“I need a drink,” he rasps, heading straight for my kitchen. “I need the strongest thing you have in this apartment. If you have rubbing alcohol and a lime, I’ll take them.”
“Whoa, Doc. Slow down. What happened?”
“It’s bad, Madi. So bad.”
I grab the tequila, the limes, and two beers.
“Drink,”I command.
He cracks the bottle and takes a pull.
“Okay,” I say, leaning against the counter. “Hypothetically. What’s going on?”
Beckett lets out a long, ragged exhale. He finally looks at me, and I see the genuine, soul-deep trauma in his gaze.
“Hypothetically,” he starts. “Let’s say a son—let’s call him… Meckett—goes to his mother’s house. He wants to be a good son. He wants to fix a leaky faucet. He wants to hack at a hedge.”
“A noble hypothetical Meckett,” I chime in.
“Meckett walks into the kitchen,” Beckett continues, staring into the middle distance. “And he finds his father’s best friend. A man he’s known since he was in diapers. A man who is basically his surrogate father.”
“And?”
“And he’s wearing flannel bottoms and nothing else. And Meckett’s mother—hismother, Madison—is wearing the man’s work shirt. And she is… she’s playfully disciplining him with a kitchen utensil.”
I stop mid-sip, my eyes widening. “With what?”
Beckett winces. “A spatula. There was… there was booty-slapping. There was ‘bad boy’ role-play.”
I try. I really do. I bite the inside of my cheek until I taste copper. I stare at a crumb on the counter like it’s the most fascinating thing in the world. But then I look at Beckett—this broad, powerful trauma doctor, a man who handles life and death every day, looking absolutely defeated by a spatula, and I lose it.
I burst out laughing.
“It’s not funny!” Beckett shouts, though he’s starting to crack a smile despite himself.
“Oh my God,” I gasp, doubling over.
“Apparently, her gutters need clearing.”
I can’t take any more.
He nudges me in the ribs. “You’re not helping. He’s been ‘maintaining’ the property. In every sense of the word.”
I reach out and grab his hand, squeezing it. “Beckett, listen to me. Your mom is happy. Tom is a good guy, right? You’ve told me lots about him before. And hey, at least you know he has stamina?”
“Don’t,” he groans, dropping his head onto my shoulder. “Don’t ever use that word in relation to my mother again.”
I laugh softly, my fingers tangling in the hair at the nape of his neck. The humor is there, but underneath it, I feel the shift. This is the first time I’ve seen him truly off-balance.
He feels human.
He feels like mine.
“I’m sorry you saw the spatula, Meckett,” I murmur, kissing the top of his head. “But look on the bright side.”
“There is no bright side. The sun has gone out. The moon is a lie.”
“The bright side,” I say, tilting his face up so he has to look at me, “is that you’re here. I have tequila. And I am definitely not your mother.”
