I was going to kill him.

Pull off his balls with pliers, gag him with them, then stuff his body into the trunk of his piece-of-shit car that started whenever the hell it felt like it.

It was nearly ten, and Daniel was still in bed. He’d never been a late sleeper unless he was up exceptionally late studying. Or unless he was out exceptionally late with a tall, billowy, blonde bitch who giggled at his every breath.

I peered out my back window, hoping to see Michelle out there with Sasha. It’d give me a new direction for my psychoness. Or maybe I should just ping-pong between Mike and Michelle. Oops… couldn’t forget about Miss Sweet Thang.

I did laps around my family room. I was in a lovely mood that morning. I should’ve called Chase, but I didn’t want to do that to him. I needed to calm myself down. I needed to switch from coffee to valium.

No, what I needed was to have a nice mother-son chat and alert him to the dangers of women like Cassie. The ones who will suck out your soul and leave you withering in agony.

Fuck, Jillian. Settle down and focus. What was I most pissed off about? I had to prioritize. Check off one task at a time before moving on to the next. Cassie, gone—check. Michelle, put in her place—check. Mike, do something about your damn car or I’ll kill you—check.

I didn’t have a chance to get Daniel alone during the party since he had a parasitic wood nympho leech stuck to his side, but I’d accepted that since I’d planned to have him to myself afterwards.

Afterwards never came. He drove Cassie home in Mike’s car, since imagine that—it started. And when he called me later, he’d mentioned that Cassie was very upset about something, practically on the verge of tears, and would I mind if he stayed with her a while? He hadn’t felt right about leaving her alone in that state. I couldn’t even say I needed the car back because it wasn’t my car, and when I’d questioned what the emergency was, he said he’d fill me in later.

“I really have to get going, Mom. She needs me right now.”

I didn’t buy it for shit. Yes, I suppose I’d feel horrible if it was a true tragedy, but why did I have this nagging sensation that it was a broken nail turned dire, and my son was just too damned considerate to walk away?

The door creaked open a little after eleven, and Daniel stumbled out of the room. If I didn’t know he abstained, I’d have sworn he was hungover.

“Any coffee left?” he asked, running his hand through his stuck-up hair.

“Yes, but it’s cold.” He nodded, going into the kitchen and grabbing a mug. “I thought you didn’t care much for coffee.”

“It depends. I’m in the mood for it today.” He poured a cup of the four-hour-old brew and stuck it in the microwave.

“Rough night?” I quickly decided that was rhetorical, and I really didn’t want to know what he was doing with Cassie until 3:00 a.m. “It’s easy enough to make a fresh pot. Stale coffee tastes nasty reheated.”

He shrugged. “I can’t tell.” He pulled it out after the ding and downed it all. “Sorry about last night, Mom. I have some time today, but I might be pretty out of it. It was hard to fall asleep when I got home.”

Hmm…. My curiosity wrestled with me and won out. I changed my mind; I wanted to know after all. That way I could gauge Cassie’s level of hold over my son.

“Was it something serious to keep you out so late?”

“When I brought her home yesterday, she realized she’d left the back door open for the past two days. And when she couldn’t find her cat anywhere she broke down. I couldn’t leave her like that, Mom. I had to stay and help her look, keep her calm.”

Hmm…. Too ambiguous. If she really lost her cat, I could understand the reaction. But leaving a door open in winter? Suspicious. It felt staged. Maybe she didn’t even own a cat.

“But then around midnight we heard the meow, so happy ending.”

“The cat was outside the whole time?”

“No, in the laundry room downstairs. Cassie figured she was hiding because she’s leery of strangers.”

Hmm…. “Glad to hear the cat’s okay, but then what happened? It was still another few hours until you got home.” Shit. Why did I ask that? I didn’t even want to think about it.

“She was still very worked up over what could have happened. I can’t say I totally got why she was that emotional when it ended well, but I wanted to respect her feelings even if I didn’t understand them. Thought you’d appreciate that, Mom.”

