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“Every morning, and I mean every single morning, there is a split second where I’m still with them, then reality slams into me. I wake up, and I can’t believe this is my life. Sometimes, it feels like a lifetime since I heard her call me mommy.” She glanced at the dining room table, and her shoulders stiffened.

“Tell me about her.” If she wanted to talk about her baby girl, I’d listen. “What happened?”

Thunder rumbled in the distance. We both glanced out the window as lightning lit the sky.

“Do you want the whole story because that could take all night?”

Tension thickened the space between us. Was there an unasked question in her statement? It had been a long time since I’d had an intimate conversation with a woman. Natalie and I had gradually grown apart until her love turned to hate and mine to indifference.

My situationship with Clover was uncomplicated. Jaymi was a tangled mess of complex emotions. I wasn’t looking for complicated. But I wanted to be here, probably more than I should. “I have all night.”

Her smile widened. “Then maybe we should swap the coffee for wine.”

“You got a beer?”

“Sorry.” Her nose pinched. “I don’t drink it.” She pointed to the cupboard above her. “You might find something you like up there.”

I reached over her head and opened the cupboard. The bottles were lined up alphabetically with the labels facing forward. I grabbed the Tennessee whiskey.

“The glasses are to your right. I’ll take mine on ice.”

Another fucking thing to love about this woman. The girl liked whiskey. I grabbed two tumblers from the cupboard then shifted around her and used the ice maker in the door of the fridge to add a few cubes to her glass.

“Jeff and I had rented an Airbnb on the lake.” While she talked, she poured olive oil into the hot pan and crushed a clove of garlic through a press and added it to the oil. “He’d been working a lot, and I’d been distracted, trying to establish myself as a teacher. The first year is hard.”

I’d make a comment about one squealing kid being enough, but considering her situation, I listened to the advice she gave Lili, and I spoke less and listened more. I handed her the drink. With the first sip, I’d committed to staying longer than I should.

“I think because I’d always felt like I had something to prove.” She rested her hip against the counter. “Jeff was two years older than me. We were high school sweethearts. Once he graduated, he went to Eminence University. His parents wanted him to go to an Ivy league school, but he wouldn’t leave me behind.” She turned back to the skillet and added the onions I’d chopped.

“I’d gotten pregnant my junior year. I wasn’t going to prove his mother right. She’d never come out and directly asked me to give up the baby, but she’d made comments. Comments that made it clear that she didn’t want me to keep the baby because she wanted her brother and his wife to adopt her. They weren’t able to have any kids. Jeff’s parents wanted a grandbaby. They just didn’t want me and Jeff to raise her.” She shrugged. “His parents eventually came around once Matti was born.”

“How did your parents take the news?”

She handed me the broccoli to cut and tossed gnocchi into the boiling water. “Amazingly well. They were worried, probably disappointed, but they didn’t voice it. My parents are happily married. My mom is born again. So, the rest of us are, too.” She chuckled. “She says God gave them everything they wanted with me and my brother. Ryan is two years older. He and Jeff were best friends.”

I smiled. “Did your brother kick his ass for knocking up his little sister?”

She laughed. “Actually, he was Jeff’s best man when we got married on my eighteenth birthday. We didn’t have a wedding, but it didn’t matter. We went to the courthouse. We just wanted to be married.”

I remembered that feeling. Lili hadn’t been unexpected, even if she wasn’t planned. Getting married made sense since Nat and I had been together a couple of years. We lived together, and we were both old enough for the responsibility of being a parent. At least she was. I eventually got there, too.

Just too late for me and Nat to work out.

“You can add the broccoli to the pan.” She went to the fridge, and I tossed the florets into the sizzling pan. “What about you?” she asked.

I grabbed the wooden spatula she’d used to sauté the onions, and I stirred the broccoli. “Nat and I married when she found out she was pregnant. I wouldn’t say we had an epic love story. We had a good thing for a while. I’m not going to lie. I wasn’t good to her. I wasn’t good for her. We grew apart, and neither one of us had any desire to try and work it out.”

“Lili talks to me about you and her mom.”

“I’m not much better at divorcing Nat as I was at being married to her.”

“There are worse things than being divorced.” She opened a jar of sundried tomatoes and added them to the skillet as I stirred. Then she opened a carton of chicken stock and poured it into the pan. When she got to the spices, she’d far exceeded my culinary knowledge.

“You know, I’d have been happy with a grilled cheese sandwich,” I said as she shifted positions with me.

“This is simple.” She drained the gnocchi, added it to the broccoli, and covered the skillet with a lid.

Lightning flared through the windows. Instantly, thunder boomed over the house. Windows rattled, and outside, something exploded. Jaymi jumped. Instinctively, I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her protectively against me. The lights hiccupped, the house popped, and everything went dark.