Chaos Remains (Greenstone Security 4)

I grinned. “Only if it’s the five-dollar kind.”

“What my woman wants, she gets,” he responded. “Except that I’ll be getting the thirty-dollar wine.”

I rolled my eyes. “Whatever. I’m plotting ways to get you back.”

A pause. “I’m really lookin’ forward to seeing what you come up with, cupcake.”

My breath hitched at the sex in his tone. How could he sound like that, through a phone, at the grocery store?

It should be illegal.

I took so long to answer, Lance spoke again.

“Got to go, babe, see you at home for payback,” Lance said.

I swallowed.

Home.

“Okay, see you soon, love you.”

It was only after I hung up did I realize what I’d done.

What I’d said.

I’d freaked out for the next twenty minutes pacing the kitchen and screwing up cupcakes until the boys came home.

My boys.

Lance did not act different. He kissed me. Hard. Despite the numerous cootie warnings. He poured my wine.

He acted like I hadn’t just declared my love for him over the phone, after a week of being his woman. Nor did he act like it had scared him off.

So I relaxed. The number of orgasms and creative use of frosting after Nathan had gone to bed helped. Falling asleep in his arms helped even more.

I hoped like anyone hoped, that some kind of fairy tale was coming true.

My mistake.

At least Lance only took a week to show me that fairy tales were bullshit.

I should have thanked him for that, really.

But he didn’t give me the opportunity to thank him.

He didn’t give me the opportunity to say a word, in fact. Not after he’d said a whole lot of words.

It was after a wonderful day. One of the best since the fire, once of the best in recent memory.

It was unremarkable.

A Saturday.

Rosie was over with Rogue.

We were sitting outside, drinking iced tea, talking, watching Nathan play with the toddler, watching Lance paint the shit out of the fence in the back yard.

I didn’t ask him to paint the fence.

Just like I didn’t ask him to paint the door.

Replace the mailbox.

Do small things that made this place more of a home. Do things that weren’t small at all.

Things that I thought, meant that he was staying.

But it turned out, he was doing them because he planned on leaving.

That very night. On that beautiful, unremarkable day.

Rosie had left.

Nathan was in bed.

I was coming from his bedroom to see Lance standing in the living room.

There was a duffel bag beside him.

The sight of that seemingly unassuming duffel bag chilled my blood.

My bones.

“What is that?” I asked, voice calm, even, eyes focused on the bag and then on Lance when he didn’t answer me.

“I can’t stay here, I can’t be with you two,” he said, not looking me in the eye.

My breath hitched. Loud. Like someone had hit me. It felt like that. A physical blow.

“I can’t give you calm, peace,” Lance continued, still looking at a spot on the wall above my head.

I laughed. Through the pain. Through the panic.

I knew he definitely wasn’t expecting that since his eyes snapped to mine. “Peace is something that is lost to me whether or not you’re here,” I told him, my voice still strangely calm.

“I have a child, a full-time job, full-time friends, and a mind that demands a constant state of crazy. Each of those scrapes a little bit of whatever peace would’ve been left from my childhood, my marriage. Add them up, it’s all gone, only chaos remains.”

I stepped forward to reach up and cup his face. He stiffened slightly at my touch, but not as much as he would have if anyone but me had tried this. Though, no one but me actually try such a thing. “I don’t want peace,” I said, my voice a whisper. “I can’t live in it. The world has swallowed up all my peace, and I’m glad. I want all the chaos that remains, I want all that you can give me. Don’t try and use what you think I need as a flimsy excuse. If you don’t want to be with me,” I paused, thinking about the little human sleeping down the hall. “If this is all too much for you, I want you to tell me straight up. I’m a big girl, I’m well aware that I’m not exactly uncomplicated. I’m a single mom who works at a diner and currently has a house that is half burned down.” I swallowed as the weight of all those words settled on my shoulders. Although it felt like I couldn’t handle any of it, I knew that I could. That I had to. That I would, no matter what.

I straightened my shoulders. “Don’t do me any favors by trying to find the right version of the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ speech,” I continued. “The truth works best with me. I can handle it.”