He put on some background music and grabbed a bottle of wine while I unloaded the takeout Chinese food. I loved that one night he made me dinner and served it on the kitchen island, and the next he handed me chopsticks and a container. There was something so intimate about eating at the coffee table. I’d ordered cashew chicken, and he’d ordered shrimp chow mein. Every once in a while, he’d hold out his container, and we’d swap and exchange smiles.
When I wasn’t running away from him literally or figuratively, I really did enjoy his company.
“How was your trip?” I asked.
“Busy. The client changed his mind about forty times before settling on what I’d proposed in the first place.”
I flashed a cheeky grin. “Sounds familiar—you must bring that out in people.”
He chuckled. “How was your week? Visit with the ex go okay?”
I set the container down. “It never does.”
“What happened?”
“I take her to visit her father because I care about her. Garrett uses Izzy as an excuse to talk to me and tries to pump her for information. She’s starting to see him for who he is.”
“That sucks. Sounds like he doesn’t appreciate what he has left.”
“Yeah. He really hurt her this time. On the drive home, she pretty much told me she wants to stay with me even after Garrett gets out.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“Honestly, I hadn’t given it any serious thought until she mentioned it. Until recently, she’d spent much of our time together silently hating me from her bedroom. But when she put it out there, I realized I can’t see my life without her in it anymore. And as much as she tries to push me away, she wants a mother figure in her life. Maybe Garrett and I can work it out.” I shrugged. “It works for plenty of divorced couples that the mom keeps custody and the kids visit the dad on the weekends. I happen to not share DNA with her, but I don’t see her as any different than my own.”
Hunter looked at me funny.
“What?” I said.
“You’re a great mom.”
I felt my heart squeeze. A great mom. No one had ever said those words to me. “Thank you. Like I’ve told you, I don’t have a clue what I’m doing, but I try to always put her first.”
Hunter set his container down on the table and finished the last of the wine in his glass. “Come here, MILF.” He held out a hand to me.
When I placed mine in it, he somehow maneuvered to tug me up and onto his lap so I straddled him.
“Never fucked a hot mom before.”
I smiled. “You’re so crass.”
Hunter locked our fingers together, and his face turned serious when he looked into my eyes. “We okay?”
“Yeah,” I sighed.
“Your eyes are saying something different.”
“What do you mean?”
“They either tell me you want me or tell me you want to run away from me. There’s never an in-between with you. When I was a kid, me, my brother, Derek, and all the neighborhood kids used to play this game called Red Light Green Light 1-2-3 where one person was ‘it’, and the goal was to get to him while he sang red light green light 1-2-3. But at any time, it could yell red light and turn around. Then everyone had to freeze in place and stop advancing.”
My forehead crinkled. “I know the game, but what does it have to do with me?”
“You’re it. I keep advancing, but I feel like any minute you’re going to yell red light again, and I’m going to need to freeze—possibly with a bad case of blue balls.”
While his analogy was a little crazy, he wasn’t that off base. I’d been sending him hot and cold signals since the first day I met him, looking for any excuse to run the other way. But it all boiled down to one truth.
I looked at our joined hands and raised my eyes to meet his. “You scare the crap out of me, Hunter. But I can’t seem to walk away.”