Page 19 of Unravel You

After dinner, Max decided to go on a walk to find Pirate, Derek’s stray cat with a bad paw. Aptly, his name was Pirate because of the limp and the black-and-white fur. Max was in charge of feeding it, so he and Pirate were inseparable now.

“When are we going to tell him?” Derek poured wine into my glass.

“Bedtime?” I shrugged.

“Em can bring him anytime. It’s up to you.”

“I think that might work. Maybe in a week. After, you know…”

He clicked his teeth. “After you’ve confirmed my family doesn’t eat children for supper?”

“You know what I mean.” I slapped his shoulder, and he caught my hand.

“You’ll like it there. The house is coming along great.”

“What house?”

“Our house.”

My eyebrows must have shown the panic that settled in my chest because Derek quickly corrected. “No. Not to live in. To visit. You’ll see.” He finished the last sip of his wine and stood. “I have a few more calls before I call it a night. See you upstairs?”

“Yeah, thanks. Leave me with the cookie monster to deliver the news.” I drank from my glass. Did he have to work now? After the out-of-this-world orgasm in Vail, I’d hoped we’d come home and finish off in our bedroom.

“You’re right. We should present a united front.”

“No, I got it.” I waved him away before I changed my mind and asked him to go upstairs with me instead. “Go. Don’t stay up too late. We have a plane to catch in the morning.”

“No, ma’am. We’re doing this together.”

I’d be damned if his southern accent and the peck on my hair didn’t make me ache for him.

“Hey, Max,” he called out. “Come over and talk to us, buddy.”

“Are we doing the good cop, bad cop thing? You should be bad cop.” He braced his hands on his hips.

“Why me?”

“Because I’m the new guy.” He shrugged.

My chest tightened. Was that how he saw us? Max and I were a family, while he was the outsider? That was my fault. I kept pushing him away when it came to Max. We certainly thought of him as family.

“You’re not the new guy. I love you. And Max does too.”

Before Derek, Max had asked on a daily basis why he didn’t have a dad like his other friends at school. Why it was just the two of us. My answers to his questions were always the same. We were a family. We didn’t need anyone else. Derek proved me wrong, and Max loved him for it.

Since then, Max stopped asking about his real dad. For his own good, our safety, I hoped he’d never ask again. Though I feared that if Alex ever showed up, Max would go with him out of sheer curiosity to meet his bio dad. I hated that there was nothing I could do to change it for Max. To make him see Alex wasn’t a good person. My fault for getting involved with a heartless jerk.

Max strode back to the patio deck with Pirate at his heels. Derek sat back on the chair, both hands resting on his lap. I’d seen him sit at the head of the table in boardrooms, command meetings of hundreds of employees, looking in control and intimidating as all hell.

This version of him was something else, like he was afraid of a six-year-old. Max was everything to me. Everything I did started and ended with him. If he had asked me to leave Derek, I had no doubt in my mind that I would have put Max before any feelings I had for Derek. Good thing Max never asked me to make such a choice.

“What is it, Mom?” Max asked, petting Pirate.

Right. Would I skip the Atlanta trip if Max asked me to? Was that what Derek was afraid of? That I’d choose Max over something that was obviously so important to him. “Derek invited us to meet his family in Atlanta. What do you think? Do you want to come with us?”

Max made a face that, again, reminded me of Mom. “But it’s a school night.”

“Right. So you would have to miss a few days of school.”

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