“I’ll make sure he respects your space,” I promise her.
She rushes back inside. Claudia has a strong spine and a need to present a strong face to the world, but she’s not as strong as she wants me to think. I won’t take away that illusion from her by lingering long enough to watch that façade come down a bit.
My alarm goesoff the next morning, and I have to force myself out of bed. Normally, I’m up before it even goes off. Not today. There are probably a dozen things that need to get done both at the shop and around the house. Liam’s injury and absence have had a trickle effect on how things run around here. It’s hard to continue to be the father my four youngest kids need, the husband Wren deserves, and all the other roles I’ve taken on in life. I’m juggling so many balls, I’m bound to drop one before too long.
I don’t know how much time I spend staring at the coffee maker until I’m snapped out of my trance when Wren sets a cup in front of me.
“Black, just like the cloud hanging over your head. Anything you want to talk about?” she asks.
How can I talk about something that is still all jumbled up in my head? Perhaps the wisdom is in the palm of my hands, or at least on my mug that reads, “But first, coffee.”
I take a careful sip of coffee. I’m already sore and hunched over from working under that damn truck all day yesterday; I don’t need to add a burned tongue to it. Logically, I know it’ll take more than a few seconds for the caffeine to work its way into my system, but with the first sip, I feel my thoughts start to untangle.
“Do you think Liam is still in love with you?” I ask in a voice that is barely loud enough for even me to hear.
She doesn’t miss it, though, and the coffee cup in her hand slips from her fingers and shatters on the floor. It might seem like an extreme reaction, but not for someone who lived through the first time Liam got sober.
We’re stronger now than we were back then. We’ve got a decade of marriage under our belts. Ten years of loving hard, and being there every day, making sure the other knew how much we loved the other. Insecurity is a bitch, though, and can creep up on you even when the foundation is strong.
“What makes you ask something like that? I know he and I got into it before he went into rehab, but we’ve moved past all of that bullshit from the past,” she says, ignoring the shards of ceramic all over the floor.
That means she’s really concerned, because Wren is a compulsive cleaner, and even more concerned with eliminating safety hazards. Broken dishes would definitely top the list of things she doesn’t want the children to encounter.
“Just something Claudia said last night,” I admit.
“Maybe we do need to go to family therapy,” she says begrudgingly.
Family therapy. Two words I’d hoped never to have to use again. The first time we sat down in an attempt to heal our wounds, it almost ripped them completely open.
“I’ll agree to one session to start, but?—”
She stretches up on her toes. “Nothing on this earth will take me from you, or you from me,” she whispers and kisses me softly.
“Not enough,” I mumble against her lips.
I look at the clock. By my calculation, the kids should be up any time from now to thirty minutes from now, but this mania I feel won’t be ignored without reminding both of us how our connection began.
I lift her up, and she instinctively wraps her legs around my waist.
She looks over her shoulder and sees that I’m heading for the pantry. Our room is the first place the kids will come looking for us. Heaven forbid any of them try and get their own breakfast, which means we should be fairly safe hiding there.
“The pantry?” she asks, confused.
“I do some of my best work in closets, or have you forgotten? I’m happy to remind you now, but you have to be quiet. Can you do as you’re told?”
The corners of her lips quirk up. “Yes, Daddy.”
God, I love this woman. I don’t care how wrong it was the way we got together, the only thing that matters to me is that we are and that we stay that way.
Chapter Eleven
Wren - Past
There is somuch to be uncomfortable about tonight. Let’s start with the most obvious. I’m on my way to have dinner with my ex-husband and his new girlfriend. Just because Griffin and I have been married for about eight months now doesn’t mean that it’s any less awkward that I’m now technically my ex’s new step-mother. So, yeah, all of that is weird as fuck.
Then let’s move to the location. Liam is renting his dad’s house, the one he grew up in, because we’ve moved a little over an hour north to Centralia to open the new location of Hale and Storm Automotive. So tonight we’re having dinner in a home, filled with furniture that Griffin and I fully christened every surface of during the time we were sneaking around. And when I say every surface, I still remember the cold feel of the granite counters in the kitchen when Griff decided I was a better snack than anything in the fridge.
I take a deep breath when we park in front of the house and follow Griffin up to the house. Out of habit, he goes to reach for the knob but stops himself with a chuckle.
