The Other Man

  He was more likely to ask the questions, and then swing if he didn’t like the answers.

  I approached the two men tentatively, wondering if it would do more or less damage if I ran back into my room to put on more than a robe.

  The opportunity was lost to me as both of them noticed me right away.

  Raf grinned at me, and Heath turned back to the coffeepot and began to make me a cup. He prepped it just the way I liked, though I couldn’t remember why he should know that.

  “Good morning, Mom,” Raf said.

  “Morning,” rumbled Heath, his voice sounding gravelly and unused, as it usually did, no matter how much he used it.

  I hugged my son briefly, took the perfectly tailored cup of coffee that Heath handed me, murmured a quiet, “Thank you” to him, and leaned against the counter about two feet from Heath and across from Raf.

  My gaze moved back and forth as the two of them continued chatting as though all of this was perfectly normal.

  It was not. Inside, I was freaking the hell out.

  Did this make me a horrible mother?

  And, how horrible of a mother did this make me?

  But then I remembered how old Raf was, and observed how well he seemed to be taking it all, and I felt worlds better.

  But then I remembered how old Heath was (not much older than Raf!) and went back to freaking the hell out.

  Oh my God. What was I doing? And why did they both seem to think this was way more normal than it was? And . . .

  Were they actually getting along?

  Hitting it off?

  Never in a million years would I have imagined this could go down the way it did. But it only did for two simple reasons.

  Raf.

  And Heath.

  It was like they wanted to get along even more than I wanted it.

  I started blinking rapidly as I realized why this was. Heart melting for both of them.

  They did want it more. And the reason was simple. Me. They wanted it more for me.

  How wonderful was that?

  And that was the moment I was sure that Heath cared about me. Not just wanted me. Cared about me. About what would trouble me, and what would make me happy. And he knew me well enough, apparently, to know how to handle this specifically awkward situation.

  I’m not sure I can describe it, but it was endearing as almost nothing else could have been, and in a way that could only pave its way straight to my heart.

  The way Heath, this gruff man of few words, bent over backwards to be respectful of me, and to me, to my son.

  Sincerity fairly oozed off him as he tried his best to portray to my son that, while it was obvious he had spent the night at my house, he was there, not for some sleazy reason, but because he cared about me.

  Heath glanced over at me, and his whole hard face softened as he caught what must have been a smitten, dazed look on my face.

  He took a deep breath and moved to me.

  “Hey,” Heath said, cupping the back of my head and giving me some intense eye contact. “I need to get ready to go work for a few hours, but I’ll be back in time to go to the grocery store with you.”

  Whatever that meant, I thought.

  He kissed me lightly on the forehead and went back to my bedroom to get dressed.

  After he was gone, I faced my son as squarely as I could, tried to make eye contact, but couldn’t stop a grimace. “Busted,” I said with a sigh.

  He laughed, and a weight lifted off my shoulders. I’d been worried that, I don’t know, I guess that my dating again would somehow affect my sons badly. Like it would damage them somehow. But Raf did not seem at all damaged. I couldn’t have been more relieved.

  “So . . . you’re actually okay with this?” My tone was hopeful.

  “To tell you the truth, when he answered your door at that hour of the morning and everything, wearing what he was wearing, my first gut instinct was, well, I was a bit appalled about the whole thing. It’s sort of a worst nightmare of mine, you . . . hooking up with one of my old classmates or whatever.”

  I just stared at him. I had no idea what he was talking about.

  “I’m sure you noticed,” he continued, “but in high school, and even in college, we’ve had some friends who were pretty f—”, he corrected mid-word, “freaking obsessed with you and things would slip, they’d say stuff about you. Well, we got in some fights.”

  I had noticed, in a vague kind of way, how weird all of his friends were around me, how awkward, and I wasn’t stupid or oblivious, and they were teenage boys, so it was easy to figure out why they were being weird and awkward, but I hadn’t known that it bothered my boys so much.

  And I did remember the fights. I’d hated it when they got in fights. Seeing cuts and bruises on them was a special kind of torture for me. It literally made me feel faint when I thought of either of my children being physically harmed. My reaction to seeing their blood had always been extreme.

  “But anyway,” Raf continued, “he’s not an old or current classmate, so that’s not really the issue. He’s just young . . . and a little strange, with all the scars on his chest . . . But who the hell cares? He obviously cares about you. And, well, Dad was a bastard to you, and you deserve so much better. You deserve to have whoever the hell you want, and you get to pick who that is. So if you’re happy, we’re happy.

  It was one of those moments you can only have when you’re looking at your own child and thinking, Well, here it is, this is who my child is, and no matter what happens, how they mess up, or what mistakes they make, as people invariably do, I am looking at a decent human being. I raised a good person.

  Pride could be as profound a thing as love. In its own way, just as powerful. And God, was I proud of my boys.

  It wasn’t lost on me how ironic it was, the pride I took specifically in Raf’s sensitivity.