I just smiled. That’d show me for teaching my son to be a gentleman. I should’ve stressed that there was a difference between respecting a woman who was deserving of it and one who just pretended to be. The latter wasn’t worth fucking up your life.

“It also got me thinking that for the duration I’m living here, I don’t want to be disturbing you all the time, especially when I come home late like that. What if I moved my room down to the basement? I could just come and go through the garage instead of the front door.”

Was he planning on making a habit of this? The rec room. Love nest. Soundproof. Ah, no. “It’s one thing to have the occasional party, but having a bedroom down there would be too cold in the winter.”

“It’d be all right.”

“No, it wouldn’t.”

In other words: Case closed. I couldn’t stop him from doing God knew what somewhere else, but it wasn’t happening right below me. And it really was freezing down there this time of year. I could set up heaters once in a while but not leave them running day and night, and with the garage door always opening, letting in the cold air….

“Wait, you said Cassie left her door open for two days? How could she go that long without feeling the cold air blowing in?”

“Because she wasn’t home. She was in Chicago, and then she only stopped home quick to change and grab something before the party.”

“What’d she have to grab?”

“I don’t know, Mom. I waited in the car.” He looked at me strangely. “What does that matter?”

All these questions started rising inside me, bubbling up faster than I could handle. I was scrambling to capture them all before they got away.

“So she didn’t take a shower for two days?”

“She did in Chicago before we left. You’re kinda acting—”

“Before we left?” Wait a freaking minute. All those questions and I was only focusing on Saturday? “She was with you? For the interview?”

“She didn’t sit in the room with me during that hour, but yeah, she was with me the rest of the time. I thought you knew that.”

I jerked my head sharply. No, I did not fucking know that. How would I know that?

“Mom, are you okay?”

“You told me you just saw her for the first time again on Friday morning.”

“I did.” His mouth twisted into a goofy smile. “Yeah, it was a spur-of-the-moment thing. All really sudden.”

Ya think? “She comes over and says hello and then she just hops in your—my—car and that’s that?”

Who the hell does that?

“Basically. Once we started talking again, we didn’t want to stop. Next thing I knew, we were driving to Chicago together. I’d planned to come home that night, but we were having such a great time we just decided to stay.”

“And you all just stayed over in some tiny college apartment?”

“No, we hung out with Jason, then got a hotel room for the night.”

“A hotel?” I’d probably said it way louder than I intended. No, I definitely intended it to be loud. A fucking hotel?

He laughed a bit. “We just needed a place to stay. It’s not what you’re probably thinking.”

What I was thinking was that the answer to my ‘who the hell does that’ question was now solved. Ding ding ding. A slut.

The fact that I’d slept with Chase within hours of meeting him hadn’t escaped me, but I’d been around long enough to have raised a son into adulthood, and I had a seventeen-year marriage under my belt. If I wanted to be a slut, I’d earned that right.

The only thing she’d earned was a big ole box of ‘stay the fuck away from my family.’

“I know you’ve always had really good judgment, Daniel, but I’m wondering what happened here. How well do you really know this woman? What if she’d turned out to be an ax murderer and hacked you up while you were sleeping?”

“What?”

“I never even heard anything about her when you were at East Shore. Were you seeing each other then?” If so, I didn’t know a damn thing about it.

“No.”

“Were you friends, at least?”

“No, but how does that make a difference? She was a senior. I wouldn’t expect her to notice me as a sophomore. But it was hard not to have a thing for her. Most of the guys did.”

“So, she didn’t acknowledge you in school. At all. But yet she was so excited to be reunited with you?”

He plowed his hands through the hair that refused to stay down. He looked innocent right then with his rumpled T-shirt and pajama bottoms. Boyish and corruptible.

And I was the mama bear with razor-sharp claws, ready to gouge the honey from Cassie’s saccharine smile.

“Mom, I’m not sure what you’re trying to get at. Maybe she didn’t pay attention to me in school, but so what? She remembered me enough to recognize me, and I definitely recognized her. Were you the same person in high school as you are now?”

