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Amos came out right about then, seeing me gazing out the door as Lana pulled out.
“What?” I asked.
“Dunno if you noticed,” he said. “But baby girl has three carseats in the back.”
I hadn’t.
I’d parked further away. And, quite frankly, I’d been too busy eye-fucking her in that sundress to notice anything else.
She didn’t have a ring on her finger. I was sure about that. But, yeah, that didn’t necessarily mean anything. This wasn’t the fucking fifties. You could be with someone, building a life, having kids, without getting married.
Maybe that was for the best.
It would make shit less awkward if she had a man and was renting my place. Couldn’t exactly try to make a play if she had someone already.
There was no explaining why this imagined or realistic man of hers had jealousy growing in my system.
Maybe I was wrong to turn down the fun at the club the night before. A dry spell could explain my hyper-fixation on a woman who was likely not available.
“You know how mama bears are when someone threatens her and her cubs,” he said, jerking his head toward the shooting range.
“You think she’s single?” I asked.
“Think she shoots like someone who will do anything to protect what’s hers,” he said. He took his bottle of water out of the fridge, and went back into the range.
I spent the rest of the day trying not to overthink his words. And trying to forget about Lana.
Something that became impossible when she called me later that night…
CHAPTER FOUR
Lana
Stupid.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, that was what trying to rent a little cottage from the man who also knew I was training hard to learn how to shoot.
There was no way for him to know why, I reminded myself as I pushed two bowls of mac & cheese across the table toward my kids.
Not from the dollar store. Because it was cheaper to buy it at the local big box store. An off-brand, sure, but it all came down to the money these days. I’d gotten good at feeding my kids as cheaply as possible.
I mean, no, this wasn’t the healthiest meal, but sometimes kids needed food for the soul, not for the body, and I wasn’t going to demonize any kind of food to my kids. I’d spent my entire adult life trying to unlearn the toxic things society had taught me about food and our bodies and self-worth.
“I know, I know,” I said with a head shake as I made my way back to the fridge to grab the ketchup. Hazel, my four-and-a-half-year-old consumed more ketchup than actual food some days, I swear. “There you go,” I said, squeezing it over her pasta in a zigzag motion that had her smiling up at me.
“Thank you,” she said as I sat down.
“You’re welcome, baby,” I said, passing her and her brother napkins.
“Why aren’t you eating?” Isaac, my seven-year-old, asked, pinning me with too-wise eyes for his age.
They looked like me, a fact that I only grew happier and happier about over the years. I had my reasons. And they had nothing to do with vanity.
Their hair was a little softer, a shade that tiptoed that line between brown and blond, much like mine had done as a kid, only to darken as I got older. They had my brown eyes, too. And cleft chins. They were both in a growth spurt, making them a little long and lean, but I reminded myself that we’d been through this before, that they always put a little more weight on when they were done growing, and that there was no reason to assume I wasn’t feeding them enough or anything like that.
I was good at creating more things to worry about, even if they weren’t rooted in any sort of reality.
“I’m not hungry right now,” I lied to Isaac, giving him a smile to drive the falsehood home.
The truth was, I would eat whatever was leftover after they were done eating. But if I said that, Isaac would ration himself, so I could have more.
Seven, going on fifty-seven, that was my little man. Too smart for his own good. Or mine, most days.
“So, what should we do tomorrow?” I asked, praying they would choose something free. I wasn’t sure if I had the heart to keep saying no to their requests to do other things, things that cost money. I had some extra cash set aside. But it was money I wanted to use for the range.
I’d gotten… slightly better the second time.
I wasn’t going to practice forever.
I just wanted to keep going until I could hit the center or head of the target almost every time.
I wanted to know I had it in me.
Just in case.
“Mov—“ Hazel started.
“Beach,” Isaac cut her off, and I swear that boy knew exactly what he was doing.
