I work on the plans for the seventh floor all night. Even once I’m in bed, I work, trying to distance myself from the loneliness of this empty house and the fear that it’s always going to be this way.
I’m woken in the middle of the night by the ringing phone. The lights are on, the laptop still open beside me, and I nearly fall out of bed trying to grab my cell before it wakes the kids, until I remember that they’re not here to be woken.
It’s Jeremy. My hands shake as I swipe over the screen to answer.
“Open the door,” he demands.
I’m still too panicked and sleep-dazed to ask why. Blearily, I rush downstairs and fling the door open to find him standing on the porch with Henry sound asleep in his arms.
“What happened?” I ask.
Jeremy’s gaze goes to my tank top and boy shorts. I guess I should have put on a robe, but it’s certainly nothing he hasn’t seen before. He was barely interested even when I wore less.
“Take him upstairs,” he says, thrusting Henry at me. I stand frozen, open-mouthed as he returns to the car to get Sophie. Whitney is sitting in the passenger seat, her face lit by her phone screen, as if none of this is happening around her.
“What are you doing?” I demand when he returns with Sophie. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“Yes, Lucie,” he says, “I’m aware of the time. I have to head out of town, so I'm bringing the kids back.”
My eyes are still barely open, but I feel rage rushing through my bloodstream and it’s a thousand times more effective than caffeine.
“You what?”
He glares at me. “Unless you want them to wake up, keep it down.”
Grinding my teeth, I head up the stairs with him at my heels. I tuck Henry in while he deals with Sophie, and then I follow him back outside, the grass damp and sticky against my bare feet. "What could possibly have come up this late at night?"
He’s already rolling his eyes, bored with this conversation before it’s begun. "We’re taking a road trip. Whitney’s friends rented a place in the mountains.”
I know better than anyone how selfish he is, yet I’m still appalled. It’s the first night he’s spent with them since we left, and he couldn’t even manage that.
“They’re going to wake up to discover you just ditched them,” I say, my voice low with fury—a fury that threatens to turn into tears if I back away from it for a second. “How’s that supposed to make them feel?”
He rolls his eyes once more. "This is so typical. You should be fucking ecstatic. You want them all the time, and now you get them, but you’re still bitching.”
“Yes, of course I’m bitching! You're running off on a last-minute trip with your teenage girlfriend and you don’t give a shit about how that will make the twins feel."
He laughs. "Do you hear how bitter you are? Maybe that’s why you’re home alone on a Saturday night."
I sink to the front step as Jeremy peels out of the driveway, trying hard not to cry. Part of it is frustration at how little control I have here, that he can hurt my children and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it. But it’s also that his words, as always, carry just enough truth to do damage. He was right—I had a free Saturday and I chose to spend it working before falling asleep alone. Maybe I am bitter. Maybe I deserved the way he treated me, the way my mother and father treated me too.
Maybe it really is me who’s the problem.
“Hey,” says a voice. Caleb—hair sleep-tousled and eyes barely open—emerges into the circle of light cast by the lamp on the side of his garage. The sight of him briefly knocks every other thought from my head. He’s in nothing but shorts—smooth skin and taut muscles on full display. He runs his hands through his hair and his biceps pop in response, his abs flashing to life, stacked neatly one atop the next like a pack of dinner rolls.
And then he yawns, and reality intrudes. He was asleep and we woke him up with our fighting. Why must every humiliating incident I suffer have an audience, and why is that audience always him?
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I guess we woke you.”
He shrugs. "My window was open, and he was being such a dick that I thought you might need some backup. I couldn’t find my shorts, so it took me a minute.”
I try to ignore the image that comes to my head unbidden—of him before he added the shorts. Was he naked? In very fitted briefs? My mind is capable of diving into the gutter at even the worst of moments, it seems.
“I hope you’ve got a good lawyer,” Caleb says.
“I do,” I reply, though I’m not sure it’s true—Darryl left me a message saying he was ‘really busy right now’ and would have his associate, Sharon, take over. She’s done absolutely nothing.
“Seriously, Lucie…that guy is unhinged. I don’t know how you ever thought he was going to provide you your fairy tale.”
“I didn’t.” I came back here once the house was legally mine, hoping to see you, and met Jeremy instead. “I went through most of college with my friends telling me I was too picky, so I decided to see if they were right and got pregnant almost immediately by accident.”
“Shit. I’m sorry.”
"No, I’m sorry. You must feel like you're living next to the set of a trashy reality show.”
“Believe me, Kate and I have been the interesting neighbors more often than I’d like.” He sees the sympathy in my gaze and shakes his head. “It wasn’t just the drugs, and to be honest, it was pretty entertaining at times. Kate’s probably the smartest person I know. I used to enjoy listening to her tell off neighbors whose yard signs offended her.”
It shouldn’t bother me to hear the admiration in his voice, but it does. "You must really love her to be willing to wait like that."
He pushes a hand through his hair again, and infinite muscles in his stomach ripple in response. “I’m not waiting, actually. I had my friend Harrison—he’s a lawyer—file for divorce.”
My mouth falls open. “You did? What led to that?”
“He’s been on me about it for a while. I realized I was going to—” His eyes are wary as they meet mine. “For all my failures, I’ve never cheated on anyone. I wanted that to remain true.”
In other words, Caleb wants to get laid. The idea of Caleb sexually deprived and eager makes a muscle in my core clamp down so hard it almost hurts. I think of what it would be like, slowly undressing as he watches, and that muscle tightens further.
We’re both single, so none of what I’m picturing is impossible, but I’m the opposite of what he wants. If he just escaped a committed relationship—the one that convinced him he didn’t ever want to be in one again—he sure isn’t interested in a single mom with two kids.
“If you’re a free man, shouldn’t you be off living out your single bachelor fantasies?”
“I’m not entirely free yet. We have to prove we’ve tried to reach Kate first, but…” He raises a brow. “Single bachelor fantasies?”
I grin. “You look like a threesome-with-supermodels-type, if I had to guess.”
That dimple of his flashes in the moonlight, and the muscle low in my belly spasms again. “I’m pretty sure every guy is a threesome-with-supermodels-type if he can make that happen.”
I wave a dismissive hand at him. “Look at you. Obviously, you can make it happen.”
A half-smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “So you think all I need to do to get a threesome with supermodels is ask for it?”
I groan. “Shut up. You already know you can get pretty much anyone you want.”
He regards me quietly. “But not you, because you’re holding out for the fairy tale.”
He’s offered this up as if it’s a statement, but I almost sense that it’s...a question.
Would I? Sleeping with Caleb wouldn’t necessarily rule out waiting on the fairy tale. The two things could, in theory, occur simultaneously. It could happen right here and now, me sitting on this step with my legs spread wide.
Yes, yes I would. I’d do it without question if that was something he was open to.