“I barely even remember high school, Daniel. Hardly the same thing.” I went over and leaned against the counter next to him. He had a valid argument, but only if Cassie were taken out of the equation. “I’m just concerned because you barely know her.”

“But she told me she’s worked with Chase for over a year. And she knew you. I like her, okay? I’m not sure what the problem is.”

The problem was… where did I start? I didn’t trust her. Period. But I couldn’t tell that to Daniel without backing it up. Everything had come together too easily to be coincidental, but a feeling wasn’t proof.

“When Chase and I were first… seeing each other”—yeah, we’ll call it that—“Cassie was interested in him too.”

“I know. She told me.”

“She told you?”

He shrugged. “If that’s what you’re basing everything on, that’s not that big of a deal. So she was interested in him briefly when she started at the school. She soon realized he had feelings for you instead, and that was the end of it. She doesn’t even think of him as anything more than a colleague now.”

Oh, she was good. Heading it off at the pass. Even more reason to keep her in fucking lockdown.

“Just be careful, okay?”

“I’m still not sure what you’re so worried about, but sure. I’ll be careful. Now, I’m really wiped out, even with that coffee in me. I’m gonna lie back down for a while. We can grab dinner together later?”

I kissed him on the cheek. “Yes, go. Dinner sounds great.”

He returned to the bedroom, and I was left trying to figure out if our conversation had been a success or a train wreck. I decided it was a ‘to be determined’ and went into the family room. I had a junk drawer I’d been meaning to clean out for five years.

Nope, all those runaway paper clips could hold onto their freedom a while longer. I zeroed in on Sasha instead, running circles around a tree. Not far away stood her owner, dragging on a cigarette.

I slipped on my coat and shoes and went out through the patio door. Michelle saw me and waved. I waved back. I wasn’t even really mad anymore, more blown away at her audacity, but I still wanted a good explanation. And I wanted her to know boundaries, because obviously her open-concept model was not going to work for me.

I stepped over to the fence that separated our yards and called her over. I could invite her inside, but it wasn’t something I wanted Daniel to wake up and overhear. She shuffled over, the glowing butt staring me down, and slung her arms over the metal wire.

“Hi, Jillian. How’s your day going?”

“Not sure yet. Hey, I didn’t see you around again yesterday. You didn’t come back to the party?”

“I did, but just for a second to get my shoes.” Shoes? Sasha ran over, and she swooped her up. Oh yes. She’d left without shoes, but since that wasn’t by far the strangest thing she’d done that day, it wasn’t even worth asking about. “Henry wasn’t feeling well all of a sudden, so I needed to sit with him. Pain in the ass but ‘in health and sickness’ and all that. You know how it goes.”

“So, Chase helped you out all right? Got all that salt down for you?”

She puffed out a ring of smoke. “Oh, yes. He was very helpful. Thanks for letting me borrow him.”

“Sure. Say, I’m curious about something, Michelle.” I gripped the cold links of the fence. “What in the hell was going through your mind when you asked my boyfriend for a sperm sample?”

“Is he gonna do it?”

“What? No.”

“I can pay him for his time. I’d only need him once, twice a week, depending.”

Depending on what? She was acting like she wanted to contract him to plow her driveway. This is beyond insane. I really should start listening to Perry more often.

“Are you listening to yourself here? How can you possibly think it was even okay to ask him something like that? And to tell him I gave my blessing?”

“You did.”

“Right, Michelle. I told you it was perfectly fine with me to ask Chase to jack off into a cup so you could rub it all over your face.”

I mean, what the fuck? If she wanted it that badly, I’m sure she could hire some student at the local college who was hard-up for some extra money. Or break into a damn sperm bank. Whatever. As long as she kept my man out of it.

“Honey, I specifically recall you telling me you’d share. Can’t fault me for wanting some of that Chase cream. Not when I can see proof that it works.”

“God, Michelle. Whatever you thought I said, it wasn’t that. So just never—”

She pointed ahead. “You got a fancy red car pulling in your driveway.”

