Chapter 4

Gabe is still snoring away. He must have been dreaming.

I come back down the hall, and she’s sitting on the couch, and her body language screams it: we’re not going to have sex. Clothes neat, back straight, legs crossed, hands folded. Closed for business.

Yeah. Probably for the best.

Said no man, ever. I am still craving access to her body like a starving man craves food, but even a starving man can recognize an empty pantry.

“So,” I say.

Her eyes fill with tears again. “I—I’m sorry.”

“What are you apologizing for?”

“For letting things go so far and then not—”

She gestures in the general direction of my waning semi.

“Getting me off?” I shrug. “I’m a big boy. I can take it.”

Notice, I don’t apologize for taking advantage of her distress. Not that I don’t feel a little bit guilty. But only a little bit. That was her hand on the back of my head and her voice murmuring, Jack, please, and her whimpering Jack, don’t stop.

Yeah. I was paying attention. All of me was.

“I was upset—”

“No, really?” I say. It comes out testier than I mean it to. I’m all for a woman’s right to say no, anytime she needs to say no, but let’s face it, there is a real, biological vise around my balls right now, and they are letting me know about it.

“I should go,” she says quietly.

I’m not planning to argue with her. Mainly because I’m too busy having an argument in my own head. One part of me—the part that actually knows what’s good for itself—is fucking relieved that she’s just going to walk away. Because as much as my body has designs on hers, there is no way that won’t lead to complications. And I’m not a complications guy. I’m the simplest guy you know. I go to work, I go out with the guys, I pay child support and watch my kid to avoid being an asshole, I get laid when the urge strikes. It’s worked out well for me since Gabe was born, and I was planning on sticking to that strategy for the next seventy years or so.

The other part of me, the crazy, stupid, self-destructive part, is thinking, Just a little more. Just one night. Or two. Or a week, or a month, or as long as it takes to get this out of our systems. What can it hurt?

She stands up, the movement sharp and decisive.

“You can’t go back there.”

This is not a thing I plan to say. It just pops out of my mouth. Because I’m picturing her going back to that condo she shares with Harris. The condo where she found him with his tongue on her best friend’s—

Yeah, not so much.

I can see the moment when she has the same realization.

“I can’t go back there,” she repeats. And her whole upper body kind of collapses. Her face, too. I recognize that look. It’s not unlike the look that Gabe had on his face an hour earlier when he realized that all the women in his life had abandoned him with me.

Don’t cry. Please don’t cry.

“And I definitely can’t stay with Mia.”

The way she’s cataloguing it, where she can’t go, it makes my chest hurt.

“I could—go to San Diego.”

Her mom and dad are in San Diego. They retired there right after Maddie moved into Harris’s place with Gabe. Maddie complains all the time about how far away her parents are and how infrequently Gabe gets to see them. If she went to San Diego with Gabe, it would break my mom’s and my sister’s hearts.

“Stay here,” I burst out.

I’m not thinking. Because if I’d been thinking, I’d know that was the worst idea ever. The kind of idea dreamed up by a still semi-hard dick frustrated in its evening activities, not by an actual brain. And yet, I’m still talking. Or one of my heads is still talking, anyway.

“I have lots of space. Gabe has a room here.”

And we could finish what we just started. We could let it play out, see where it goes. Get it done, get it out of our systems, put it behind us.

You idiot! my brain is shouting back at me. If you want to get laid, there are twenty women I can think off the top of my head, no strings attached, no complications (and that’s not counting the ones you would have met tonight if you’d gone to the game with Henry and Clark). This one? She’s off limits. She’s always been off limits.

Maddie’s shaking her head. “That’s a really bad idea.”

“Why?”

Have I mentioned I’m contrary? If someone fights with me, I tend to dig in. It’s one of the things that used to send my dad into a rage. Two seconds ago, I was pretty sure it was a really bad idea, too, but now that Maddie’s arguing with me—

“It would be confusing for Gabe. Having his parents together.”

“Not more confusing than you moving out of Harris’s condo. It would be the least disruptive thing for him. If you’re going to pull him out of Harris’s place, that’s going to mess with his head, but at least this is familiar.”

I am officially a dick, because I am using emotional manipulation and the happiness of our child to convince a woman to stay under my roof so that I can have another shot at getting her into bed. But I don’t feel that guilty. Maybe because I think what I said is actually true. Gabe is going to be super-confused no matter what. He likes Harris (the only example of really bad taste I’ve seen from him—must be Maddie’s genes). So maybe hanging out here for a little bit would make a good consolation prize.

Maddie is looking confused now. I can see her working through the details in her head. So I give her a little help.

“Commute stays the same.” The pharmacy where she works is in Seattle, so actually halfway between Harris’s condo and my house. “It’ll give you time to find a place that’s the right size and not too expensive, which will save us both money.” I figure if I display some obvious self-interest, that will deflect her away from my real self-interest. “Plus, built-in child care.”

She eyes me suspiciously. Maybe she’s more aware than I think of my less-than-superior track record at watching Gabe on my own.

“What? I’d be here anyway. And my mom and my sister are super close. You know they’d be psyched to help.”

“But Gabe’s preschool is near Harris’s place—”

“So he’ll switch. You can pull him out, and either send him near me or wait till you figure out where you’re going to live and then enroll him.”

She bites her lip, thinking about it. “I think I have to pull him anyway. It doesn’t make sense for me to live in Mukilteo if Harris and I aren’t together.”

The thing is, I have now actually convinced myself it’s a great idea. For one thing, where the hell else is she going to go? She doesn’t have other friends she’s as close to as Mia, and even if she did, they probably wouldn’t have the space to take in both her and Gabe. But apart from that, this is actually a good solution for the two of them, for all the reasons I gave her. And I can put up with the disruption, especially if there are a few benefits thrown in—

Her eyes narrow. It’s possible she saw my glance slide over her body when I was thinking about benefits. If I did not mention this earlier, being pregnant and nursing Gabe made Maddie’s body sexier. Rounder, more generous, softer—

Eyes up, Jack.

Mine meet hers, unfortunately. Caught.

“That—what just happened—” She waves a hand to indicate the couch. “That can’t happen again.”

I thoroughly disagree with her, but I’m not going to argue. I nod, earnestly. “Okay. That can be a ground rule.” We can revisit the ground rules as necessary, later.

She is still eyeing me suspiciously.

“You’re the one who jumped me,” I point out.

She looks sheepish, and relaxes a little.

“I’ll go make up the guest bed.”

“Jack—”

She’s going to say no. She’s going to say what a bad idea it is—for her, for me, for Gabe, for all of us.

Her eyes are soft, still red from crying earlier, and very green in the lamplight.

“Thank you.”

She follows me down the hall and we make up the guest bed together, not talking much, me swearing occasionally under my breath as one does over the fact that it’s the twenty-first century and no one’s managed to come up with anything better than a fucking fitted sheet.

“Can I borrow something to sleep in?” she asks. “I guess I’ll have to go back there tomorrow to get some of my stuff at least.” Her face crumples at that.

“I can go with you. Run interference.”

“You’d do that?”

She doesn’t have anyone else to do it. I don’t point that out to her, though. I just say, “Yeah.”

I give her one of my T-shirts and a pair of sweat shorts with a tie waist. She says she’ll use Gabe’s toothbrush tonight.

I say, “Um, good night.”

She says, “Yeah. Good night.”

I brush my teeth and slide between my own sheets.

She’s wearing my clothes. They’re touching her bare skin.

I lie there, my balls still achy, thinking, So much for not-a-complications-guy.