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My phone dings and I jump, which leads to my spoon falling and smearing chocolate ice cream right across my off-white comforter. I was wrong. I was zero bites away from a breakdown. The tears are already cresting my eyes.
It’s hard to see my phone screen through my blurry eyes, but I manage to read Alice’s message—How are you all doing? —and tap out a response.
I’m hiding in my bed and I just stained my comforter with ice cream. Please send help.
Obviously, I don’t mean that. And so, when I hear footsteps on my stairs literally two minutes later, I freeze. I’m more frozen than my ice cream, which is more like soup at this point. I’m so frozen and, quite frankly, exhausted, that I don’t even move. If someone is here to steal something, have at it. If it’s not my children, I don’t care. My eyes are so heavy I’m surprised they’re still open, and I can’t tell you what time it is.
Then the footsteps near the open door of my bedroom, and I realize they’re too heavy to be Alice. Maybe it really is a thief. Oh, no. I can see the headline in theBalsam Falls Gazettenow:Single mother loses diamond necklace she doesn’t have while hiding out and thief makes off with the goods without being caught.I seriously wouldn’t put it past—
“Jen?”
Seth?
What?
Did someone call the cops on my thief already? It’s only been three minutes. Or did I fall asleep? Yes. That must be it. I fell asleep and I’m dreaming I heard Seth’s voice. It’s admittedly not the worst voice to hear in my dreams after a day like today.
“Jenna, what are you doing?”
Oh. That sounded like…
I lower the comforter from over my eyes and promptly discover that A) I did not fall asleep, and B) Seth is standing there with two hot pink grocery bags in his hands, wearing his uniform and a blend between amusement and remorse in his expression. It’s an odd combination.
And then I remember he’s waiting for an answer. “Huh?”
I need sleep.
“I was coming to talk to you. Just as I was about to knock, Alice appeared behind me with these bags.” He lifts them as if I hadn’t noticed, which would be impossible. He’s the epitome of masculinity, and he’s holding two hot pink grocery totes. It’s more than noticeable. They can probably see it from space. “She told me the kids weren’t feeling well, and said she was going to text you. Then she sent me in with the groceries, told me to find you up here, and that if I hurt you, she’ll have me dead and buried within two minutes flat, all evidence pointing to the mailman. I don’t think she was kidding.”
“She wasn’t.” It’s all I can manage, because it’s just now setting in thatSethis standing in the doorway ofmyroom, and I’m a human marshmallow with chocolate ice cream and messy hair and absolutely no memory of how to carry on normal conversation. “I—I was hiding.”
Just swell, the fact that my voice jumped to a soprano note on that last word.
“From the house and making supper and my kids and—” I gulp in air as Seth lets the grocery bags down to the floor, resting his hands on his gun belt “—the fact that I’m exhausted and probably a terrible mom and all I want to do is lay down and sleep until morning, but I can’t because Ella and Eli are sick and I know they’ll be waking up any minute and I have got to make supper and I’m probably the worst mom alive because I really wanted to see the tapirs. They’re so God-awful ugly, but I had it all planned out.”Pause my run-on-ramble for a hiccup of a sob.“And I failed.”
“Hey. Jen, stop it.” Through my blurry eyes I see Seth move closer, and then I feel his weight shift my bed as he sits down next to me. I almost gasp when the pads of his thumbs brush under my eyes, and my pulse skitters when his hands rest on my cheeks. “You are not a terrible mother. You’re the furthest thing from that, okay? Do you hear me?”
I nod as I sniffle, clinging to his touch and the fact that he’s holding my gaze so intensely. There are tiny flecks of navy around his pupils, I notice, and it fades into more of a cerulean towards the edges. Oh, and in his right eye there’s an itty-bitty dot of gold in the lower left corner of his iris. I don’t think I’ve ever been so fascinated by eye colors in my lifetime. Maybe I’m hypnotized. I don’t know.
I do know that I really want to ask him why he left last night, but now I feel like there are cement blocks tugging on my eyelids and I try to remember why I’m not asleep right now. Honestly, I could just scoot right into his chest and fall asleep there. But then I blink, and I’m jolted back to reality. The one where Seth is next to me, cradling my face in those strong, masculine hands, face only inches from mine.
He must sense it too, because his hands fall and he grabs the ice cream carton, puts its lid on, and reaches over to set it on the nightstand beside my bed. I immediately miss the warmth of his skin, but then he’s back, this time cocooning my hands in his.
“I’m sorry about last night,” he says quietly. I wonder if he realizes he’s rubbing his left thumb over the tender skin on the back of my right hand. Because I do. I have goosebumps on my entire body because of it. “I shouldn’t have left like I did. It was wrong and it was disrespectful to you. I overreacted because…”
I try to say“Because?”to prod him on, but my lips are immovable. Also, now he’s massaging both of my hands with his thumbs, and I wish I had a mirror because I feel like the goosebumps have popped up on my face. Is that humanly possible? I don’t think so, but it really does feel like they’re there. How creepy would that look?
“Because that song brought up memories I could care less about ever remembering,” he finishes, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows hard. “I—I want you to know I meant what I said last night about you deserving a love story like the songs you were playing. You do deserve the world, Jen. I mean that with every fiber of my being.”
I look down at his hands holding mine, and a tear slips down my cheek as the implication of his words sets in. “And you think you don’t?”
His lips part as if he has a quick comeback ready, but then he clamps them shut and a muscle in his jaw twitches. I don’t have the slightest idea where the urge comes from, but I find myself freeing a hand to reach out and touch the scar just above his lip. He takes a sharp breath, but I don’t back down. I won’t. Not without breaking at least one wall down in Seth’s prison of defense against anything that makes him feel.
“Where did you get this?” I whisper, allowing my fingertip to rest on the scar.
“On a call.” He clears his throat because his words came out rough, and the pressure on the hand he’s still holding increases as he closes his eyes. “It was my first, uh, domestic abuse call after being hired onto the department. The officer I was with told me he was going to let me lead the call because he trusted my judgement and training to handle it. So, I did. We were about to get the guy in cuffs after little to no resistance when he jerked out of my grasp, spouting off. His wife was the target, of course, so I threw myself in front of her. The guy’s left fist connected with my jaw, and the diamond in his wedding band cut my skin.” He pauses, exhaling a slow breath. His eyes open, but he doesn’t look at me. He looks somewhere behind me, as though he’s reliving the moment all over again. “My partner was the one who had to get him cuffed. He was forced to call backup. I had one job and I—” He stops short, voice too heavy with emotion to continue.
“Seth, stop it.” I move my hand so it’s cradling the side of his face, so I can feel his strong jaw tremble against my palm. “You’re beating yourself up for something that wasnotyour fault and that you can do nothing to change now. There’s a reason you had a partner with you that day. You had no way of knowing the guy was going to turn on you or on his wife. Did you?”
