It was a stark and utter contrast to our cluttered, warm home that was charred wood and black ash.
Despite the fact that I had all this evidence that I wasn’t walking into the front door of my home, I still had to catch myself from throwing my keys on the side table I’d restored myself.
Lance watched me do this, because he was Lance and he watched me do everything. Before the fire, I thought it was just his intense way, something he did with everyone. I could almost believe myself when I thought it. But after the fire, it was unmistakable that it was something he only did with me. And Nathan. But it was different with Nathan.
Every time we were in the same room I felt it. That mixture of fire and ice in my bones. His stare that imprinted itself into my skin. It was like he expected me to burst into flames just like my house. He barely left mine and Nathan’s side now, the week-long absence never mentioned. I itched to know the reasoning behind the absence. Why he left. Why he came back. But I was a coward. I was fragile. My first few layers burned off in that fire. I was exposed to the nerve. I didn’t want him to tell me why he left or why he came back. I wasn’t strong enough for answers I might not like. And I didn’t want to tempt fate either. I didn’t want to point out the obvious to him about him being well and truly back in our lives, scare him off.
Not that he seemed like he was going anywhere. He was always there with me to drop Nathan off at school. Pick him up with me. Have dinner with us, though he barely grunted responses to Nathan’s chattering, not that he really noticed.
And he was there, in the room right next to mine, sleeping. Or I presumed he had to sleep at some point. Because even though my son thought he was some kind of superhero—and I was inclined to agree since he pulled me out of a burning building—he still needed some shut-eye. So did I. Because I was most definitely not a superhero.
Yet I snatched a mere few hours for the nights we had been here. Not because I was afraid I’d wake up in a burning house again. No, I didn’t have fears with Lance under the same roof.
It was the fact that I was under the same roof as Lance, so close to him I could smell him in the air, that was the big reason I couldn’t sleep. I tortured myself in the nights when the sheets felt too heavy, the air felt too stifling and my body was overcome with an animal kind of hunger. I managed to chase away that want, that need for Lance in the daylight. It was much easier in the daylight, when all the reasons why I couldn’t give in were illuminated, stark, clear. But as the sun set, it obscured all those very good and very practical reasons.
And now, those very good and practical reasons were disappearing in the daylight too, walking into the house that wasn’t my house and seeing my son wearing clothes I hadn’t bought him and holding a fishing rod that was taller than he was.
Lance was wearing clothes I didn’t recognize either, the man version of Nathan’s little boy outfit.
Where Nathan’s little pants, boots, and shirt were absolutely adorable, Lance’s were straight up scorching.
I wasn’t exactly familiar with most sportswear, but before this moment, I would’ve been confident to go in blindly and say that any kind of fishing attire would not be sexy.
Like at all.
Right now, I was being proved very, very wrong.
“We’re goin’ fishin’,” Lance said in reply to my earlier question, the one I’d almost forgotten I’d uttered before I started taking all of this in.
“Lance is taking me to his church!” Nathan all but screamed at me, his grin threatening to split open his face it was that wide. “And he got me my very own rod and special fishing clothes.”
I smiled back at him, his happiness infectious and welcome. This past week had been tough for my little man, to say the least. Heck, this month. Although Nathan was one of the best five-year-olds to ever exist, he was still a kid.
There was only so much he could handle.
So the smile hit my heart.
Reality hit it a second later.
“We’re gonna go in a sec, but we have to go and find worms in the garden,” Nathan declared.
I wrinkled my nose up at the thought of digging up slimy creatures and handling them. Though I definitely didn’t mind getting my hands dirty in most ways—I was a mother and a waitress after all—worms and any kind of insects was where I drew the line.