“Nice try, buddy.”
“The TV? We could all watch a show together.” That perked him up, brows riding high as if his manipulation was irresistible.
“Nope. You know the rules. No electronics at the dinner table. We can have one meal a day where we all have an actual conversation, can’t we?”
Thomas’s shoulders sagged. He might as well have gotten the news that he was grounded for a month. “Why do I have to have the most uncool mom on the planet? No one else has to do it.”
I tapped his nose. “Maybe I just love you more.”
Okay, who said I couldn’t wield my own manipulation?
He rolled his eyes, but there was affection behind it, the kid trying to fight the smile that pulled to his mouth.
Such a tough guy.
Good thing I knew better.
Gramma laughed, transferring the roast to a platter, talking over her shoulder as she did. “Don’t let her fool you, Thomas. Your mother used to try to pull the same stunt on me when she was growin’ up. She always had an excuse why that television should be blaring during dinner. Nearly drove your Grandpa Smitty straight to the loony bin.”
Thomas’s mouth dropped open. “Mom got to watch TV during dinner? That’s so not fair.”
“Not even close. But you have to give her credit. She tried just as hard as you.” She knocked him with her hip. “Might as well give it up, kid. Because I loved your mother more, too . . . just like she loves you.”
It was all affection.
Devotion spinning all around us.
Thomas so comfortable that he did, in fact, give it up. He helped Mallory climb into her chair while I wrangled Sophie into her high chair. Gramma heaped a ton of food onto each of their plates, roast and potatoes and carrots.
“Grams has mad cooking skills, that’s for sure,” Thomas said, shoving his fork into his mouth and talking around his food. I didn’t even have the heart to tell him not to talk with food in his mouth.
He’d had enough of that polishing to last him a lifetime.
Our meals had never been shared like this before.
The comfort of it only found here.
Where a true sort of family resided.
Where just being together meant more than anything else.
My gaze roamed around the table.
My grandmother who’d raised me with my grandpa before he’d passed eleven years before.
My children.
Thomas and Mallory and Sophie.
Love shining so bright.
Thomas chatted with my gramma as if he were the man of the house, which she continually told him he was, and Mallory laughed uproariously at just about everything, while Sophie babbled a little song while she flung half her food into her hair and onto the floor.
Hope filled me full.
Joy so bright.
Heart beating wild with the possibility of it all.
* * *
I’d been sitting in my room for the last two hours, trying to settle the riot inside me that writhed and heaved.
The kids had long since been bathed and tucked into bed. A continuation of our story had been made, a new twist in the Ruby Prince and Priceless Princesses, two new pages drawn into our sketchbook.
A dragon and his lair.
I guessed maybe it had been fed by the text message that had been waiting from Reed after we’d gotten finished with dinner.
Reed: You’re running out of time to make the right choice. Do you think I don’t know you were at that gala? Sniffing around? You’re treading into dangerous waters, Grace. It’d be a shame if you drowned.
Terror had raced my veins when I’d read the words. It hadn’t even been a veiled threat, his blatant hostility growing greater and greater with every day that passed, my worry amplifying in direct correlation to his warnings.
I knew the only thing holding him back from coming completely unglued was the flimsy evidence I had against him, which probably amounted to nothing, but somehow had worked at keeping him at bay.
The problem was, I was beginning to feel that assurance slipping. Reed’s demands had gone from pleas for me to return to threats of what would happen if I didn’t.
As if I’d ever trust his feigned affections. Not ever again. I’d already seen the monster hidden underneath.
I’d met Reed in college. Our love had been sweet, if not a little boring. Maybe I should have given more credit to that, but I’d been so young that I hadn’t even had time to read the warning signs before he had a ring on my finger and had moved me from my dorm and into his house.
Looking back, I could see that it’d been nothing but a strategic move. A game piece.
It hadn’t been long before I was just another pawn he kept under his thumb.
I refused to succumb to it.
Antsy, I glanced around my childhood room.
It hadn’t been touched since I’d left when I’d headed to college.
High school pictures were still tacked to the walls and played partner to posters of my teen idols. My twin bed was still made up in the same quilt my grandmother had made for me after I’d picked out the colors for the patchwork pieces when I was thirteen.
The room was filled with small white furniture—a dresser and a desk and a nightstand that had a pink lamp sitting on top of it that matched the quilt.
From where I was propped against the headboard, I looked around, running my hands up my arms, fighting both the fear and anger at Reed and the buzz that still lingered from what had happened earlier this afternoon at the salon.
A quiet hum that drove the possibility of sleep from my mind.
More intense where it glowed beneath the bracelet around my wrist.
What I needed to do was sink down into my bed and put a pillow over my head.
Block it all out.
Maybe I was just delirious, still angry, my spirit rejecting everything Reed had implied, everything he stood for, the chains I was anxious to be free of.
Maybe it was that flicker.
The idea of more.
I glanced at my phone.
Just as fast, I jerked my attention away and questioned whether I’d lost my sanity.
Apparently so because just as fast I picked up my phone from the nightstand.
Quickly, I typed out a message to the number I’d gone and memorized like it was a theorem on my next high school calculus test.
Seemed fitting considering I felt as if I was officially back to that age.
A young girl who wanted something more. To experience what it felt like to be alive. Exhilarated and excited. To be touched and loved and adored.
Me: Thank you for what you did today. I wish I could have truly expressed to you what it meant to me. I want you to know it meant everything.
Somehow, none of those worries seemed to matter when I pushed send with a rush of butterflies taking flight from my skin.
Fluttering and flapping and the threat of an eager grin crawling across my lips.
His name and number had been nothing but a slip of temptation in my hand.
Part of me knew I shouldn’t. That I should just let it be.
But sometimes that loneliness came on too fierce. When I could feel my spirit moaning from within, the worries growing more severe at night, in the moments when I felt utterly alone.
Or maybe I was already addicted to the way he made me feel. To the way I could feel those crazy-colored eyes raking over me, filled with the promise of the most decadent kind of sin.
It’d be a pleasure unlike anything I’d ever known. I knew it. I’d felt the promise of it radiating from his skin and vibrating from his body.
I could still feel that gaze touching me from across the space. Maybe the only reason I sent that text was because I wanted to experience it for a moment more.
Silly girl.
But sometimes, fantasy was the only thing that kept us moving.
I sat on the edge of my bed like a girl waiting to be asked out to prom, holding the phone as if I could will it to buzz.
Five minutes passed, and he hadn’t texted back.
Disappointment pooled in my spirit.
I tried to push it off. It was for the best, anyway.
Even harboring the idea of something happening with us was sheer recklessness.
I wasn’t the type of girl who threw caution to the wind.
Tossing my phone onto the nightstand, I flipped off the lamp and tugged the covers over my body.
My old room fell into darkness. Those sweet, innocent faces raced into my mind the second I pushed everything else out. I needed to regroup. Make a new plan of attack.