Page 105 of Bad & Bossy

His arms wrapped around me quickly, his stature tall for his age but not quite hitting mine. “I know you hate Mom and Dad and all, but like, can we keep in touch? You’re not half-bad. Harley wants to get to know you too.”

Fuck. Why did that make my chest tight?

“Yeah, man. We can keep in touch.”

Hurriedly, we exchanged numbers as I shot a text to my driver. I was buzzing every second of the way while I walked him to the exit, the reality of some kind of familial extension within my grasp washing over me. It was a lot, even though we’d only spent probably five minutes together. But it felt like a lifetime, and more importantly, a lifeline.

Family.

“I’m right across the street,” he said down the phone. He turned toward me as he walked to the car, spinning one finger beside his head as if to indicate that our mother, on the other end of the phone, was insane. I laughed. “Mom, I’m waving at you. How do you not see me?”

He slid into the back of the car and the driver shut the door behind him, leaving me alone and unconnected once again.

But it didn’t have to be like that anymore.

I’d made it a year. I’d made a connection. I was healing, I was getting better, and I was fucking capable now.

Maybe she had moved on. Maybe she was done with me. But she’d given me a lifeline, too, the last time I saw her.

I need you to be sober. Fully.

I was fully sober now.

I was stable.

Chapter 38

Dana

The sound of a toddler screaming was almost normal to me now. But multiple? No. That cut through like a knife to butter.

I stood on the threshold of the sliding glass door that led out to my new backyard. We’d nearly finished settling in with the help of Hunter and Lottie. Unpacking with a two-year-old was a nightmare on its own, and I’d nearly wept when they’d shown up two weeks ago with a crew of men and a distraction for Drew—their son, Brody.

Streamers and birthday hats littered the ground as the two of them ran circles around each other. The rest of his friends had gone home, but of course, Lottie and Hunter stayed to help with every aspect of the cleanup. They’d spoiled my son rotten already. They didn’t need to pick up after him too.

Mom, Dad, and Vee stayed as well, but they were significantly less helpful.

But even with all of those people that I held close to my heart around me, I couldn’t help but still feel alone. There was no one there to wrap an arm around my shoulder. There was no one there to kiss me and celebrate the milestone of my son in the same way as me. No one that was feeling the same level of pride, even if they all tried.

There was a crater-shaped hole in my life, and although most of the time I was able to ignore the ache of it until the early hours of the morning, it was harder today.

“Brody!” I snapped, and the boy spun on his heel in the grass with a metal trowel in his hand. “Drop it!” He stared at me for a moment, his blue eyes sparkling in the waning sunlight.

And then he went right back to chasing Drew with it.

Lottie stepped across the lawn, her footsteps nearly reverberating through the ground before she snatched it from her son’s hand. “Fucking two-year-olds,” she grumbled, storming up the steps of the porch before depositing the trowel in the plastic box. “I love him, but he can be a handful.”

I snorted as she wrapped her arms around me, leaning on me for support. “I’m tired,” I grunted, doing my best to hold her up but close to failing. I was seconds from collapsing when she let go.

“How are you holding up?”

I narrowed my gaze at her. “I’m fine. My parents are here and we haven’t argued—yet. Drew got a shit ton of gifts that will need to be opened with a box cutter, so that’s fun. And he’s probably going to crash in, I don’t know, about an hour? So his sleep schedule is going to be in the gutter.”

“You know that’s not what I meant,” she sighed, slotting an arm around me as she turned so we could watch them. Somehow they’d managed to find a rope, and decided tug-of-war was an original invention.

I let my mom handle that one.

“You know how I’m holding up,” I muttered, steeling my jaw. “It’s just a bit harder today than it usually is.”

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