I turned around to see Candace’s red Saab. “I have to go. Just don’t….” I glanced back at Michelle who was already walking off with Sasha.

Okay, now what? I hadn’t spoken to Mike since that night he’d picked up Daniel from my mom’s. Thankfully there’d been no reason to. I curved around the side of the house and stopped Mike from coming up to the door and ringing the bell.

“Daniel’s taking a nap.” I was instantly transported back nineteen years. It was much simpler when there were bars around his bed, and blondies were something he wanted to bake, not spend a night in a hotel room with.

“Okay.”

“And you need to do something about your car. It’s not reliable. Either get it fixed or else we need to make other arrangements until he can buy his own.”

“It has problems starting sometimes when it gets too cold. Let him park it in the garage.” Well, that would explain why it started up the day before; it’d warmed up into the thirties.

“Yes, but what if he’s off somewhere and the temp drops? I don’t want him stranded, and he might not always be able to get a ride. And I remember you having problems with it in summer too.”

He nodded. “All right, I’ll have it looked at again.”

This is going too easy. He must want something. “Are you here to see Daniel?”

“Actually, I was hoping to talk to you about something first.”

“If this has anything to do with Chase, don’t bother. I’m not getting into it with you again.”

He dragged his foot over the stone walk, kicking little bits of snow around. “No, I’m not going to mention him now.”

“Now? How about not ever? Unless you can be—”

“Dammit, Jillian.” He looked up. “I’m not here to fight with you, okay? I just need a little help.”

“Help?”

“It’s about Candace.”

“Come on, Mike. We’ve been through this before too. If you don’t want to marry her, stop stringing her along, for God’s sake. Either end it or—”

“She’s pregnant.”

“What?” I blinked a few dozen times. “Pregnant?”

He dug his fingers into his scalp, looking like he was trying to puncture it. I assumed he wasn’t ready to pass out cigars yet. He still hadn’t moved past the jump-off-the-bridge stage.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do, Jillian.”

“How far along?”

“I don’t know. Maybe six weeks.”

“And how is she doing?”

“Sick. But happy, I guess.”

“You guess?”

He stuck his hands in his pockets. “She wanted this, to start a family before it was too late. But… I just don’t know if I can do it again.” I hit him as hard as I could on the arm, and he stumbled back. It felt good. “What the hell, Jillian?”

“No, Mike. What the hell is the matter with you? You don’t think you can do it? Too bad. Fucking deal with it.” I was far from going all fangirl over Candace, but she deserved better than this shit.

“You don’t understand. I think she tricked me.”

“You know what? I don’t care. If she did, I agree that’s messed up, but it was your choice to go back to her and give her hope. You knew she wanted marriage and family. Regardless if you’re ready or not, you need to take responsibility and be there for her and the baby. Wouldn’t you expect Daniel to man up and do the same if….”

My mouth filled with vile-tasting liquid. The thought of Daniel ever getting Cassie pregnant… No. Just no.

“Jillian?” He waved his hand in front of my face. “You look a little pale.”

“Yeah.” I needed to rinse out my mouth. “I should get back inside. When are you going to tell Daniel?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t wait too long.” I turned to go up, making it two whole steps.

“Jillian?” I paused. “What if you mentioned something, broke the news to him first?”

I faced him. “You make it sound like you’re dying. This is supposed to be a good thing. You’re in a better position now to be a father than when Daniel was young. Your practice is established, and you have more time to be involved in this child’s life. Don’t fuck it up, Mike, just because you’re scared. And no, I’m not telling Daniel. You should be the one to do that, and when you do, be conscious of how you do it. He may not be a kid anymore, but you can still set an example.”

A band of nausea rolled over me, causing that sickening sensation again. I made it to the front door, and Mike didn’t call out a second time. Hopefully, the message had sunk in. It was okay to be scared; it wasn’t okay to use that as an excuse to be a dick.

I went inside, noting the quiet house. I’d gone down all three items on my to-do list and wasn’t sure if I’d accomplished any of them yet. I tacked on a fourth:

Do everything in my power to never have this same conversation with Daniel.