“Sloan,” he says her name and smiles. “Your daughter,” he guesses. “You haven’t talked about her at all tonight.”
That was intentional. I nearly mentioned her a million times but stopped myself. This dating meets mom life is still uncharted territory for me and keeping the two separated when everything with Knox is still barely twinkling in the ethers waiting to take some sort of shape in the real world, just seems like the smart, responsible choice. “You have to pass some security check points before I let you into that part of my world,” I tease, though I mean every word.
“Good.”
Not at all the answer I was expecting. But then, he’s been surprising me all night. “That’s it? You’re just cool with that?”
“You’re her mom. I’m not here to influence your parenting choices. I just want to support them.” He tips his head to the side, smirking. “Besides, I just learned something about her I already think is pretty awesome.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. She has a kick ass relationship with her mother if she’s usually your ‘we’ person.”
I smile. “You have no idea.” But I think he may find out sooner rather than later.
We reach the steps leading out of the sand and toward the small parking lot we left my truck in and linger for a bit longer. Following the rhythmic crashing of the waves, he sways me back and forth until we’re full-on slow dancing on the beach. Quietly, he sings to me, the tender rasp of his deep voice meant only for my ears does a number on my heart, making it swell in my chest until I feel the most beautiful ache. This is what it feels like when ‘your cup runneth over’.
When we finally make it back to my truck, he slips the keys from my hand. “I’ll drive. You rest so you can be your best for the hounds.” He winks, then clicks the key fab unlocking the doors before he opens the passenger side for me.
“You don’t even know where you’re going,” I point out but still climb in. I have a feeling as soon as I sit, my body will remember that it hasn’t slept since yesterday.
“True,” he admits. “But I’m really great at following the little voice on my map app.” He hands me his phone. “Set me up, would ya?” Then he smacks a lighthearted kiss on my lips before he closes the door and hurries around the hood to the driver’s side.
For a second, I just stare at his phone in my hands. I lived with my ex for over a decade, and he never even left his phone where I could see it, let alone hold it. When I tap the screen and find no signs of a lock on it, I’m even more thrown by the differences. So, this is what it’s like when a man isn’t cagey. Interesting.
“You know what’s weird,” I say when he opens the driver’s side door and joins me inside the cab.
“Babe, I see hundreds of people from all walks of life, most of them drunk, night after night. I know a lot of shit that’s weird.” He chuckles. “Narrow it down for me.”
I hold up his phone. “You’re not hiding anything from me.”
For a moment he looks like maybe I’m trying to trick him. “Are you not going to tell me where you live? Are you literally going to hide from me?” he asks, apparently having decided to try and sort the trick out for himself.
I laugh. “How would that even work? What, you think I’m going to blink like I’m Jeannie and zap myself back to my house while you’re left behind in the parking lot without my address?” Despite the benefits of magic, we both agreed we wouldn’t have been happy in that sitcom. Sexism aside, I’m not a fan of pink, so wearing that outfit day after day would have put me in a moodrealquick. I’d have been using my powers for bad in no time. And Knox wasn’t down with all that secret keeping.
“Then I got nothing,” he admits, laughing too. “What the hell are we talking about?”
“My ex always had a lock on his phone. And even when he knew I couldn’t get into it, not that I wanted to, he was always deleting all his messages, never left a trace of any conversation behind. Plus, he’d put people, and by people, I mean women, under fake male names in his contacts,” I rattle off the first examples that spring to mind. “He was shady as shit about it all.”
“Again, he sounds like a douchebag. Where does this get weird?”
“Oh, he totally is,” I confirm. “And it gets weird when I tell you that I only just now realized that he made me feel like I’m the one who wasn’t trustworthy. Like, he had to lock it and keep it out of my reach because I couldn’t be trusted to respect his privacy.” I wave his phone back and forth. “And I realized all of this because you handed me your phone, told me to go into it and open shit up and add information, and my first thought was,‘he trusts me’ not, ‘oh hey,he’s trustworthy’,” I end my rant and take a breath. “Weird, right?”
I’m less convinced it’s weird by the time I’ve heard it all out loud. Maybe it’s just sad. A little pathetic even.
“Kenley,” his voice pulls me from my thoughts, and I realize I was spiraling. I really am tired.
I look up from staring at the phone still resting in my hand. “Yeah?”
“Wanna know what’s even weirder?”
I nod. “Yes, please.”
“I totally understood all of that.” His eyes have a bittersweet look to them when he goes on, “and I didn’t even realize I knew the feeling until I heard you spell it out.”
“Shady gaslighters suck.” I make a face and the weight in his eyes lifts again.
“Fuck yeah, they do.” Then he turns on the engine and nods at his phone. “Now, can you do something with that thing other than stare at it and psychoanalyze us bo
