Chapter 23

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

NOVA

I went into my room and closed the door. “The tornado isn’t even close to us yet, and the trajectory doesn’t look like it’ll come our way, so you don’t need to worry.”

His eyes bulged. He sat on the edge of our bed— his bed—and loosened his tie. “What tornado?”

“Isn’t that why you needed to talk to me?” I asked, feigning ignorance. “The kids were pretty freaked out, but they’ve calmed down.” I wasn’t about to tell him I was just as worried as the kids.

“Who’s the man?” His face didn’t give anything away, but his tone did. He wasn’t happy. I wasn’t going to pretend to imagine he was jealous. I imagine he didn’t like the sense of control slipping away. Carter didn’t like being in the dark. He wanted to know everything—to be the guy to tell you things for the first time. This was new territory for us.

There were a multitude of ways I could handle this situation. The petty side of me wanted to hang up. I hadn’t called, begging him to tell me about the woman moving into his apartment. But the peacemaking side of me, who didn’t want conflict and recognized that he was well and truly out of my life, wanted to end the conversation as quickly as possible so I could return to Alice, Ben, Dusty, and the cat.

Besides, there wasn’t anything between Dusty and me but friendship, which meant I didn’t have to broach the subject of romantic relationships anyway.

“He’s a friend,” I said lightly. “Gigi knows him well and vouched for him. He’s a good man, but I didn’t bring him around the kids until I felt the same way. Don’t worry. I’m not being reckless.”

Carter stared at the camera, his jaw working. “I don’t like the idea of men I haven’t approved of being around my kids.”

“You don’t trust me?” I asked simply, though my stomach was roiling. Between the two of us, I was the one who always put the kids first. He couldn’t even manage a ten-minute conversation with them more than once a week.

“Of course I trust you.”

“Then I don’t see what more we have to talk about. I need to go, Carter.”

He looked ready to argue.

I didn’t let him. “I need to get back and check the news for tornado locations.”

That seemed to work. He shook his head, but I could see how angry he was. When I hung up the phone, I dropped my head back and breathed out.

Ben and Alice were gone when I returned.

“They followed Leia into their room. They think she’s playing hide-and-seek, but I think she’s just not used to a couple kids chasing her around.”

“Will she be traumatized?” I pulled out the chair kitty-corner from his and sat down.

“No, I think she likes it. She was being coy, watching to see if they were following. ”

I couldn’t help but laugh. Dusty’s eyes held mine. He seemed hesitant, like he wanted to ask if I was okay but didn’t want to pry. The last thing I wanted to talk about was Carter. We had done that enough.

Surveying the puzzle piles, I lifted my eyebrows. “There’s a lot of blue. I can see you didn’t put Texas together.”

“This puzzle is ridiculous,” he answered quickly, starting to put the pieces into piles again—corners, edges, color and pattern schemes. The man was clearly not a novice. “The whole surrounding ocean is one solid color. How are we supposed to use cunning and smarts to figure out where each piece goes?”

“I think it’ll have to be more of a try each piece to see if it fits kind of situation.”

“Like I said. Ridiculous,” he muttered.

We spent the next hour working on the puzzle, getting each state put together and starting on the surrounding water. We were interrupted twice when Ben wanted to bring out his Star Wars toys and show them off—all except Chewbacca, who was still suspiciously missing—and then to show Dusty his Kylo Ren costume.

“Alice took Chewie,” Ben said, swiping his lightsaber around the small living room.

“I did not!” she argued.

“Did, too.”

“I don’t even like your dumb toys.”

“Yes you do. You wanted him to marry your Barbie.”

“Barbie doesn’t need?—”

“Okay, bedtime,” I said, rising and clapping my hands. I hazarded a glance at Dusty, but he looked amused, bending over the table to fit blue pieces into the ocean until one fit, then moving to the next. We’d become methodical about it, and I think both of us just wanted to see the puzzle finished so we could burn it .

“Can Leia have a sleepover?” Alice asked.

Dusty looked up, giving her a sweet smile. “Not tonight. As much as she’d love that, we don’t have her litter box or her Yoda.”

Ben ran over, sheathing his lightsaber. “She has a Yoda?”

Dusty jerked his chin slightly toward Alice’s pink monkey stuffed beneath her arm. “Leia sleeps with a stuffed Yoda, and I left him at home. She loves it as much as you love Peaches, so you can probably guess how hard it would be for her to sleep without it.”

