I stood and lifted him up on my hip. “I’m sure you’ll see Addie again soon,” I promised, smoothing his curls, damp from the humidity. “Now, tell Addie and Mr. Proffitt goodnight.”
“Bye, Addie,” Henry said, stifling a yawn. Then he held out a hand to Whit. “Goodnight, Mr. Proffitt.”
Whit solemnly shook his hand. “Goodnight, Henry. I hope we get the chance to see each other again soon.”
Whit held open the door, but I paused before stepping inside. “I don’t know what I would’ve done if Mr. Monty hadn’t helped me.”
Whit studied me for a moment before saying, “I have no doubt you’d have figured out something.”
“Maybe,” I said softly. “But I think you might be more like your father than you realize.”
“I’m no saint, Zellie,” Whit insisted, something in his voice telling me that was half confession, half promise.
He stood so close I could feel the heat of him warming the space between us. I looked up into his eyes—dark, hypnotic—and something inside me tightened in a way I hadn’t experienced in years. I realized I actuallylikedthis quiet, mysteriousman. More than liked him. And the pull between us was undeniable, palpable. And dangerous.
If Henry and Addie hadn’t been there, if the murmur of voices from the game room hadn’t cut across the moment, I don’t know how the night might’ve ended. And judging by the way he looked at me, he felt the same.
I drew in a steadying breath, gathering the scent of the evening air into my lungs, focusing on that instead of the nearness of Whit Proffitt, and forced myself to turn away. When we stepped inside, conversation halted and several curious faces turned to us. Merilee was among them now, I noticed. Her knowing grin grew, and she winked—at me or at Whit, I couldn’t tell.
I cleared my throat and smiled politely. “Thank you all for such a warm welcome. And, Chase, thank you for organizing this. It was wonderful. I’m really happy to be here. But if you’ll excuse me, I need to get this little guy to bed.”
Everyone burst into cheerful chatter and goodnights. Pearlie wrapped me in a motherly hug and ordered me to come see her if I neededanything.
As I carried Henry toward the elevator, I let the warmth of my new home envelop me. But beneath it, Pearlie’s words echoed, raising questions I wasn’t ready to ask just then.
She’ll do just fine…
Chapter five
Two days after moving in, I’d just tucked Henry into bed after reading “just one more” story when Whit texted that a friend of his family wanted to talk with me about a job. A job. Really, the man was unbelievable. If I hadn’t desperately needed work, I might’ve resented his help, even considered it interference—like when he’d arranged for childcare with someone I’d never even met. But instead, I was grinning like a teenager getting a text from her crush.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I sent a brief, businesslike reply thanking him for the lead and promising to follow up, then looked up the business online. It was a used bookstore and coffee shop appropriately called Ever After Coffee and Books. It was perfect, exactly the type of place I’d always dreamed of working.
Damn it all.
“Mama!”
I sighed, already knowing what was coming. Henry was relentless when it came to his bedtime reading. I couldn’t blame him, though. He came by it honestly. And I knew these times would be gone all too soon, so I always caved.
“What’s up, baby?” I called, walking back down the hall to his room. “You’re supposed to be going to sleep. No more stories tonight.”
But when I entered the room, Henry was fast asleep, blankets tucked beneath his chin, gripped in his little fists, his eyes buttoned up tight.
A chill ran along my spine like a thousand squirming spider legs. I crept in, trembling as I scanned the shadows, praying I wouldn’t find anything, that maybe Henry had just called out to me in his sleep.
Thankfully finding nothing, I sank down onto the foot of Henry’s bed, willing my pounding heart to slow down, reassuring myself that it was fine.
Shaken, but forcing the unusual incident out of my mind, I went into the bathroom and started a bath, opening the frosted window a crack when the room grew a little too warm, but not wide enough to let anyone walking by get a bit of a peep show.
I’d never had a tub big enough at our little place to take a bath and relax. Once, at an old farmhouse Vivian and I had stayed in for a while with one of her boyfriends, there’d been a huge clawfoot tub where I’d soak for an hour at a time, draining a little water and adding more when it got to be too cool. The rest of the experience staying there was total shit—Vivian had made sure of that.
The guy—Mike—had been one of the good ones. A loving boyfriend to her, a rare father figure to me. One hell of a difference from what she usually shacked up with. I’d actually let myself hope that we could stay, be a real family, maybe even get a dog or somethingpermanent. But Vivian picked fights with Mike all the time, drank too much and threw empty Jack bottles at his head, tried to drag me into the middle of it and then would call me an ungrateful whore when I took his side.
One time, Mike bought me a jacket that I’d wanted and gave it to me for my birthday. Vivian was beyond pissed. She and Mike had quite the screaming match over that one. And she marched the jacket out to the burn pile and set it on fire.
We left the next day. That was the first time I ran away. I went back to the farmhouse, begged Mike to let me stay. But I was fourteen, so Mike did what any decent guy would’ve done and called the cops. CPS got involved for a while.
