Page 45 of Cold Foot Komodo

“Gasp! Are you looking?” Sasha murmured low. “I can be your wing-woman.”

Beth snorted. “If a man is meant to enter my life, he’ll enter it. Doesn’t hurt to have a bunch of tough-as-leather cowboys around for lookin’ at though. They wear those Wranglers just right.”

Sasha was already feeling better, just within a minute of being in Beth’s presence.

A waitress asked what they wanted to order, and they got a pair of cosmopolitans and burger baskets before they settled back into conversation.

“Did you hear about the meeting tonight?” Beth asked.

“What meeting?” Sasha asked as she shimmied out of her winter coat.

“Reed called it. I was going to head there to see Wreck and Timber after this, but Wreck asked me to hang back tonight.”

Sasha frowned. “I wonder what it’s about.”

Beth shrugged. “Has Reed mentioned it?”

“Umm, no. Not to me.”

Beth canted her head and studied her. Sasha dropped her gaze and busied herself with bending the edge of a cardboard coaster.

“I thought you and Reed were getting close.”

Sasha shrugged. “He decided it was too much.”

“What? When did he say that?”

“Last night.”

“Oooh, honey. Was that when you messaged me?”

Sasha quirked up her lips into a forced smile. “Yep, but you know what? I’m feeling better about everything today, and I have been so excited to meet up with you.”

A smile graced Beth’s lips, crinkling up the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. “Men are complicated creatures. They pretend they aren’t, but they truly are.”

Sasha huffed a laugh, relieved to be moving the conversation forward. “Was Wreck’s dad complicated?”

“Very.” Beth clenched her hands together and rested her chin on them as a faraway look took over her face. “When I first met him, I couldn’t see anything else. He was the air, you know? He was everything and everywhere, and I couldn’t see outside of him. I think sometimes when it’s like that, you can’t see the bad parts. It took me a really long time to see the bad parts. I don’t get that feeling from Reed. He’s a peacemaker. He’s steady.”

“Were you married to Wreck’s dad?”

“Yes. For many years. It was happy until it wasn’t happy. That part was a gradual thing, and I wrestle with whose fault it was. He used to say I was the reason he stayed good. I was the reason the world was safe. But then his animal was growing,and I was…shrinking. I tried to keep him grounded, but that kind of power does something awful to a man who isn’t strong enough. Sometimes it breaks the moral compass. I think he tried to be good. I could see it in moments when he would come back to himself, and he would be destroyed over the destruction he caused.” She shook her head. “He just couldn’t make the good in himself big enough to save him at the end. He was too comfortable with destruction, and when he died, a part of my heart broke, and a part of it was relieved in the knowledge that the world was a safer place for his absence.”

“You never got remarried?”

“Oh no. I dated some, but I focused on teaching Wreck to be different than his father. I wanted to make sure he was stronger. I wanted to make sure that when he found a woman, when he found Timber, he could keep her bigger than the fire inside of him.”

“From what I can see, you did good. I see how Wreck talks to you and treats you. You’re a queen. Your son adores you, and appreciates you. No one acts that way toward a parent who doesn’t deserve it.”

“I learned from my grandma,” she admitted. “She was five-foot-nothin’ of spicy, funny goodness. She loved the dickens out of the people who deserved it, and didn’t let anyone mess with her family, and that was who I looked up to when I was young. Who do you look up to?”

Sasha let out a long breath and shook her head. “There’s a dozen messages in my phone from my mom right now calling me a bitch. That’s not the relationship I would want with my kids, if I ever have them. I would raise them the opposite of how Timber and I were raised.”

“That’s hard.”

Sasha nodded. “I would have no tools, and will have to make up the parenting thing as I go.”

“Oh you have tools enough, honey.” Beth’s eyes were so earnest as she told her, “Timber will be a great sounding board. You’ll know what those babies will deserve. You’ll be just fine.”

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