  When he was young, it had manifested early. As early as three I could remember him just suffering when he saw anyone else in pain, even if it was just a scraped knee. If he saw another kid get hurt, he was the one that would set up the second ear piercing scream, and I’d run to him, ask him what was wrong. He’d always say something, in the serious little way he had, something like, “I don’t want my friends to get hurt,” or, “Do you think they’re okay? Will they be all right?” Or when he was a little bit older and protective of his kid brother I’d get random outbursts of, “I don’t know what I’d do if something ever happened to Gustave.”

  He was the sweetest boy, but it had worried me endlessly how keenly he felt the suffering of others.

  But live and learn. What a beautiful person that too sensitive soul had turned into.

  “Will you put in a good word to Gustave for me?” I asked him. Gustave, my youngest, was more stubborn, less accepting than Raf, but Raf had a way winning him over to his point of view. “I know . . . the age difference and the suddenness of it all. It would be totally understandable if it freaked you guys out.”

  “I’ll tell him. He’ll be fine with it, Mom. I promise. He—we both just want you to be happy. There’s not one single thing in the world I want more.”

  I turned away from him, busied myself, put my mug in the sink, rinsed it out. I didn’t want him to see that he’d made me tear up. He hated, more than anything to see me cry.

  But he was silent for so long that I knew he’d seen it.

  Without even looking at him, I moved into him, burrowing into his chest to give him a hug.

  He’d outgrown me when he was fifteen, but to this day, I marveled at how much taller he was than I was. I was not by any means short, but he could still fit my head under his chin.

  He squeezed me back.

  “I love you, bud,” I said into his shirt. “Oceans deep. Rivers wide.”

  “I know it. I love you back. Just as much. And Gustave is going to take this better than you think.”

  “I hope so.”

  “I know so. And it’s a good thing, too, since I invited Heath to have dinner
with us here.”

  “You invited him to dinner? Here? With the family?

  “Yeah. I like him. I think he’s good for you.”

  Did my son have terrible instincts, and I’d just never noticed it before? Poor judgement on a scale that was until now, unknown to me?

  Certainly, where Heath was concerned, I knew I was operating at less than full capacity, as far as brain cells went, but that had everything to do with the fact that I couldn’t be in a room with him and form more than a few coherent thoughts in a row.

  What was Raf’s excuse? What did he see in Heath that made him trust the guy and want him in his beloved mother’s life?

  I didn’t think Heath would ever hurt me. Wrong or right, I felt he wouldn’t. Felt it deep in my womb, the place where my deepest instincts were grounded. But that didn’t mean I thought he was a nice guy or even a normal one. I knew something was up with him. I knew he was dangerous in a very fundamental and literal sense. He’d told me so himself, and I knew there was plenty he hadn’t told.

  And Raf wanted him to attend a family dinner? Even the thought was ridiculous, for so many reasons.

  “I don’t think he’d be up for that,” I told him, because it was the easiest, shortest way to end the conversation. Because it was true.

  “He said yes.”

  Or not.

  “What?” I asked, thinking I’d misunderstood.

  “Tonight. I volunteered to help you cook, but he called dibs as your sous chef.”

  I honestly thought at first that he was messing with me.

  Heath came out from the back of the house right then, fully dressed now and called out, “See you tonight, Raf,” as he walked out the front door.

  Unless they were both messing with me, it looked like this was happening. Tonight.

  So much for spending the day in bed.

  CHAPTER

  EIGHTEEN

  Raf left a while later, promising to be back for dinner at six. I’m not sure if I was just being paranoid, but the way he said it sounded ominous.

  I am being paranoid, I quickly decided.

  I found myself in my closet, wondering what the hell a woman wore for a day like this. I’d never introduced my boys to anyone I was dating, for obvious reasons. Most of their lives, I’d been married to their father, and after that I’d been on only a few casual dates with no one special.

  And now this. What was this? Boys, meet the man I’m sleeping with who, though I’m borderline obsessed with him, may or may not still be around a week from now.

  Ideally, I could have avoided this altogether. Well, maybe that wasn’t ideal because that would mean Heath was gone for good. But certainly, if I had any luck at all, I wouldn’t be dealing with this quite so early on in a budding relationship with a volatile, unpredictable man.

  I gave myself a pep talk. At least the age difference thing hadn’t freaked Raf out too much. At least Heath had been on his best behavior. Both of them had, so there was that. And it was a lot.

  And so, what to wear. Casual? Feminine? Flirty? Definitely nothing too sexy, certainly not for the first time my boys were meeting my—whatever Heath was.

  I settled on a short, patterned tank dress in a soft nude and gray that set off the warm glow to my skin tone. The sweetheart neckline hugged my collarbone in an appealing way, but didn’t reveal too much cleavage, and the pleated wrap bodice was fitted and showed off all of my curves, but could in no way be considered tight.

  It was a touch sexy, but in a romantic, feminine way, which I thought (hoped) was the appropriate balance for the occasion.

  I picked out some pale pink sandals to wear when we went to run errands, but stayed barefoot around the house, as I was always barefoot around my house.

  I left my hair wavy and loose and wore minimal makeup—a soft pink lip, a touch of blush, mascara.

