All bravado, anger, determination, or whatever had been holding me together gave way.
And the tears started. My body shook with the force of my first sob.
Lance’s eyes flared. I waited for him to flinch away, to tell me to stop crying, stop being weak. Or to just leave me there to cry it out on my own. This wasn’t his job after all, to console a hysterical woman.
He did none of those things. He did the thing that I would never expect him to do in a hundred years. He took me in his arms and let me sob into his chest.
He held me.
For a long time.
He was the one to finally break me apart.
But he kept me together too.
I woke up in an unfamiliar bed the next morning with no memory of how I got there.
My last memory was of Lance’s smell. Of his arms around me. Of his tee, how it dried my tears and smelled like fresh laundry and safety.
I had no idea of how I got into the most exquisite sheets I’d ever lain my body in. If I had no memory, then I must have been carried here.
By Lance.
Lance held me in his arms as I cried.
Lance carried me to bed.
The thoughts hit me before the reality of my house—or lack thereof—set in. It showed me where my priorities lay. Or what rocked me to the core most, not the house fire I almost died in, but the cruel kindness of the man that pulled me out of it.
That epiphany was cut short when I blinked at the time on my phone.
It was nine-thirty in the morning.
I hadn’t slept that late in… recorded memory.
Sleeping in is nothing but a fantasy as a single mother.
Nathan didn’t let me sleep in.
I was looking forward to his teenage years, when I’d have to yank him out of bed by his ankles at noon. I’d been resigned to the fact I wouldn’t get any kind of sleep-in for at least another ten years.
But it was almost ten.
I’d missed the shift at work Esther had forbidden me from turning up to.
Nathan was beyond late for school, and no way had I planned on giving him two days off in a row.
I’d planned on getting him back into a routine, to a semblance of normalcy. I could get him dressed because in addition to outfitting me with everything a woman could want, Rosie had made Nathan’s dreams come true, right down to a Captain America comforter on his twin bed in the room down the hall.
No way was he in that bed.
The sounds of life coming from the kitchen had me jerking up. It was the smell of coffee that got me fully out of bed and limping down the unfamiliar hall that didn’t have a single photo on the walls.
I expected Lance.
Nathan.
I got neither of two of my favorite men.
I got one of my favorite human beings instead.
She was in the kitchen, the one with a familiar setup to mine, but with no cool knick-knacks, or personality like mine had.
A pang hit my stomach.
Like mine used to have.
“What’s up, sleepyhead?” Karen asked, grinning, handing me a coffee cup, leaning on the breakfast bar.
I took the cup without thinking. Then I looked around for my son.
“He’s at school,” Karen said the second panic started to rise in my throat.
I focused back on her. “Eliza arrived early this morning, planning on trying to stop him from pouncing on you and getting him ready so you could sleep,” she explained, sipping at her own cup. “Lo and behold, he was up, eating oatmeal and barbeque sauce.” She screwed up her nose. “Something that is super fucked up, by the way. He was dressed. Talking to Lance, who was grunting at the appropriate moments.”
I gaped. “Lance got Nathan up, dressed and made him his crazy oatmeal?”
She nodded. “That he did. I want to hate that guy, I really fucking do. But then he keeps turning shit around.”
“That he does,” I murmured, wondering if I was mad that Lance got my kid up and ready and took him to school, without waking me or giving me a chance to say goodbye or smell his hair or anything.
“Nathan went in and kissed you goodbye,” Karen said as if she could read my mind. “But you were sleeping like a zombie, or so he said. We really need to get that kid into the Walking Dead, educate him on the fact that zombies do not sleep.”
I raised my brow at her. “Nathan is five years old, Karen,” I reminded her. “A little young to watch the dead come back to life and eat the living.”
She shrugged.
“He was okay?” I asked, sipping coffee and worrying about my little buddy.
Her eyes turned kind. “Yeah, babe. He was fine. Resilient kid. I dropped him plenty of times when he was younger, he got right back up.”