Alice shook her head, eyes wide. “She couldn’t.”

“So I’d better take her home, right?”

Alice was in full agreement. Ben, who didn’t have affection for a stuffy, didn’t understand. I held Dusty’s eye while I ushered my kids toward the bathroom to brush their teeth. “I’ll be right out, but if you want to leave, don’t worry about waiting.”

He glanced to where Leia had curled up on the sofa, then back to me. “I can’t leave until this ocean is finished.”

Weird, sweet relief sluiced through me.

It only took about twenty minutes to get the kids in bed, read them a few stories, and kiss them good night. When I finished, I went to the kitchen and filled a glass with water, guzzling it down.

“You made that look delicious,” Dusty said from the table. His cat was curled against his chest, and he stroked her back like a villain.

Heat curled in my chest, but I tried to keep my feelings in the friendzone. I nodded toward Leia. “You make that look creepy.”

Dusty’s face split into a grin.

“You could be Lady Tremaine for Halloween.”

“Who?”

“The evil stepmother in Cinderella . ”

“Ah,” he said, nodding slowly like he understood and possibly agreed. “Should we finish the puzzle?”

“I’d love to. Want me to bring you some water? It’s either that or chocolate milk.”

“Water, please.”

I filled a glass and brought it to the table. I should have had something else to offer him—I mean, all I was doing with that water glass was waving both of my flags, the poor one and the mom one. But, honestly, Dusty was well aware of both of those things, and it hadn’t stopped us from becoming friends. I grabbed the plate of oatmeal chocolate fudge bars I’d made yesterday and put it on the table.

We sat together, working through the blue ocean pieces and snacking on cookie bars. Dusty told me about the small farm he grew up on and how he didn’t keep animals on it anymore except his horse. Though half the time, even his horse stayed with Tucker, so they could practice roping for the local rodeo.

“Do you want to have animals again someday?” I asked, leaning back in my chair and watching him do everything with one hand while the other petted his sleeping cat.

“Maybe. It’s impossible with my job schedule now. Eventually, when I have kids to boss around, I can think about getting some. You know, people I can command to feed animals and muck stalls.”

“Kids are great for bossing around,” I said, nodding sagely. “They always do exactly what they’re told and never miss a single chore.”

He seemed to sense I was kidding. “Hopefully I’ll have a wife who likes animals too, and it’ll be a joint effort.”

A wife. So he did want one, then? When a guy was almost thirty and didn’t have a girlfriend, it was hard to know what his priorities were, if marriage was even something he wanted. I itched to ask him why he wasn’t married yet, but I couldn’t breach the personal nature of that conversation. It felt like too much, somehow.

“I wish you luck in finding her,” I said, pouring all my attention into the little blue puzzle piece that didn’t fit anywhere. I could sense Dusty’s eyes on me, but instead of looking up, I picked up a second piece and fitted it in place.

We were almost finished. The next ten minutes went by easily, our conversation shifting to what we had both been interested in during high school. Him, football of course. Me, choir and culinary arts.

“I did cross country for a while too, and I wasn’t too shabby at it,” I said.

“We have a few great places nearby to go running, if you want trails.”

“Oh, it’s been too long. I don’t think I have it in me anymore.”

He looked at me suspiciously. “What do you do for you, Nova?”

“Eat,” I said, pinching another corner from a fudgy oat bar and popping it in my mouth.

“What else?”

“I have too many things on my plate to worry about hobbies.”

“Okay, before, when you didn’t have so many things on your plate. What did you do for you then?”

Nothing. That was the truth. I cleaned, cooked, got the kids everywhere they needed to be. When I had a minute to myself, I usually was trying a new recipe or meeting a friend for lunch. I did workouts in my living room to stay in shape and make it possible to eat all the things, but I hadn’t run in quite a few years. Not since getting pregnant with Alice. But my life didn’t seem lacking because of it, either.

“Honestly, I’m okay being in one of those stages where I’m always a little frazzled and don’t worry about wearing makeup or getting me time. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with my kids being my focus, especially while they’re going through this huge change.”

He nodded, but his mouth pressed into a thin line, considering. “I’m not a dad, so I really can’t give an opinion. But I have gone through a lot of first responder training, and I can’t help but think about oxygen. We need it to breathe, right? It’s important. When you’re on an airplane and the oxygen masks drop, what do the flight attendants want you to do?”

“Put my mask on first. I know where you’re going with this.”

