“I was not watching you. And I didn’t come here to spy on men working out.”
Her voice rings out in the sudden silence, and she goes that adorable shade of red again.
“Mom?” A voice behind me has me turning around.
One of the boys, Kieren, I think his name is, approaches us, looking as embarrassed as his mother. There’s no denying the boy’s hers. His dark hair hangs over his eyes. He’s taller than she is and lanky. He walks with a stoop, like so many teenage boys do, not yet comfortable with their place in the world. And his green eyes flash the same as hers with embarrassment.
“What are you doing here?” he hisses.
She turns her attention from me to the boy. “Is this where you’ve been sneaking off to? A boxing gym?”
“It’s not a…” He tries to explain what we do here, but she’s not listening. I regret making her so flustered if she’s going to take it out on the boy.
“I did not bring you up for this kind of violence.”
“It’s not like that, Mom.” He glances around at the other boys who are here for the training session. They’re standing by the boxing ring blatantly watching.
“Can we just go?” he mutters, obviously not wanting to be embarrassed in front of the other boys.
I turn to go in and shoo them away, giving the mother and son their privacy.
“We’ll talk about this when we get home,” she mutters.
I turn back to watch them go, the mother marching across the parking lot and the boy following behind, his shoulders stooped.
“Who was that?” A hand claps down hard on my shoulder, and I look up to find Aiden watching the woman and boy leave.
Her scrubs swish in the night as she strides across the parking lot.
“That,” I say, watching her ass sway, “is my future wife.”
3
LAUREN
The traffic heading toward the high school is heavier than usual, and we crawl along the main street. It looks like there’s a burst pipe ahead, but I don’t know the town well enough yet to find a detour.
I glance over at Kieran, and he’s slouched in the passenger seat. His headphones are in, and he’s staring intently at something on his phone. His hair falls into his face, framing his square jaw and the downy hair on his upper lip.
For a moment I’m taken back to holding him as a baby, his wide eyes peering up at me as he clung onto me. How did that little baby grow into the gangly teenager sitting in the passenger seat next to me? It feels like only a moment ago he was holding my hand as we toddled to the park. Now he hasn’t spoken to me since I hauled him home from the boxing gym last night.
I cringe at the memory of marching him off in front of everyone, and especially the hot shirtless man. My cheeks heat thinking about Dean. I think that’s what he introduced himself as, but I was too transfixed on his muscles to remember his name.
All night I turned in my bed, thinking about his muscles rippling on his back and what it would feel like to be pinned down by his strong arms.
I shake my head to clear the thought. I shouldn’t be fantasizing about a muscular thug when there’s clearly something going on with my son.
He’s not the child who used to tell his momma everything. He’s closed off and doesn’t tell me where he’s going, which is why I followed him last night. At least it wasn’t as bad as I thought. He’s not caught up in some gang or drug deal. To anyone else, it might seem overprotective.
But when his father is doing time, it’s hard not to be on edge, worried Kieren will go down the same road.
I should have been relieved that it was only a boxing gym, but my encounter with Dean had me fired up. Kieren’s right to be angry. I should have backed off, but if he’d told me where he was going in the first place, I wouldn’t have feared the worst.
“What you watching?” I lean over in my seat, and Kieren angles his phone away.
A new fear stabs my heart. I hate to think what the algorithm serves up to a fifteen-year-old boy. Probably all that manosphere misogynistic bullshit. I just hope I’ve brought Kieren up well enough to see it for what it is.
It would have been laughable ten years ago, sad little men who can only get their self-worth by putting women down. But women’s rights in this country have gone backward lately, and their message of toxic masculinity is gaining popularity. And most of the men who spout this bullshit grew up in single-parent homes, brought up by single mothers with no strong male role model to teach them all the different ways there are to be a man.
