmly on my hip, holding me in place.
I scowled at him, the best I could through the haze I’d been put under. No matter how powerful his sexual prowess was, or how intoxicating his touch was, it wasn’t going to distract me from the fact that Nathan seeing Lance and me in this position would complicate things even more.
But short of physically fighting myself away from his grip, that would likely confuse and scar Nathan even more, I couldn’t move.
Nathan, to his credit, didn’t even notice. To be fair, his attention was on the two fistfuls of dirt he was holding up at us, things squirming amidst the brown stuff that was dropping all over the carpet.
“I got worms,” he repeated, grinning.
“I see you,” Lance said, still not letting go of me even as I tried harder to move so I could stop my son from dropping dirt all over a floor that wasn’t ours.
“Good work, buddy,” I told Nathan, smiling. “Let me go,” I hissed at Lance under my breath. “He’s dropping dirt all over the floor.”
“Yeah, and I’ll clean it up,” he murmured. “Just wanted to hold you for a second longer.”
Then he leaned into me, took a long inhale, frickin’ sniffing me, and stepped away so he could retrieve a plastic container for Nathan to drop his fistfuls of dirt and worms into.
I didn’t even have it in me to be grossed out witnessing all of this, I was too shocked and turned on at the fact that Lance had full-on smelled me and then his eyes had darkened with pure sexual hunger afterward.
Then he left.
Got a container for the worms.
Cleaned up the dirt.
Took my son fishing.
And I spent the entire afternoon trying to recover from what just happened.
Spent the entire afternoon coming to the conclusion that I’d never recover from Lance.
* * *
Nathan caught a fish.
I knew this, because he brought it ‘home’ in a brown paper bag, along with the biggest grin I’d seen on my son’s face in recorded memory.
It was safe to say he liked Lance’s version of church.
I liked it too, especially when Lance ordered me to “sit my ass down and keep reading” while he cooked up the fish.
It was the most delicious thing I’d ever tasted.
And I only half tasted it, since I spent most of the meal sneaking glances at Lance, sensing the change in the air. In us. He was here to stay.
He was taking my son fishing and cooking us dinners.
He was here to stay.
It scared me.
Excited me.
Enough so my hands were shaking as I read Nathan his story that night.
They continued shaking as I put the book away in his new shelf full of books donated, gifted, and handed down from our family and friends.
Lance was waiting for me in the living room.
He was standing in the middle of it.
Not sitting, relaxing, with a bottle of wine open and Barry Manilow playing, ready to seduce me.
He’d already seduced me.
In a complicated, cruel and intense way.
“I’ve got to go,” he said before I could speak.
I blinked. “You’ve got to go,” I repeated.
He nodded once. “Got a job. Urgent. Wouldn’t take anything less than that. Wouldn’t leave you if it wasn’t only me that could do it. But I’ve got to.” He paused, jaw tight as he looked out the window. “Duke’s outside. He’s gonna hang out. Crash if it takes all night.”
“All night?” I repeated, obviously turning into a braindead parrot.
Another nod.
“Is it, are you...” I trailed off, trying to process. “Are you going to be in danger?”
This was Lance’s turn to blink, obviously not expecting this response. “Be safer than I am standing right here,” he growled
.
Growled.
And then he crossed the room, grabbed me by the back of the neck.
Kissed me.
Then he left.
Chapter Twenty
Lance was right.
He was gone all night.
Duke slept on the sofa.
He was still there when Nathan and I got up in the morning.
Lance was there too.
But we couldn’t exactly have any kind of interaction with a five-year-old boy and a thirty-year-old badass sitting at the breakfast table with us.
Lance was dropping Nathan off at school. Duke was trailing me to work.
That had been decided at some point before I woke up.
That pissed me right off.
Of course, I didn’t say anything, just glared at Lance and did my level best to go out of my way to be super sweet to Duke.
It was safe to say that Lance did not like that.
At all.