“Perfect. That makes my point easier to get across.” He shot me a teasing grin, then sobered, his honey eyes glued to me. “You get to decide what your mask is, Nova. If it’s baking, great. Running? Great. Trips to Disney World? Expensive, but great. You get to decide what you need to keep your oxygen levels healthy.”

“Ben is dying to go to Disney World for the Star Wars rides. We haven’t taken him yet.”

“Him and me both,” Dusty muttered, sending me a boyish smile.

“You’ve always been a Star Wars nerd, haven’t you?”

“Maybe. I’m not ashamed.”

“You shouldn’t be.”

“My parents promised to take me to Disney World when I was fourteen,” he said lightly. “Not for the Star Wars, but because they were really good at promising things they had no way to follow through on.”

“I thought you lived with your grandpa by then?”

“Oh, yeah. My parents had disappeared for years, but they showed up the summer before I went to high school and pretended to be interested. I haven’t seen them since. They were heading to a compound in North Carolina last I heard, but since they took my piggy bank with them, I decided it was okay for me to stop caring. ”

My hand stilled before reaching for the final piece, then I dropped it in my lap, leaving the last piece on the table. “Have you considered looking them up?”

Dusty stared at the final piece. “I thought about it when I moved my grandpa into Pleasant Gardens, but decided not to. It took years to make up my mind about them. First I was bitter and hurt. Now, it still hurts—I won’t try to pretend it doesn’t—but the bitterness is gone. Instead, I just don’t care. They chose drugs over me, so I choose to live a happy life without wondering why I wasn’t good enough for them.”

“Sounds healthy,” I said, and altogether impossible—but I didn’t add that part out loud.

“It wasn’t always.” He said no more than that. “Should we do the final piece together?”

“Sure.”

Dusty picked it up, and I awkwardly took the other side. We shoved it into place in the wide expanse of blue and pushed it down together. “That was satisfying,” he said.

I grinned, running my hands over the finished picture to smooth it out. “It’s the best part of the puzzle.”

Dusty stood. “I better get this girl home.”

“Thanks for coming over.”

He gave me a flat look. “I wasn’t doing you a favor, Nova. I really like your kids.”

“I know,” I said, surprised to realize I meant it. Dusty had a way of providing service to me without making me feel like a chore. It was one of the things I liked most about him. Whether he meant to or not, he made me feel like he wanted to be here. “I won’t even offend you by trying to tell you how I plan to pay you back.”

He rolled his eyes. “At some point, you’ll have to accept that getting to hang out with you guys is paying me back. If I hadn’t come over tonight, it would have just been me, Leia, and an early night with Kylo Ren. ”

What did it say about us that I’d followed that sentence exactly? I walked him to the door but didn’t open it yet. “You’re a good guy, Dusty.”

His smile was self-effacing.

Without thinking too much about what I was doing, I leaned toward him, my arms going around his neck in an awkward hug where I tried my best not to squish—or wake—the sleeping cat. His free arm went around my waist, applying pressure, and I pressed my forehead to his shoulder briefly, inhaling the scent of laundry detergent and a faint hint of manly soap. His fingers splayed on my back, increasing my pulse into dangerous territory.

It would be a downright lie to tell myself I wasn’t falling for this guy, pointless to try and convince my pulse to calm down. It knew when I was being held by someone worth kissing, and all I wanted right now was to move the cat out of the way and do just that. But my kids were on the other side of the wall and his baby was literally between us, and I wondered if those were two reasons not to push it.

Besides, what if I was just another Gracie Mae, not getting the hints he was dropping in front of me? Maybe I’d been out of the game so long I didn’t know the difference between teasing and flirting anymore.

No, that was silly. There was no way he would be this overt with someone he didn’t have an interest in. That didn’t make the situation easier. He might think he wanted to date a single mom, but it was a lot of commitment. For my kids’ sakes, I couldn’t just jump into anything yet.

Reluctantly, I pulled away. His hand dragged around my waist as I stepped back.

We stood there, looking at each other. He didn’t move to leave, and I didn’t turn away.

My phone rang. I wanted to ignore it, but it had ruined the silence and broken the spell between us. I pulled it from my pocket and saw my mom. I showed him the screen. “I’d better take this.”

He nodded, giving me one last searching gaze before opening the door. “See you Saturday. And bring your A-game.”

“Oh, don’t worry, Dusty. I plan to,” I said, then closed the door behind him.