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I narrowed my eyes at her but couldn’t help from grinning.
Karen regarded me with a raised brow, skepticism and worry mixing on her face. “How are you still holding it together?” she asked, her routinely strong voice cracking slightly. “With all of this happening, things that would bring down anyone, you’re still…” She trailed off.
I smiled wider. “Still somewhat sane? Walking around?” I finished for her.
She nodded.
“I’m a mom,” I said by response. “It’s what we do. In times of crisis, we handle, we get through it, for our kids. And then, when it’s all over, when everything is as close to okay as it’s gonna be, I’m surely going to crumble.” I thought fondly of that moment where this constant state of fear and adrenaline would stop keeping me going and I’d curl up in a ball in the bottom of a shower. “But not now, not when Nathan needs his mother. I’ll get us through this.”
Karen’s eyes shimmered. “You’re such a fucking badass,” she whispered.
I shrugged, uncomfortable with the respect and admiration in her eyes. It definitely didn’t feel deserved. “I’m a mom,” I said by response. “It’s what any mom would do.”
She shook her head. “No, babe. Not any mom would do everything you do and continue to do for that kid. Not every mom would be strong or brave enough to walk out that door three years ago. To make a life for her kid with almost nothing. And not every mom would be strong enough to handle all the crap you’ve handled and still play, laugh with her son. You know that. I hate how well you know exactly what a bad parent would do in this situation, but you do. And instead of taking that trauma they put onto you, injected into you and resuming the cycle, you broke it.”
Tears started to drip into my coffee, so I glared at Karen. “You’re not allowed to make me break down yet,” I scolded.
Karen gave me one more look that threatened to chip at my resolve before her expression changed into something more familiar and light. “Okay, but, you’ve got to promise that you’ll call me when you have your breakdown. When this is all over.”
I nodded. “So in about thirteen years?”
It was then she laughed.
And somehow, despite everything, I laughed right along with her.
Lance
“You need to rein your shit in.”
Lance stared at Keltan, his boss, his friend, a man he respected. For those reasons, he didn’t plow his fist through his face. And because that was against the rules.
He was trying to remind himself of those rules, as he had been all morning.
The morning that started with a small human being shaking him awake and asking him where his shield was.
“I can’t find it in the closet,” Nathan said. “Or under the bed.” His eyes lit up with a kind of energy only kids could have at this time of the morning. “Do you have a secret safe?” he asked, voice lowering from the near shout it had been before. “I promise I won’t tell. Even my mom.”
Lance moved upward in his bed, fully awake, pain radiating from an area in his chest. “Don’t have a safe,” he said. “Or a shield.”
Nathan screwed up his face in confusion for a beat, but then it cleared and he nodded. “You don’t need one,” he said, like it was obvious.
“I do,” Lance admitted.
Nathan continued to stare at him in that probing and uncomfortable way that kids had. Like they could see everything you were trying to hide from the rest of the world.
“I’m hungry,” he said finally.
Lance restrained a laugh.
“Do you know how to make oatmeal?” Nathan continued.
“Yeah,” Lance said.
So he got up. Made the kid oatmeal. Even gave him the barbeque sauce to put on it, interested, impressed and disgusted at watching him eat the whole thing. Eliza arrived in the middle of it, seemingly surprised to see Lance feeding Nathan, but decidedly more shocked at what he was feeding him.
She offered to take over, take him to school, both of them not needing to say that they were letting Elena sleep.
“I got it,” he said.
The woman looked at him, really fucking looked in a way that made him uncomfortable before she smiled, big and bright. “Yeah, you do,” she agreed.
Then she left. He got Nathan ready for school.
Took him there, dropped him off, promised that he’d be there to pick him up, another punch to the gut with the look on the kid’s face when he made him that promise.
He’d driven to Greenstone. After making sure someone was sitting outside the house. He didn’t want to leave Elena. No fucking way. Not with what they knew about the fire.
But he trusted his team, even if he didn’t like the way that fuck Duke looked at Elena.
