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"Sure, baby." She kissed my cheek and smiled.
The last part of my plan was coming together.
21
OLIVE
"Mom!"
I blinked, coming back to the moment. The eggs were burning and the bacon sizzling in the pan, and the oil started bubbling and popping into the air. How long had I been standing here, zoning out as I cooked Claire's breakfast?
Dumping the contents of the entire pan onto a plate, a speck of oil collided with my finger. "Fuck."
"Mom! That's a bad word!" Claire reprimanded me.
I turned around just as Lucas was coming out of the bedroom, dressed in a crisp suit and briefcase in one hand. "Yeah, mom. That's a bad word."
Sucking on my finger, I dumped the pan into the sink and turned on the faucet. "Yeah, well, I never advertised myself as a cook."
Lucas kissed my cheek and snickered.
"How about we all get breakfast to go on the way to school?"
"No can do," Lucas sighed. "I'm already late. I called in a backup driver for me, though. So Jeffrey can take you."
I turned off the faucet. "Jeffrey. Fuck, that's his name?"
"Mom!"
"Sorry, I meant to say shit."
Claire snickered, and I smiled back at her. I was lucky with her. She was perceptive enough to catch my curses and know not to repeat them. Claire understood the difference between right or wrong, when something was allowed to be said in public and when it should be kept in private. Her emotional intelligence at ten—ten and three quarters, as she would correct me—was higher than that of most people in their twenties.
"Yeah," Lucas said, plucking a burnt piece of bacon off the plate. "Jeffrey's his name."
I tickled my chin and shook my head. "I always forget that. I must look like an asshole."
Lucas kissed my forehead. "Don't worry about it. I doubt he'll think about that in a few months time."
I leaned against the counter and gripped his hips. I couldn't have stifled my smile if I had tried. His words from yesterday echoed back to me.
I love you.
I was still riding the high of that. Love was not something I'd ever expected to experience again, and in hindsight, the love Carl had expressed to me had never been anything like this. It had never been genuine love. That love had been manipulative, controlling. But the love pouring from Lucas was real.
Lucas's love when we were young was one thing...it was some form of love most college-aged kids experienced. It was the culmination of being young, on your own for the first time, experiencing freedom outside the parent's house. It was the result of being forced into proximity during boring classes, which was made more interesting by the attractive dorm mate who lived across the hall.
That was typical.
In hindsight, maybe my relationship with Lucas in college had fallen into that category...but maybe not. It was an exception to the rule, to say the least. I'd spent ten years believing he'd abandoned Claire and me, thinking that what we'd shared back then had been a falsity, when in reality, he probably would have married me if he'd known I was pregnant.
That didn't fit into the category of childhood infatuation. That was different.
I craved the courage to muster the power to say those three special words back to him, but how was I supposed to do that? I still couldn't understand how I'd won the lottery of his love twice in my life.
Lucas grabbed another piece of bacon and grinned. "These really aren't bad."
Something he'd said stuck with me. "What did you mean by that?"