I should have felt a sick satisfaction at this, for the emotional wringer he’d put me through since last night, since the moment I met him.
I didn’t.
The only satisfaction I’d feel was with Lance’s lips on mine and his cock inside me.
That was for certain.
And I was definitely sick.
* * *
Lance was at the house when I got home from work.
Mowing the lawn.
Shirtless.
I almost walked into the front door gawking at him.
It was embarrassing.
So I hid in the small room at the back of the house, doing laundry, folding and washing until the mower turned off, the front door opened and closed and the shower turned on. Then I had to lock myself in my bedroom so I didn’t barge into the bathroom and assault a naked and wet Lance.
Why did Nathan choose to play little kid’s football? Why did it exist? And why did Marie insist on taking him back to her place after practice, so I could have ‘a break?’
This was not a break.
This was torture.
I waited until the shower turned off and enough time had passed for Lance to be dressed and decent and then I walked into the living room.
He looked up from his phone the second I entered.
“We need to talk,” Lance said, voice tight.
I nodded. “You bet your tight ass we do.”
Lance leaned back ever so slightly blinking slowly once. This was his version of surprise. It was subtle but I promised myself that I’d tried my hardest to make him look this way as often as possible.
Granted, I just made that promise at this very moment, but whatever.
I took the small pause and worked it to my advantage. “You disappeared for a week,” I snapped, though it was kind of late to make accusations like this, I was sick of all of this dancing around.
“After that kiss.” My entire body did an internal shudder. “Then, last night, you kissed me again, and just left.”
Something happened with Lance with the mention of the kiss. His entire body tightened, as did his expression. He was closing off, his shields going up, he was using all his badass weapons to tell me to back off without saying a word.
The skin at the back of my neck prickled, almost all of my survival instincts telling me to take heed of the nonverbal warning.
“The kiss was a mistake,” he all but growled when it became apparent he wasn’t scaring me away with his usual badass weapons.
I jutted up my chin in defiance to the cold words, maybe to hide a little of the hurt that came from them. “No, it wasn’t,” I gritted out.
“You’re too young.”
I laughed. He was grasping at straws now, which boded well for me. And the fact he was still standing here. Lance was not a man who stayed somewhere he didn’t want to be to preserve someone’s feelings. This was a man who protected me, my son, who protected people’s lives on a daily basis, but he didn’t protect people’s feelings.
Not even mine.
“You find me a woman who is forced to be a single mother, at any age, you make her bring up a kid, try to make sure they’re fed, clothed and housed. Also trying to make sure they are the same. This life with Nathan has given me so many things. But one thing it’s taken is any youth. No mother is young.” My words were a challenge. A dare, for him to try to argue with me.
I knew he was older. It was kind of obvious, not just with the years, the lifetime behind his eyes. But the small wrinkles at the edges of his eyes that were not from smiling. The small sprinkling of salt at the edges of his pepper hair.
I would’ve guessed mid-thirties.
He at least had a good ten years on me. But it didn’t matter. Because I was right. I didn’t feel young. I felt ancient. And no way would a man my age be able to handle all the baggage I came with.
“I have shitty taste in men, or I used to,” I said when he didn’t speak. “But not now.” I narrowed my eyes at Lance.
“I know you’ve got a past. A dark one. That you think ugly things about yourself. Ugly things that have you shutting out most of the world. That had you walking away after the kiss. But you came back. You pulled me out of a frickin’ burning building. You saved my life. Do not fuck with me with all your ‘it’s for your own good, I’m a tortured badass’ stuff right now. Straight up, it’s not gonna work.”
Again, Lance did that shock blink thing.
I was kind of impressed with myself.
“You disappeared. That’s not happening again,” I declared. “Whatever happens from here on out, you don’t disappear without a word. Not because it hurt me, which it did. But it confused my kid. Hurt him too.”
Lance flinched.
