I couldn’t decide whether she was joking or not, and she didn’t give me time.
“I can tell by your tears, you’re sober,” she said. “Drink some of that wine and cry drunk tears instead. I’ll call you in the morning.” A pause. “Everything is gonna be okay.”
On that, I made an embarrassing sob into the phone.
“My cue to go,” she said, smile in her voice. “Wine, now.”
I nodded and went to do what she said, wearing some of the most beautiful silk pajamas I had ever put on my body.
Lance was in the living room when I limped in.
His eyes went to me immediately.
And then all over the pajamas, that covered me head to toe, but his gaze melted them right off. My entire body responded.
We stared at each other.
For a long time.
Too long.
“You need to sit down,” he said, his voice thick, not empty. Not by a long shot.
But it was still a command, despite the desire it was cloaked in.
So that was what made me straighten my spine and remember the events of the day. Of the week.
“I do not need to sit down,” I snapped. “I need to get some things straight.”
He stood, jaw hard, fists at his sides. “You’ve got a cut on your foot that you’ve barely rested all day,” he clipped. “So yes, you need to sit the fuck down.”
The last sentence was a growl.
A growl.
It hit me right at the bottom of my stomach. Right in between my frickin’ thighs.
But somehow, I managed not to let that show, let any one of it show.
“Firstly, I need to thank you,” I said, my voice still a rough rasp. It hurt to speak. But then again, it hurt to breathe, so it wasn’t like I could stop the pain. I focused on Lance. “You saved my life. Risked your own. So thank you.”
He was gritting his teeth. I could see that by the way he was holding his jaw, it was something I was coming to recognize being connected to one of Lance’s highest levels of fury. Gritting his teeth so tightly his entire chiseled jaw shook.
“Don’t thank me,” he ground out. “Just don’t ever fuckin’ do shit like that again. And sit the fuck down.”
“I also need to tell you, that pulling that crap ever again won’t go down with me,” I continued, ignoring his words. “I get you’re a dangerous badass who even Chuck Norris is afraid of, but I swear to every god that’s worshipped on this planet, you try to keep me from my son when my last memory is of him coughing smoke from his lungs, I will fuck you up. In whatever way I can. You may have experience with some bad dudes, scary dudes, but you haven’t dealt with a mother being kept from her son. So straight up, you pull that shit ever again, I’ll end you.”
Lance stared at me for the longest time, a complex cocktail of emotion that I didn’t know if I had the emotional intelligence to decipher. It was jarring, seeing it all on the surface like this, when only a week ago, I could only guess at his depths.
“You went back into a burning building for a fucking toy,” he said, voice quiet, barely audible. But the velvet threat in the tone shook the air.
“It was an important toy,” I argued, voice small.
The eyes I’d been unable to stop staring at turned stormy.
In a blink, he was around the coffee table that had nothing on it but a bowl of crystals and right in front of me. Right there.
He gripped my shoulders. Still not gentle.
I didn’t think he knew gentle.
“More important than your fucking life?” he roared in my face.
I flinched, but I didn’t flinch back as I should’ve. I didn’t run like I should’ve.
“Are you fucking dumb?” he hissed, still in a shout, still in my face. “You could’ve fucking died! You almost fucking did. You bled. For a toy.” He slung the words at me like punches, not pulling a single one because I was hurt, scared or physically, mentally, and spiritually exhausted.
No. He did not stop to spare my feelings. To treat me with care.
He kept going.
“You have a son,” he accused. “A son that almost lost his mother for a toy.” The single word was hurled at me like a weapon.
It hit true.
“It’s not just a toy,” I screamed. Or I tried to. My voice was still husky, raw, barely audible. Every word was agony. But I kept speaking, because anger, fury bubbled up in my veins. “That motherfucking toy is the only thing that has stayed constant in my son’s life. He believes that toy protects him. That it will not let anyone take him away from his mother again. He’s been taking that thing everywhere since…” I trailed off, partly because I needed a break from talking but mostly because I couldn’t verbalize it. I didn’t need to. “So yes, I risked my life for a toy. A toy that makes my little boy feel safe. Protected. And maybe it was fucking dumb. I was just trying to do the best I could for my fucking child. Now can you get out of my face because I just almost burned to death. My son almost burned to death.” My voice broke on the end. Broke like a glass on marble. Shattered.