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I had a reaction to him. I wasn’t dead.
He was great with Nathan too. Especially when I invited him in for dinner. I had decided to treat Nathan and me to our favorite jalapeno chicken recipe. He loved spicy. And this was hands down the easiest and most delicious meal ever. I made mac and cheese on the side. I even went all out and made it from scratch, not having it in me to serve up Duke boxed mac and cheese.
Plus, he kept Nathan busy, so I actually had the time to make it from scratch. He found two gloves and a ball and spent an entire hour out back with Nathan throwing the ball.
Then he stayed for dinner, making conversation, asking about me, asking about Nathan, finding out my interests, hobbies, likes. There was never silence at the table, brooding or otherwise. It gave me a glimpse into what life might be like with a man like Duke.
Or even Duke himself.
I might have been seriously rusty in the dating game, but I was also a woman. Women knew when men were interested in them. Women especially knew when men like Duke were interested in them. Because although he was softer, kinder than Lance, he was still alpha as all hell. He still had a kind of mastery over the whole ‘sex god’ thing, a look, the way he tilted his body toward me as he spoke. A man like Duke made sure a woman knew he was interested. And not in a pushy, creepy way. It was like an invitation, a gentle prodding toward something that would almost certainly be epic.
It would be nice.
Easy.
Full of laughter.
It might not be forever, but there was something I was learning about these Greenstone Security men, beyond them being hot as balls, muscly as all hell and more alpha than anything I thought existed in real life. They were decent men. I’d seen enough of that. They treated women with respect. With reverence. So I knew Duke wouldn’t be extending such an invitation to me, me a single mom with a load of baggage and trauma if he didn’t intend on it being something more than a fling.
It was a huge frickin’ compliment.
It was tempting as all heck.
But something stopped me.
Someone stopped me.
Lance.
This was not a man I’d wished for.
This wasn’t a man anyone wished for.
He was too broken, too hard, too cruel for anyone to find peace with.
But I wasn’t looking for peace.
So I didn’t take Duke up on his silent invitation.
I waited for chaos to come back in.
Chaos came back in.
In different ways.
In a person.
“I have a present for you,” Rosie said, walking through the front door of my place like it was her own.
I was almost certain her own place was a lot nicer than this, considering the price of her outfit probably added up to about two month’s rent.
She never made me feel like less than her. It would’ve been easy, since I was. I wasn’t even talking about the financials. It was more about her confidence, radiating off her, like any situation was hers, like she could handle anything. The fact she was tough but also kind. Quick to help out a stranger, drop everything in her life to do so and then befriend said stranger even though she didn’t have to.
That wasn’t just her. That was Polly, who called me every morning at the crack of dawn, because she knew I’d be up and she was off about to teach a yoga class. She then told me that I’d become a lifetime member of ‘The Problem with Peace,’ one of the trendiest yoga studios in LA. So trendy, even I’d heard of it, because it wasn’t pretentious at all, didn’t cost the same amount as a security deposit on the house to join, and that the classes were the best in the state. She’d had all sorts of write-ups in magazines, magazines I read at the grocery store and then put back.
I used to love yoga. When Robert went to work in the morning, before I started with my chores for the day—he had a list for me—I would have a blissful hour of stretching, not thinking, of peace. Even when I was covered in bruises, when my entire body felt like an open wound, I would do some kind of stretches. Nathan was a great baby, so I managed it even after he was born.
As soon as he started walking, my pockets of peace were gone, chasing around a kid who woke with the sun and didn’t stop until after it had gone down.
I didn’t think I’d have the time, or the gas money to make it into the city to take a class that had a month-long waiting list to get into, but I thanked Polly and told her I’d try to make it all the same. She also promised her Ziggy and Skye would be out to visit soon and we’d have a yoga session here while the kids played.
