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.