It was still tough, and he still relished his freedom during summer, but he was starting to feel like he was making real progress. Even nights like last night, which even just a year ago would have made him felt like he’d gone ten steps backward, didn’t weigh on him the same way. Likely it was due to Leila, his therapist, giving him coping skills that were actually working, but it was also a testament to his own strength and desire to move on with his life.
He’d always have trauma, but he didn’t have to let it rule him.
“DeDe?” Maisy asked, pulling Derek out of his thoughts as she tugged on the bottom of his shirt.
He grinned down at here. “Yes, sweetpea?”
“Can we pway outside?”
He shrugged. “Why not. You wanna walk down the street to the pond and feed the ducks?”
She jumped with excitement, then tripped over her own feet in a haste to reach her shoes. “Yeah! Yeah I wanna…I wanna go!”
CHAPTER THREE
Derek convinced Maisy to leave the ducks after an hour, and only when he promised that Jasmine would be at the studio when they got there. He parked his car around the back, then carried her inside through the employee entrance and found Katherine in her private room prepping for what looked like her next client.
Her head popped up from where she was cling-wrapping her supply table and she grinned. “Hey, baby girl! You come to see me?”
“Yeah,” Maisy said, wriggling out of Derek’s arms. He kept a hold on her so she couldn’t dart into the clean space, but Katherine quickly shed her gloves and walked out to lift the toddler into her arms, kissing her cheeks.
“Are you and DeDe gonna take Jazz and uncle Sage to lunch?”
“I want chicken nuggets,” Maisy said dutifully.
Derek rolled his eyes with a grin before taking the girl back into his arms. “And maybe something green?” he added. “Is my brother here?”
Kat nodded, jutting her chin at the swinging door which led tothe open floor. “He’s out there getting Jasmine’s bag ready. Tony’s at the doctor’s today so Sage is literally saving my life.”
Derek frowned with worry. “Is he okay?”
“Yes,” she said with a sniff. “He has an ingrown toenail and didn’t fucking listen to me two weeks ago when it started getting disgusting, and now he gets to suffer through the pain of removal because he apparently knows better than his wife.”
Derek backed away. “Staying the hell out of that one.”
Kat laughed. “Wise. Anyway, I checked your schedule and it looks like I’m good to take the girls off your hands at two. You got someone at three, right?”
Derek nodded. “Yeah, it’s just a consult, then I have some line work to get done on one of my regulars which I think will be about two hours? Then I have my shading appointment at five-thirty, and that’s going to take up the rest of my afternoon. Why, you need me?”
“Nah,” she said, waving him off. “Tony will probably want to come fill in once he’s done. You know how he gets when someone fucks with his routine.”
“He has only himself to blame,” Derek said dutifully.
Kat winked at him before waving him off, and he walked through the doors, still holding Maisy’s hand. A head of soft lavender hair knocking against short, black spiked locks told him Emily and her husband Marcus were working on their sketch sheet together, and he spotted Mat bent over his drawing table next to his already wrapped tool bench.
“Hey, man,” Derek said to Mat, dropping a hand on his shoulder.
Mat looked up with a grin, reaching out with a hand to tickle Maisy under her chin. “Hey little one. Did you miss me?”
“No,” she said plainly.
Mat’s eyes widened with shock, making him looked like a kicked puppy which Derek found far too endearing. He and Mat were probably closest, as they had apprenticed together and shared a very similar style and some of their clients. Mat wasn’t the typical sort Derek was used to—soft-spoken and non-confrontational. But he’d grown on him like stubborn moss, and apart from Sam, was the person Derek trusted most with his own issues.
It helped Mat had his own. Years back, Mat’s car had been crushed by a drunk driver and he’d been in a coma for six months. He’d come out of it only to find himself needing to relearn nearly everything. And not everything had come back. During his hospital stay he’d managed to get back on his feet and regain his ability to speak, but he found himself still unable to understand written words and numbers—he claimed they all looked like an alien alphabet, and no amount of therapy had been able to get him back to where he’d been. The one thing he could do, though, was draw, and it had been a huge part of his therapy in the rehab center.
He had been married at the time too, but the stress had been too much for his wife who ended up leaving just as he was being released to live on his own. He’d moved to Fairfield after his divorce—needing to be away from a bigger city, but needing the comfort of knowing he could blend into a crowd. That was where he met Tony and Kat, and the rest was history. Tony and Kat’s shop was perfect for a tatted-up artist whose brain wouldn’t allow him to do his own accounting or book his own appointments, and he had fit into Irons and Works almost like he’d been around from the beginning. Mat mostly kept his personal life to himself, and no one pushed him to move on, though Derek couldn’t help but worry that his friend was starting to buckle under the weight of loneliness. It wasn’t his place though, so he kept his worry to himself.
“She’s just in a mood,” he told him. He gave Maisy a nudge toward the swinging half-door which led to the lobby. “Go on and see Sage,” he told her. “He has Jazzy waiting for you.”
