“Thanks for tapping my ass after I did that, baby.”

There was a smile in his smooth, deep voice when he replied, “Shut up and go to sleep.”

“You shut up and go to sleep.”

“Okay,” he muttered, kissed the top of my head and again settled in.

I settled into him.

Yeah.

Hell yeah.

Life was awesome.

 

“Say what?”

It was the next morning.

Toby’s ass was to a stool, leaning into Brooks in his high chair, spooning cereal into my kid.

His hair was also hanging down to his cheeks on both sides.

I’d discovered Toby’s version of a bedhead.

It was phenomenal.

I was standing at the counter opposite the island from them, making him and me toast.

And at his request, I’d just finished sharing my schedule for the week.

“I’m working a couple extra hours Thursday and Friday evenings, I took an extra shift on Wednesday, which was my day off, and Michael wants me for half a shift on Saturday morning, my other day off,” I repeated.

“The Christmas Fair is this weekend,” he told me something I knew.

“Dodo! Moomoo. Lala!” Brooks shouted, then threw a set of plastic keys across the kitchen.

Dapper Dan went to investigate.

Tobe turned his attention back to Brooklyn and shoveled more cereal in his mouth.

Okay, a hot guy, who didn’t fuck like a god, but fucked like a caveman god and didn’t mind me getting maudlin over my mother, but instead loved me sharing I did so he could have a mind to me, who also fed my kid breakfast with a natural ease was the most attractive thing evah.

“And, babe,” he continued, “I might wanna take my girl out on our first date.”

Oh shit.

I stopped reveling in how attractive Toby was as everything I’d been able to forget over the last day came crashing down on me.

I’d made some cards, not enough, but at least I had some to give Macy that day.

And I’d made a promise to Michael to take on extra hours.

I’d also gotten myself in a relationship that wasn’t new, since we’d essentially done the getting-to-know-you and mingling-families part for the last seven months.

But it was new.

And it was me who had to have a mind to that.

“I promised Michael, my manager,” I told him.

The toast popped up.

“Right,” Toby muttered and shoved more cereal in my kid.

I knew by his tone this didn’t make him very happy.

I took the toast out and started buttering it, saying, “I know you don’t wanna talk about this kind of thing, and you’re helping out, Johnny’s helping out, Margot’s helping out, but I still need money. But more, I made a promise that I’d take overtime through the holiday season, and Michael is depending on me.”

Toby didn’t say anything until I finished buttering the toast and putting more bread in.

Once I pushed the lever down, he spoke, “Okay, this is where I’m at, Addie.”

I looked to him to see his attention was on me.

He launched in.

“In order of priority, I wanna take you and Brooks to the Christmas Fair. He won’t remember it, but you and I will, and I want you on my arm. I want it known in town I’ve claimed you and Brooks. And I want us to have some fun, the three of us together.”

I was going to go get the jelly while he was talking.

I didn’t go get the jelly because I could no longer move.

He wanted to claim us.

Publicly.

And he wanted to have some fun.

Us three.

And again, he put that right out there.

Oh yeah.

Head over heels for this man.

“Second,” he carried on, “I wanna take you to The Star. A nice night out, just you and me. I don’t wanna take you some night where you just got off shift. I wanna take you when you’ve had a day to get shit done to clear your head, maybe relax a little, and now that I’ve seen the results, have time to do yourself up for me. Mostly, I want us to celebrate goin’ there with this and making our own memory about that. I also want time just with you to get to know you as you. Except for you at my place yesterday, the time we had last night, and right now, we’ve never had that. There’s always been someone around. And I love this little guy . . .”

He jerked his head toward Brooklyn, making his hair slant along his cheekbones, something I instantly memorized even if we were into something heavy, then he resumed talking.

“But even if he’s a kid, he’s someone and a distraction and I want time without anything distracting me from you, or you from me.”

One could say I wanted that too.

A lot.

And one could say I loved he wanted that.

A lot, a lot.

“And Christmas is coming,” he continued. “That’s makin’ cookies and watchin’ Christmas movies and wrappin’ Brooks’s presents and goin’ to parties, and you give that kind of overtime to the store, you’ll be beat and some of that can’t happen, but most of it’ll be done just to get it done instead of it bein’ done because it’s fun.”

He thought all that was fun.

Where did this guy come from?

He was totally surreal.

The good kind.

“Honey—”

“No pressure. You do what you gotta do,” he said. “I’m serious about that. I get it. Life is about doin’ what you gotta do. You just need to know that if I don’t get that shit, I’ll be disappointed. And I know that seems like I’m full of it and puttin’ on pressure. But for this to work, we have to communicate and you gotta know where my head is at and what I want. I want the same back from you. I get life is about disappointment too. But I’m not gonna get in this with you and sit on shit that disappoints me and let it infect what we got. We’re here.” He raised Brooklyn’s spoon to indicate just how here we were (and one could say I loved that too). “I’m good. That isn’t gonna make me stop wanting more.”

“I won’t take the Saturday shift,” I told him.

And God.

God.

The look on his face.

It was like I put a chest filled with treasure on the island and told him it was all his.

“I don’t want life to be about disappointment for you, Toby,” I told him quietly.

“Babe, your dad was a dick who beat your mom, so she had to put you in a car and escape him. Your husband was a deadbeat waste of space who cheated on you. My mom took off on my dad, who worshiped her, leavin’ a five-year-old and a three-year-old she’d carried in her own fuckin’ body, and no one knew why she pulled that shit. My brother fell in love with a woman and went all in, not hiding that. And she decided to go on the lam with her motherfucker of a brother who ended up kidnapping your kid and I’m still some serious pissed I didn’t get to rip his balls out through his throat, he did that. Life is about disappointment, Adeline. We got good now. We sail those winds. Because a different wind is gonna blow and it’s probably gonna blow soon. So we gotta take what we can get.”

I stood there, staring at him, hurting for him, and wondering if all this was why he’d spent the last decade and a half chasing experiences and adventure.