  And then I set to work, planning in detail a meal to impress.

  I had an extensive list made out when Heath returned in time to hit the market with me, just like he’d said.

  “You don’t have to come to the store with me,” I told him.

  He just shrugged and ignored the statement.

  We took my car, but he drove. He was not content to be a passenger, it was clear. His car wasn’t around at all, and while I couldn’t figure out why or how he’d gotten back to my place,(aside from walking) I just went with it.

  “Are you sure you’re okay with this?” I asked him, studying his granite profile while he drove.

  “Having dinner with you and your kids?”

  “Yeah. That.”

  “I’m sure. We need to face this head on. It might feel a bit sudden to them, but there’s nothing to do for it but meet them now with the way Rafael found me at that hour and in your kitchen.”

  And half naked, I thought, still mentally wincing over that.

  “Otherwise,” he continued, “your kids are going to think this is some casual hookup situation.”

  Which clearly implied that . . . ?

  “And it’s not that, and I don’t want your boys thinking that of me and you.”

  Wow. I had not a clue what to say to that. But he was absolutely right. We did need to face this. If he’d met Rafael like that, and then looked to be avoiding my boys, they could well become hostile.

  “You’re very sweet,” I told him finally.

  He shot me a level look when he’d stopped at a red light.

  “I’m not sweet, so if I said something that was, you should take it to heart.”

  I did. In spite of all of my reservations, I absolutely did.

  Like all normal, mundane, everyday things I found myself doing with Heath, grocery shopping turned out to be much more interesting and strange than normal.

  First of all, it was a Saturday morning, and our first stop was the best organic market in town, so it was a madhouse. Eventually, we split up to get through the list faster. The line for the meat counter alone was a good thirty minute wait, so Heath (sweetly, I thought) volunteered to wait for me.

  I knew he was willing to do it because he said so, but he looked like he wanted to be anywhere else. He was too restless and edgy to ever take waiting in stride.

  Having this in mind, I tried to go through the rest of my list quickly, hoping to relieve or at least keep him company before he lost his patience, and oh, I don’t know, stormed the meat counter.

  I caught glimpses of him as I perused the produce. He had women on either side of him in line, and the redheaded one behind him seemed to be trying to get his attention.

  Of course this had me peeking between shopping, watching in small glimpses as she inched closer to him.

  She was young. No surprise there. And hot. Again, no surprise. Sin City was teeming with young hot things, all here to pursue a career in the seedier side of the entertainment business.

  She struck me as a performer on an off day, her face scrubbed free of makeup, her clothes casual but revealing a shapely, lithe figure. She had the body and looks that fit anything from an acrobat to a showgirl, or perhaps a cocktail waitress if she was really new to town.

  And she just kept inching closer to Heath. Every time I looked, she was a step further into his space.

  Oh my God. I was jealous. Again. Viciously so. And I hated it.

  Jealousy was more powerful of a thing than I’d ever given it credit for, I realized.

  The idea of it was so much less volatile than the feeling of it.

  The actuality of it, where before it had always been in my mind some sort of abstract concept, was quietly blowing my mind with how awful it was.

  No wonder it was so destructive.

  I wanted to do something violent and mean to that nitwit for so much as trying to get his attention.

  It was insane. I hated that woman. She was my enemy the second she made a move on him.

  Which was so out of character for me.

  I was a girl’s girl. It was kind of ridiculous how easily I made female friends on a regular
basis.

  I was a woman that bonded with other women, fast and easy.

  I was close with every girl my boys had ever dated for any length of time. Hell, I made new girlfriends nearly every time I went shoe shopping.

  I racked my mind and couldn’t come up with a time in recent memory that I’d met a woman and had it even cross my mind to look at them as competition.

  And here I was, hating on some woman at the grocery store.

  I tried to shake it off.

  The funny thing was, Heath did nothing on his end to provoke my jealousy.

  His arms were folded across his chest in a standoffish manner. His feet were planted far apart, and the closer forward she would edge, speaking to him now, the more he’d turn his body away from her.

  He was not encouraging the woman.

  He was not flirtatious. Just the opposite. Like at the gym, he was hostile to the woman for so much as speaking to him. Brutally so.

  But I remembered clearly how fast, how aggressively, he’d gotten me into bed.

  And he hadn’t had to flirt to do it.

  On the other hand, though, he had definitely been the one to approach me, so there was that.

  He turned and said something to her briefly, then faced forward again. The girl looked properly put in her place.

  I didn’t have to hear a word to know what had happened.

  She came knocking, and he slammed the door shut in her face.

  I fucking loved it.

  Biting back a smile, I continued my shopping.

  It made me feel all warm and fuzzy as I realized that I’d never seen him show even a remote interest in another woman within my presence.

  He made me feel good about myself, and the feeling seemed to be very mutual.

  I approached him with a full cart when he was nearly to the front of the line.

  I was just in time, it seemed.

  The girl was still talking to him, still trying. She must have been one of those pretty girls who’d never been told no before and didn’t know how to take it gracefully.