“Shut the fuck up,” I warned, using my shoulder to tuck Smith behind me. It wasn’t like the conversation was going to get physical, but if I could use my body to protect him from Toren’s unfair and misdirected vitriol, I would.
“What?” Smith said, and then realization dawned. “Oh.”
He pressed his fingers against my back, his forehead against my spine, and then he literally held me up for the rest of the conversation with my dead husband’s brother.
“I can’t believe you’ve moved on already.”
“It’s been years, Toren,” I reminded him. “Almost four.”
“That’s nothing.”
“I know. I know, but also…” I trailed off, because it had been a lifetime and a blink of an eye at the same time.
Before Smith, it was easy to close my eyes and hear Ev laughing from another room, to feel the air move as he sat beside me on the couch to rest his head in my lap. Now when I did the same things, it was a crapshoot on whether my brain would imagine Ev there or Smith. What was easily decided was the one I wanted it to be, and moving on sometimes felt like a betrayal, but most of the time it felt necessary.
“How have you been, Toren?” I asked, scrubbing a hand down my face. “How have youreallybeen? How are your parents?”
“They’re the same as you,” he answered bitterly. “Back to business as usual. It’s like…it’s like I’m the only one who’s lost something.”
“You know that’s not true.”
Toren was the one who’d stayed with me at the funeral home. He was the one who’d held me while I cried out every tear my body had ever and would ever make again. If anyone understood how much I’d lost when Ev died, it was the man standing in front of me looking like he was ready to go to war.
“Either way,” he muttered. “I can see I’m not welcome here.”
“Hey now.” I tapped my hand against the edge of the counter, and Toren stopped himself from turning away. “You’re always welcome here.”
I paused, then added, “As long as you can be fair.”
Smith exhaled a long breath against my spine, and he and Toren both understood my meaning.
“Right.”
“I’m going to go change,” Smith said quietly, flexing his fingers against my waist. “Okay?”
I nodded, turning my head as he moved so I could kiss him.
If Toren was going to start coming around again, if he truly wanted to be part of my life, he would have to get used to seeing me with Smith. He didn’t make a sound when I kissed my boyfriend. In fact, he didn’t even take his eyes off my fingers, still stretched across the counter.
Smith gave me a questioning look, and I smiled at him, brushing another kiss across the corner of his mouth.
“I’m good,” I promised him.
He offered Toren a quick nod, then headed for the stairs, leaving us alone again. The noise in the shop drifted back into my awareness, and I realized I’d all but forgotten Greg in the chair with his half-finished tattoo.
“I want to catch up,” I said, “but I need to finish up this tattoo.”
Toren glanced over my shoulder at Greg. “How long?”
“Shouldn’t be more than an hour.”
“I’ll go fuck off for an hour then?” he said, and it was almost a question, a tentative upturn at the end of the sentence like he didn’t quite believe it was the right thing to do.
“Yeah.”
Toren left without another word, and I let out a breath I’d been holding so long my lungs ached at the release of it.
Of all the people I’d imagined would walk into my shop at the end of the day on a Saturday, Toren Ember had not been one of them. I went back to my seat and put on a clean pair of gloves.
