Not a lie.
“Has it been over a while?”
“It ended five years ago.”
Also not a lie.
“I’m sorry. I know when a relationship blows up it’s a big bag of suck.”
I nod.
“Was it amicable?”
I swallow my bite of food. “There was nothing either of us could do to fix it, and we both know that.”
Jesus I feel like I’m mentally walking a tightrope with lies on one side and truth on the other, and I’m wobbling like a drunk girl in high heels. I’m pretty sure if I don’t change the subject I’ll teeter right off this tightrope and land in a web of lies I can’t get out of. “You and your son’s mom, was that amicable?”
He gives me a small smile but it’s terse. “I’m trying to be on good terms. She has a right to be bitter and angry. I was a horrible boyfriend, a worse fiancé, and everything blew up before River was one, which made her feel abandoned.”
He looks so pained as he makes that confession, and a morbid part of me wants more details anyway because I can’t for the life of me picture him as someone who would be labeled a bad anything. But I change the topic because this brunch is turning into a big old downer. “Tell me about your son. River?”
Logan’s expression turns soft and is filled with pride. “River Charles Hawkins is something else. He’s strong and energetic and witty, sometimes to a fault. He loves hockey, but unfortunately the wrong team. We’re hoping he grows out of that.”
“Ugh. New England and their sports team loyalty.” I roll my eyes as I smile at him.
“You don’t follow sports?” he questions.
“I can tell you who the surfing world champion has been the last three years running,” I say. “You can take the girl out of Hawaii but you can’t take Hawaii out of the girl.”
He laughs.
The conversation lifts after that as he tries to explain to me why the Bruins and the Patriots are the best franchises in the world, and I try to explain to him how delicious SPAM can be when you use it right.
“We are definitely different breeds,” he says as he stands and starts clearing our plates. “Kind of like our dogs.”
I smile, push back my chair, and gently put my hand on his to stop him from cleaning up with me but he doesn’t stop. He insists on collecting everything and bringing it to the kitchen. I stop him again at the sink. “I’m cleaning up. You might have gotten to wash my hair, but you don’t get to wash my dishes.”
His eyebrows raise and a smirk covers his handsome face. “You’ve got a bossy streak. I like it.”
Stevie growls and barks at my feet. “I think someone needs a potty break.”
“I’ll take them out with Chewie. That way I won’t be tempted to wash a dish, and you won’t have to spank me,” he kids with a gleam in his eye as he picks up my dogs and whistles for his to follow and heads toward the front door.
I find myself staring after him. And checking out his ass. It’s a great ass.
Dear God, who am I?
I smile to myself as I rinse the dishes and load the dishwasher. He walks back in a few minutes later as I’m turning on the latte machine. “Cappuccino? Espresso? Latte?”
“Espresso. I have to go to a family thing soon, and I’ll need something to keep me awake,” he says and sits at my island. He looks good in my kitchen, filing up my space with his broad shoulders and dark stubble and sparkling blue eyes that remind me of the sea in Hawaii on a perfect day. When I’m done making his espresso and my latte, I lean on the island across from him, stir in my sugar, and try to get my thoughts to simmer down. This needs to be chill. He is my tenant, so there’s no telling him to fuck off if it goes south like my last date did. “So I have to ask, was it my concussion playing tricks on me the other night, or did you say you went to med school for a while?”
“I did go to med school. For almost two years,” he says as his eyes drop to his expresso. “I dropped out so I could go to rehab.”
The casual, easy energy flowing around us grinds to a halt. He looks up, gazes right into my eyes, and that perfect, ocean blue color is stormy now. “Alcohol, not drugs. And I’ve been stone cold sober for five years.”
“That’s great,” I say but I know my voice it tight. I’m not judging him. I just…I know that alcohol can destroy lives just as easily as drugs. Alcohol destroyedmylife, after all, and I wasn’t even the alcoholic. But he has it under control. His expression is pained, which means it still brings him shame. I can’t help but reach out and lay a hand over his on the countertop. “You had a problem, and you did something about it. That’s a good thing.”
His eyes move up to mine again, searching this time for any hint I’m just placating him. But I’m not. I truly believe that. I’ve researched alcoholism, which I don’t tell him. I had a lot of time on my hands after my car crash, and my grief counsellor had me reading a lot of different things in an attempt to keep myself from drowning in self-pity and pure rage. I push on so he doesn’t wallow in the feeling of insecurity this line of conversation seems to be manifesting. “So you decided after rehab to become a paramedic instead?”
