And we’d missed out on a lot. No big parties, no special lunches, no cute clothes. He hadn’t remembered to buy tickets to the school carnival, and he certainly hadn’t left me handwritten notes in my lunchbox.
Different.
It had all become so different.
I’d taken on a lot, certainly too much, but also not enough, because we’d drifted apart, those ties my mom had built, the ones keeping us together, stretching taut, some severing altogether.
Eventually, it had been my dad, my brother, and I, all existing in three separate spheres. Different planets orbiting the sun, none ever getting close enough to interact.
And I’d missed it. Missed my mom, missed my family.
I’m sure that’s why I started looking for that connection in others, why several of my list of twenty men weren’t just because I’d been looking for a fun time. I’d used them to search for something deeper . . . and I hadn’t found it.
Not even during my short-lived marriage. It had been him and a me, Steven and Tammy, two separate bubbles of living, and those domains had never fully meshed.
I was searching and searching and never finding.
Then I just hadn’t been able to take it anymore.
I’d rather be on my own than coming home every day, looking into the eyes of a man who said he loved me, but if he did, it wasn’t in the right way. He didn’t light up when he saw me, didn’t know when I was hurting or sad inside, when I needed to be coddled or pushed. Perhaps, it was me freezing him out, me so used to being that isolated sphere, but Steven also hadn’t loved me enough to push his way in.
He, just like my dad, had been happy to let the status quo slide.
And every day, I’d felt increasingly smothered by the warring of expectations and hopes and reality, their fingers wrapping around my neck and slowly, inexorably tightening.
Until . . . I hadn’t been able to breathe.
Goodbye Denver, hello Chicago. Then Salt Lake. Then . . . right back in Darlington, still searching for something, and still not finding it.
Sighing, I straightened my shoulders, prepared myself to enter the kitchen.
Then Maggie spoke again. “She’s a good person. She’s been through—” A pause. “Just . . . please, treat her with kindness. She deserves that and so much more.”
My heart squeezed, and I couldn’t decide if I should be filled with happiness that she obviously cared deeply or mortification that she thought she needed to counsel someone to treat me nicely. That she thought I needed pity kindness.
Either. Both. All three.
I wanted to run, but I’d been standing in the hall, frozen, listening to them to talk for going on five minutes. I needed to go in and face the gauntlet. Later I could untangle the rest of what was happening in my brain.
“You think she’ll want the works, too?” I heard Talbot ask.
And I knew I just needed to get this over with. Forcing my feet to move, to carry me into the kitchen, I said, “The works sounds great.”
Two pairs of eyes turned in my direction, two gazes settled on me—wary and hopeful, Talbot’s; curious and tentative, Maggie’s.
“Morning,” I said cheerfully.
Talbot poured eggs into a pan, topped it with some colorful ingredients and cheese, then crossed over to me, those gold eyes holding mine. He brushed the backs of his knuckles lightly down my throat, making my skin pebble with goose bumps, my pulse increase to a rapid tattoo in my veins. “You okay?”
Unable to speak, as was far too often the case with this man, I just nodded.
“Your arm?”
“Fine,” I managed.
“I’ll rebandage it after omelets.”
My lips parted, a protest on the edge of them—something along the lines of I can take care of that—but he’d already turned back to the stove, where he executed some crazy wrist-flick, pan-jerk thing and effortlessly flipped the omelet on the pan, before crossing the kitchen, picking up a plate and handing it to Maggie. “Eat,” he ordered. “Before it gets cold.”
Maggie—who I’d purposefully been avoiding looking at until that moment, for obvious reasons—was raptly watching us, her eyes going from me to Talbot and back again.
But, to her credit, she didn’t comment, just picked up her fork.
Or, I should say she didn’t comment on the whole finding-us-naked thing. Instead, she looked at me. “I heard you were hurt,” she said gently. “You okay?”
I nodded. “Just wasn’t fast enough to avoid the knife. It’s not a bad . . . what?”
She shook herself, crossing over to me, taking my hand, and bringing me over to the stools. “You’re talking about getting stabbed by a knife like it’s not a big deal.”
“I barely even felt it,” I said, giving in to her shepherding me onto the stool and just sitting down. “I’m not trying to say it didn’t hurt, especially afterward. But adrenaline is a wonderful and powerful drug.”
“But not illicit,” Talbot murmured in my ear, making me jump. He kissed the lobe before I could react further and set a plate in front of me, and then Maggie’s again forgotten plate in front of her. “She’s a tough chick,” he told my friend. “I hadn’t even processed what was happening when she’d already reacted, ordering the man to the ground.” He leaned on the counter, hip next to my elbow. I could feel the heat of him, wanted to drift closer so I could lean against him.
“It doesn’t bother
