“Hey, Mal,” I said as they headed toward the front door. “Lookin’ good in those shorts. They from some kind of special tailor? The fit is just… hngh.”
Brooks sputtered and gaped at me. “Did you…” He looked at Mal. “Did he just…”
Mal laughed and grabbed the front of Brooks’s shirt, yanking him through the front door. “Stop looking at my ass, Church. You’re practically a married man now,” he called out before mumbling reassurances to Brooks.
I heard Brooks ask him if he’d been sneaking off to a tailor while Brooks wasn’t looking.
Mal’s words echoed in my memory like a wish gone unfulfilled.
You’re practically a married man now.
If only.
After closing the door and flipping the bolt, I turned back toward the living room and threw myself down on the sofa for a cat nap, making sure the baby monitor was right next to my ear and had the volume turned up.
I fell asleep to the daydream of bringing Parrish home as my real husband, but it morphed into a dark, twisted nightmare. General Partridge laughed at me with a wicked sound, and his mustache twirled itself. A group of gospel singers swayed behind him in maroon robes and happily sang the words he lies over and over while the congregation was made up of chickens and roosters and the collection plates were heaped full of chicken wings. Parrish patted me on the hand and tried to tell me everything would be okay, but then I caught Chuck Stanley—my asshole mechanic client—asking if he could use Parrish as his pretend fiancé next. He said it would be good for business since Parrish was from the right kind of family. By then the gospel singers had changed into prep school uniforms and started repeating right kind of family over and over until I woke up to the sound of Marigold screaming through the monitor and Parrish hollering through the front door.
I grabbed the front door first before turning and racing to get Mari out of the crib. Parrish came up behind me and circled my waist with his arms.
“Bad day?” His voice was so soothing, so calm, I suddenly felt a strange combination of comfort and exhaustion.
Marigold let out a surprised sound of excitement when she heard his voice, and she lurched for him. Parrish laughed and took her from me, turning to lay her down on the changing table. He fell into a newly familiar rhythm of babbling happily to Mari while telling me about his day at work, but I couldn’t shake the funk I’d fallen into. The dream had only represented the stress I’d already been feeling.
I was asking too much of Parrish. I’d roped him into this without his consent, and now he was crossing lines he never would have crossed before. It was like a cheesy movie where the good kid was lured into a life of crime by the kid from the wrong side of the tracks. Those stories never ended well for the good kid.
“Diesel?”
I blinked at him, trying desperately to shake off the direction my thoughts were going. Regardless of how I felt, we were in it now. I couldn’t afford to lose him before the judge’s final decision.
I ground my teeth together in frustration. The truth of the matter was… I couldn’t afford to lose him at all. He was one of the purest things that had ever happened to me, and I selfishly wanted to keep him forever. Regardless of what was best for Parrish, I knew my life would be immeasurably better with him in it.
“Yeah,” I said in a sleep-roughened voice. “Sorry. Dozed on the sofa, and I guess I’m still shaking off the cobwebs.”
His eyebrows knitted together. “You sure that’s all? You seem… I don’t know.”
I stepped forward and cupped his neck before leaning down and kissing him softly. He made a soft sound of submission that immediately sent the blood zinging through my body at light speed.
“Missed you is all,” I mumbled against his mouth.
He held Marigold on his hip, and I felt her little fist grabbing at my shirt. I moved my hand down from his neck to her messy curls and tried not to think about how everything important to me—everything I held on to in this moment—could be ripped away from me within a matter of days or weeks.
I was living on borrowed time. Because if either of these people were taken from me, I wasn’t sure I could keep on going.
“Snap out of it,” Parrish said with a nip to my lower lip. “Oh, by the way, Sara made a casserole for us.”
I tried to make sense of his words. “The new pullet made us a casserole?”
He laughed and moved out to the living room. “Don’t be silly. I mean Miss Sara from the B&B. I had to stop over and pick up some more of my stuff after work.”