Page 9 of The Heartbreaker Next Door

Felicity

Ayawn claimed me as I poured cereal for Mav and looked out the window at the brilliant blue sky peppered with fluffy white clouds. The acres and acres of green grass. The ocean on the horizon. It seemed unbelievable to me that less than twelve hours earlier a hurricane had ripped through, causing my ceiling to cave in and the power to go out.

That wasn’t the only thing the storm had blown in. The real meteorological event had arrived at my door in the form of six-foot-something, broad-shouldered, strong-jawed, impossibly self-possessed cowboy. The rest of the world might have been shoring up their homes with sandbags, but I was busy trying to contain a flood of hormones.

Once he left, after serving Mav and me peanut butter and jelly for dinner, I’d lain awake for actual hours, replaying every word, every interaction between us. This was less a “tossed and turned” situation and more an Olympic-caliber insomnia spiral. I’d lain awake for actual hours, replaying every word, every interaction between us.

The man burrowed his way into my brain like an earworm, except it wasn’t a song I couldn’t stop thinking about. Every time I tried to drift off, my brain would replay the sound of his deep, sexy voice, the dry humor in the way he’d said, “All the time,” when I’d asked if people told him he was a ray of sunshine. Or the way he’d made Maverick’s day, week, year when he told him he was already a cowboy.

I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the man. It wasn’t just that Dean was objectively, almost offensively attractive. Although he was. If he’d told me he was the inspiration for every brooding romance-novel cowboy on the shelves at Barnes & Noble, I would have believed him. His greater appeal, even more than his physical perfection, was the way he moved through the world, like someone who considered his own existence a duty, a calling, and a challenge all wrapped up in one battered pair of work jeans. Even when he was silent—which was most of the time—he projected this force field of unflappability. I’d never known anyone who radiated less interest in the opinions of others, or who seemed so fundamentally uninterested in impressing anyone. The effect was both irritating and, to my endless annoyance, deeply attractive.

The guy I was seeing before, Tanner, Maverick’s dad, for comparison, had once spent an entire brunch perfecting his “candid” smile for Instagram, and the only time he’d pulled out my chair, or opened my door was when he was doing TikToks. If Dean Lockhart had ever posted a selfie in his life, I would eat my own shoe. The man was a throwback to a time before men worried about hashtags, or likes, or followers.

Something about him made me feel like there could be a Zombie apocalypse, a vampire or mutant outbreak, an alien invasion, and he wouldn’t bat an eye. He would keep everyone he loved safe without breaking a sweat.

The memory of his hands—big and slightly calloused, moving with the kind of care that never looked careful—lingered with me as I poured cereal for Maverick’s breakfast.

“Mama!” Mav shouted.

His voice snapped me out of my inner daydream like a bucket of cold water being dumped on my head. In a matter of seconds, I glanced over at him, saw his finger pointing at me, then looked down and saw the cereal overflowing from the bowl and landing on the counter.

“Oh shit,” I cursed as I tipped the box back up and began to scoop the crunchy squares that had fallen overboard back into the box.

Mav’s eyes widened in disbelief. “You said a bad word.”

“Yes, I did,” I admitted.

Since having Mav, I’d gone cold turkey on the cussing. Growing up in the foster care system was rough. The biggest challenge for me was never having a mom to look to as an example. She suffered from addiction, so her choices were typically selfish and self-serving. Because of that, I wanted to be the opposite.

Although I didn’t have a blueprint, my image of the “perfect mother,” which is all I’d ever strived to be, was one who didn’t use foul language. So I’d done my best to clean up my vocab. Only rarely did I slip. When I was exhausted or once in a blue moon when I shared the company of a man during adult time in the bedroom.

“Can I say a bad word?” Mav asked.

Mav went through a short time when he was two where he dropped F-bombs like it was his job. He did it once at the pediatrician’s office when he was getting his shots. She injected him, and he said, “Fuck, that hurts.” The nurse immediately burst out laughing, and that was all the encouragement he needed. For the next six months, he was f-this and f-that and just f-ing and f-ed. I spoke to a child psychologist who told me to ignore the behavior, and it would stop. It took a lot longer than I’d hoped, but eventually, he ceased cursing like a sailor.

“I’m an adult, so I can say that word. You are four.” I’d explained this to him many times, but he loved to continue to ask.

“Can I say it when I’m five?” He held up his hand with all his fingers stretched out.

“Will you be able to drive a car, have a job, own your own house, or pay your own bills when you’re five?”

He shrugged, as if it were a distinct possibility that would be the case.

“Well, if you can do all those adult things when you’re five, then yes, you can say a bad word then.”

“Daddy doesn’t have a job or his own house, and he’s an adult.”

Touche. It was tough raising a bright kid. Trying to edit and filter myself so I didn’t say something that could be interpreted wrong and having to come up with explanations for things other kids wouldn’t have picked up on, was mentally and emotionally draining.

I was formulating an explanation that would make sense to Mav, without putting his father down, something I never did, when my phone vibrated.

My heart skipped in my chest and the first thought I had was: is it the cowboy next door? I quickly realized how ridiculous that was considering he didn’t have my cell phone number. And if he’d managed to get it, that would be very stalkerish, red-flag behavior.

Still, he was my first thought, and the mere possibility had my heart doing jumping jacks. Which was concerning, to say the least. I’d spent an hour with him, he’d barely spoken, and yet he’d managed to colonize a truly unreasonable amount of my headspace.

It was frustrating, to say the least. I had a strict “no men” policy. I needed to focus on Maverick, on building a new life for us in this strange, windswept coastal town, and that under no circumstances would I get involved with anyone—much less a man who seemed genetically engineered to be emotionally unavailable.

But it seemed rules, like ceilings, were sometimes more fragile than they appeared.