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Like my marginally comfortable counter stools were much better.
“Don’t thank me,” I grunted, staring far too long at her mouth before I dragged my attention away and grabbed two water bottles from the fridge. “I told you I’d do anything to help. Even if that means embarrassing myself with a soccer ball.”
Setting one bottle on the counter, I cracked the other open and went to hand it to Kenzie, but she reached forward and took the unopened one instead.
The quick movement startled me, but then I remembered the yogurt conversation. And how she’d refused to take a sip from my water at the park. Must be a germ thing I thought and popped the cap on the bottle in my hand and took a sip.
“Was it true what you said about Michael Phelps?”
My eyebrows rose, and I wiped the back of my hand across my mouth. “Of course. I wouldn’t lie to him. Or you.”
Kenzie looked at me like the concept was almost foreign to her—and having met Stan, I could see why. The man lied as easily as he breathed.Called into work, my ass.
“I went to law school with a kid from Maryland who went to elementary school with Phelps. He loved to share how bad Michael was at everything but swimming,” I explained, adding, “Though I’m pretty sure I could give him a run for his money on poor soccer skills.”
“You weren’t that bad,” she said with a small smile.
I hadn’t been good at soccer when I was six, and the next thirty years hadn’t improved my skills. I was sure everyone else at the park thought it was an exaggeration when I tripped over the ball no less than five times—two of those times sending me crashing to the ground to the amusement of both Jake and Kenzie—but it wasn’t an exaggeration; I was that bad.
“It should be illegal for me to be within ten yards of a soccer ball, and you know it.” That brought a smile to her face, and it felt like I’d won the goddamn World Cup.
“You have other skills,” she said, and as soon as our eyes connected, her smile stifled into a small gasp, realizing how her words sounded.
I cleared my throat. Time to change the subject before it got too tempting to show her just what those other skills were. “You have a great kid.”
“Thank you.” Her chin dipped, a lock of blonde hair falling forward. Her eyelids fluttered, and when she looked back up, there was a glaze over her eyes. “I have a less-than-great ex.”
I tensed. The urge to punch the shithead’s smug face when he cut Kenzie’s time short just to prove he could still blast anger through me.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” I said, unwilling to hear more until I was certain she knew she didn’t owe me this. She didn’t owe me anything. “I came today to be there for you, and I will continue to be there for you and Jake without expecting anything in return.”
“I know.” Her tongue wet her lips, and she swallowed. “But I want to. I didn’t before because I have a hard time trusting people. A hard time trusting… trustworthy people. And Jake… he’s everything. Literally everything I have, and the only thing I care about. And I just…”
“Wanted to keep him private.”Protected. “I understand.”
She nodded and took another sip of water. “Stan and I met when I was eighteen. He’dwas training to become an EMT, and I… my parents were divorced; my dad was never really in the picture. My mom… wasn’t that great. The kind of single mom who wished she was just single.”
I hummed low.
“I guess I was looking for a hero to save me from my own life then, and I met Stan, and that was what he was; a knight in shining armor at every turn. He became a paramedic right around the time I learned I was pregnant.” She took another drink of water.
“Was he always…”An asshole.
“No,” she said, understanding exactly what I meant. “But over time…”
“His narcissism bloomed?”
She inhaled sharply, and for a second, I thought I’d gone too far; he was the father of her son, after all. But then she nodded.
“I don’t know what happened. Maybe I was young and naïve and wanted to escape my own home life so I missed it. Maybe I became pregnant so early on that I didn’t want to see it because he was the father of my child.” Her shoulder sagged. “Or maybe it was the job… constantly being called to people in dire moments—the life and death decisions he had to make… maybe that brought out something that was always there.” She paused. “He became controlling. Obsessed with being in control and being the hero saving people.”
“Just because he did good work doesn’t mean he gets a pass to treat you like shit.”
Her eyes snapped up. “Oh, I know,” she said, her voice much firmer than I’d anticipated.
“Did he hit you?” I had no idea why I asked. Blooms housed women who needed shelter from domestic abuse, and I’d filed plenty of restraining orders against violent husbands or exes; Kenzie would know she could’ve shared if this had happened to her.
“No,” she insisted, and then looked like she was about to say something else before she stopped herself and rolled her bottom lip through her teeth.
