Page 65 of The Heartbreaker Next Door

I shrugged. “I’m not worried about him. I’m worried about you.”

That got her. Her eyes widened in surprise. “Me? You shouldn’t be.”

But I was. I wanted to tell her how much, but that wasn’t the Lockhart way: bottle it up, bury it down, let it fossilize.

Tanner’s footsteps thudded down the hallway. He entered the kitchen with a swagger that was clearly put on. His attention flicked between the two of us. “Glad you’re making friends around here, Felly.” He looked at me then, really looked. I recognized the calculation behind his smile, he was measuring me for something, maybe a threat assessment, maybe just the fun of it. “Family business, huh. No offense, but you don’t seem the type to—” he made a vague circle through the air, “—do the whole family thing.”

“And you’re the expert on the whole family thing, are you?” I countered.

A flicker of anger flashed in his eyes, but he tried desperately to conceal it.

“Mom!” Mav called out from his room. “Mom, can I have water?”

I could feel Felicity’s stare bouncing between the two of us. It was clear she didn’t want to leave the two of us in the kitchen alone.

“Mom!”

“Coming!” she shouted back, as she grabbed a cup, filled it with water, and headed down the hall.

As soon as we were alone, Tanner smirked at me. “So how long’ve you and Felicity been, uh—” He made a gesture that could have meant dating, or sleeping together, or maybe just breathing the same air.

I didn’t answer. It was none of his fucking business.

“Just curious.” Tanner lifted his hands in mock surrender. “Mav seems to like you. I’d hate to think the kid was getting mixed signals.”

That was when something in me finally cracked, just a hairline fracture, but enough. “Now you’re worried about your son? After not seeing him for what was it…six months?” I asked calmly.

He smiled, but his eyes were sharp. “You know you're temporary, right? I’m his family.”

His words hit my deepest insecurity. I always believed blood and responsibility defined family.

What claim did I actually have on Felicity or Maverick?

None.

22

IF THE ARMOR FITS

Felicity

The day of the black-tie fundraiser arrived like a boulder crashing through the window of my mind. My nerves hadn’t allowed me to sleep for three days straight, and the tight churning in my gut started the instant my eyes opened and didn’t let up, not even after two mugs of coffee and a heroic round of dry-heaving over my bathroom sink.

It wasn’t a normal case of event planning anxiety, either. Not when the centerpiece of my existence—my four year old son—was currently out of my line of sight and in the hands of the last man on earth I would trust with an actual, literal heart, let alone the small, sticky, precious one who lived inside mine.

Tanner, Mav’s father and my personal cautionary tale, had rolled into Valentine Bay last week like a late-season hurricane: sudden, loud, and with a whiff of property damage. He’d asked to take Maverick for the day, after he’d already got Mav excited for the excursion.

“It’s just a couple hours, Felly,” he’d said, like I was still nineteen and still green enough to find that endearment endearing. “That way you can get ready for your party, and we get some real father-son time.”

The casualness of his pitch made my skin crawl, but I’d sworn to myself I would never stand in the way of Mav and Tanner’s relationship. I knew, firsthand, what it felt like to be abandoned by a parent, two in fact. I would never do that to my son, no matter what it cost me. I would never let my issues with his dad negatively impact him. It wasn’t about me, Mav would always come first.

Still, agreeing to his “afternoon” with Maverick was something I’d only done after the world’s lengthiest internal debate and a frantic, emergency phone consult with my therapist, who assured me that it was both “healthy” and “developmentally optimal” for a child to witness both of his parents in the wild, even if one of those parents had the emotional maturity of a mall kiosk.

Tanner swore up and down he’d have Maverick back by two in the afternoon, plenty of time for him to get ready for the fundraiser. So, at ten a.m. sharp, I did the most unnatural thing I could imagine, let my son run up the walk into his father’s arms, watched them get into Tanner’s rented sports car, and then stood on the porch with a smile that could have won an Oscar for Best Performance by a Woman Not Currently Having a Panic Attack. I waved. I shut the door. And then I cried, just a little, just enough to keep my eyes from swelling shut before my big night.

That left me four unpromised hours to get ready for the Founder’s Day fundraiser. Four hours of silence, four hours with no sticky hands, sudden shrieks or “Mom! Mom! Mom!” interruptions. Four hours in which to either execute the finishing touches on the biggest event of my professional life, or to spiral into a million catastrophic what-if scenarios about whether or not Maverick would come home with thirteen cavities and a new catchphrase like “What happens in the Porsche stays in the Porsche” or something equally horrifying.

I tried to keep busy. I checked on the ballroom setup. I double-checked the seating chart. I texted three members of the event committee and then called Bethany at Ever After Blooms, who assured me that yes, the ranunculus would be there by five-thirty, and yes, they would be in the precise shade of cream I’d specified, and no, the delivery kid would not “accidentally” eat any of the edible centerpieces, which happened to me once.