Tears crept into the backs of my eyes with his words. With the firmness in which he said them. Lance was not a man to make empty threats or promises. He was promising to take care of Nathan and me. In a way that made it seem like he intended on sticking around for the long haul.
It was beautiful.
It was write a song, a book, a movie about it kind of beautiful.
But my life wasn’t a song, a book or a movie.
My life was trusting a man who made similar promises to a girl from the gutter. I gave all my power to a different man who made those promises.
So I jerked myself out of Lance’s arms.
He let me, because he was Lance and sensed I needed it.
“You need to let me take care of myself. My son. First. Do it my way. You don’t get to come in and decide to have it yours. So you figure out if you can live with that.”
And then, I turned around and walked out, terrified I’d come home to the reality that no, Lance could not handle that.
But I didn’t.
I came home to Lance and Nathan throwing a football in the front yard. Nathan sprinted up to me, screaming about the catches he’s made and that Captain was the best coach ever.
Then, Captain, the best coach ever and my man came up to me. Kissed me. Right on the mouth. In front of Nathan. The whole street. The whole world—or what it felt like to me.
“I can live with this,” he murmured against my mouth.
And that was that.
I wish.
Chapter Twenty-Two
We had one week after the confrontation.
One week.
Of some kind of perfect.
That wasn’t at all perfect.
Because this was Lance. He was so far from perfect that he was pure broken perfection. He was cold and hot. Hard and soft. The change in our relationship definitely didn’t change that about him. He didn’t open up to me about the demons that didn’t just lurk under his skin, they were part of him. From skin to bone. I didn’t expect a mere week to make him comfortable enough to open up. To let me in.
I expected it would take a lifetime for something like that to happen. And no matter how deluded, or stupid it was for me to even think something this early, I wanted a lifetime.
It was a quick change, sure, to have Lance sleep in bed with me and for Nathan to get used to him as he was. For Nathan to see that things had changed—and the little angel barely blinked at Lance kissing me, he merely commented, very calmly, that that was how you got cooties. Lance, very calmly, responded that he was okay with cooties if they came from me.
This, of course, made me burst out laughing.
When I was finished, Lance was staring at me, and Nathan had become distracted with something on TV.
Lance stroked the side of my face, his thumb brushing my lower lip. “You got a nice laugh, baby,” he murmured.
I tried not to swoon at the term of endearment that he’d been using for the past week.
“Gonna have to make sure I figure out how to hear it every day,” he continued, making not swooning impossible.
He might not be opening up, but he was calling me baby, touching me with tenderness, he was making me laugh, making Nathan laugh, cooking dinner, giving me orgasms that I hadn’t thought actually existed in real life. I didn’t give a crap of what seemed too soon.
And that was my mistake.
I didn’t have the excuse of being naïve. Robert had ensured that naivety had been beaten out of me. Instead, it was because of something Robert hadn’t ever managed to beat out of me.
Hope.
I hoped that I might be given this little bit of beauty amidst all this ugly. That Nathan had been given it.
I hoped that I was maybe giving something a little bit beautiful to Lance too. That Nathan was.
I hoped that Nathan and I were enough to quietly chip away at his walls. To show him that he could have a life with us.
Maybe that’s why I slipped one day. Six days into our week, when I didn’t know it was the second to last day I’d get with him. I was at home. Baking cupcakes. From scratch. No box or anything.
I’d sent Lance and Nathan out for more eggs.
Nathan went because he went everywhere Lance went.
It was halfway through frosting my first batch that I realized I also needed more frosting. I called Lance to tell him this.
“Need anythin’ else?” he asked, even though I was almost certain he was pushing a very large cart full of everything I could want or imagine.
“No,” I said, concentrating on the frosting.
“Wine?” he probed, something resembling teasing in his voice.