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“You were having wine,” he said plainly.
Oh, thank gGd.
“And when I came back from the bathroom, you were, like, standing over her. Like,leaningover her. Your face was super close to hers.”
I swallowed.Shit.“That’s it?”
His eyes narrowed slightly, but he nodded.
“I was just telling her a secret.”
I hated lying to him. I hated it more than I hated anything in the world, more than I hated the way Jan had made me feel when she’d died and I’d found everything out, more than I hated Andrew, more than I hated how much I had to be away from Lucas. This was our one thing, ouronlymajor rule, and I seemed to be breaking it far too much lately.No lies.
“Were you worried about that?” I asked.
He shook his head again, his chin going red from rubbing raw against my shirt. “No. I like Ava.”
I leaned my head back against the wall, taking deep breaths to calm the racing in my chest. I needed to broach the topic with him—this wouldn’t necessarily go away anytime soon, and even if things didn’t work out with Ava, I’d have to do it at some point. He was already asking about it, and I had to be okay with that. “Does the idea of me dating someone upset you?”
He scrunched his mouth up to the side as he thought about it. “No,” he said. “Are you dating Ava?”
I swallowed again, and it felt like sand. “Yes,” I breathed. Fuck the lies. “Is that okay?”
Lucas nodded as a little grin spread across his cheeks. “Youlikelike her.”
I huffed out a half-hearted chuckle. “Yeah.”
“Do you think Mommy would like her?”
Dear fucking God, I was not ready for that question.
I didn’t know how to answer it, couldn’t breathe life into a single word in response. It was as if every bit of air left my lungs at once, like I’d slammed into the ground after jumping off our balcony, like I’d drunk myself stupid into a blackout.
“Dad?”
How on earth was I supposed to answer that? How was I supposed to keep Jan’s good name in my mouth when he asked questions like that? I promised myself I would never talk badly about her in front of him, promised myself I wouldn’t ever lethim know what really happened—but even thethoughtof her approving or disapproving from beyond the grave was enough to send me reeling.
What the fuck was I doing?
She’d damaged me.
She’d broken my heart and smiled at me in my dreams with the pieces stuck between her teeth.
And here I was, two years later, offering the remnants of that to someone else. And not just my own, but the mostly untouched, only slightly damaged heart of my fucking son.
I needed to take a step back.
I needed time.
I needed to get my head on right.
“Yeah,” I lied, and fuck, it hurt. “I think Mommy would like her.”
Chapter 27
Ava
Three days. That was all it took for me to start feeling antsy about not having seen Adrian in person.