I held fast. “I’m a nice person, forgiving, I don’t forgive people that hurt my kid. But the only reason I’m forgiving you is because I’m almost certain you thought you were doing him a favor just like you thought you were doing me a favor by walking away.” I didn’t let him speak because I was on a roll and I needed to get this all out before I choked on it. “Our home is a shambles right now. My life is. I don’t need to complicate it more. But I like you.”
Biggest understatement of the year.
“I feel safe with you,” I continued. “Nathan feels safe with you. You told me that the things you did for me were selfish. All I’m asking right now, is for you to be selfish again.” I didn’t lower my gaze, even though his was getting so intense it was getting hard for me to stay standing. “I’m asking you to stay.” My voice was little more than a whisper now. “Stay because it’s your job. Stay because of your conscience. Because you want to. Because I want you to. Because Nathan wants you to. Pick a reason, I don’t care which one.” That was a total lie. I wanted the last three reasons to be the reason. “But just stay.”
Lance had started this conversation with his hands straight at his sides, which was mostly his default posture, that or the ‘universal badass’, which was arms crossed over impressive pecs, legs spread slightly wider than hips, chiseled chin jutted slightly up.
His hands were not across his chest. They were fisted at his sides. Another sign I had learned to recognize as a chink in his armor.
His eyes were swimming with all sorts of things. Things I wasn’t smart enough to decipher. I hadn’t studied him enough yet. But I planned on getting my frickin’ Ph.D. in Lance if I could.
“Okay,” he said.
“Okay?” I repeated.
He nodded, it was violent, jerky, like he was mad at his decision.
I was not mad at it.
He wanted to stay.
Cue interior happy dance.
Something moved in his eyes.
Something that stopped my interior happy dance and turned on an entire other area between my legs.
The air turned thick. My body hummed with expectation. Of another kiss. Then something that was a lot more than a kiss.
Then, of course, Duke bowled through the door. I didn’t immediately move from my spot, inches away from Lan
ce’s mouth. He didn’t move either. I only knew it was Duke who bowled through the door because he cleared his throat and said, “I interrupting somethin’?” in a harsh tone I’d never heard from the man before.
I jerked back, realizing what this looked like.
Lance didn’t move, only to narrow his eyes slightly at me, then a lot more at Duke.
I didn’t have time to figure out what the heck had just happened because Keltan walked through the door too.
He looked between Lance and I. Then between Duke and Lance.
Then he grinned.
Lance did not grin.
Neither did Duke.
I threw up my hands. “Can we stop with the male testosterone?” I demanded. “I know Nathan isn’t here right now but I don’t need him soaking it in through the air when he gets home. I like my smiling, chatting child.”
Duke stopped glaring at my words.
Lance did not.
Keltan stopped smiling, looking to Lance. “You haven’t told her yet?”
Lance’s eyes narrowed more. “Told you, she doesn’t need to know this shit,” he ground out.
“What shit?” I asked immediately.
Lance focused on me. “Shit we got handled.”
I glared at him, forgetting all the fond feelings I’d been having toward him. “Does this shit have anything to do with me?”
He weathered my stare for a beat then nodded once.
“Well, then, it’s shit I need to know,” I said slowly.
“It’s about the fire,” Keltan said, eyes on Lance, as if he were a lion he just let out of the zoo and wasn’t sure if he’d attack or not. “We might not be able to pin it on Robert. His alibi is watertight, his father no doubt has something to do with it. But—”
“Wait,” I interrupted, the small but uttered strongly enough to get the attention of the men in the room. “You think that Robert set the fire?”
Robert wouldn’t be sick enough to try and kill his son. Me, maybe. But Nathan? No. He couldn’t.
“The fire department hasn’t even come to a conclusion on what started the fire yet. And when they do, it’ll be me that caused this. I just forgot to blow out a candle.” There was an edge of desperation to my voice now. I was willing these men to believe that it was an accident from me rather than malicious intent from the father of my child that caused the fire.