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.
With Nathan, it could be “what’s for dinner?” just as easily as it could be “why aren’t there gas stations in the sky for planes that run out of gas?”
I stopped frowning down at the bills in front of me and put on a smile for my kid. “Yeah, baby?”
“Why is Captain hanging out with us so much? Is it so my daddy doesn’t come and take me for a sleepover again?”
Shit.
How did I not know this was coming?
We’d had the talk about his dad, and why he picked Nathan up, why he acted weird, why Mommy was really upset when she saw him. Why he probably wouldn’t ever be seeing him again.
But I had avoided the whole reason for the strange men around the house because I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to explain it to him. So far, he’d been acting like they were new friends and took in their presence without blinking. Probably because there was usually almost always someone for him to play with, he and Ziggy were fast friends, despite the age gap. But there were significant changes in our lives. The security systems. Lance doing a ‘walk through’ before we were allowed in the door.
I wanted to tell Nathan as much of the truth as I could. At the same time, he was five years old and telling him that these men were here to protect him from his violent father was not a truth he could handle and not one I wanted him to.
He had taken them all in his stride, as if it were normal to have beautiful badasses around all the time. As if Lance was just a new friend that lurked around the house, speaking mostly in grunts and smoldering looks.
Well, there weren’t as many grunts for Nathan, and definitely not smoldering looks, which was maybe why he had waited until now to bring it up.
I stood up from where I was sitting to move to the sofa and bring Nathan into my arms. I pushed his hair from his face so I could give him a forehead kiss, breathe him in for a second and also think of what the heck I was gonna say.