Page 64 of Second Chance for the Single Mom

Shay: Want to Facetime? I’m sitting in bed, thinking about you, and it would be a lot more fun with video…

Me: Tempting, but I need to get to sleep. You’ll just have to wait until I’m back in town.

Shay: I hate waiting.

Me: Too bad. Good night :-)

Shay: Teasing me like that and then going to bed is actually illegal.

Shay: Trust me: I’m a lawyer.

Shay: Night, Haley

I smiled while rereading the text thread. Oh, it was sotemptingto jump on a video call and have phone sex. But I was having fun making him wait, dragging it out.

It would make it that much more satisfying when wedidhook up after I was back in Vancouver.

I thought about Shay and the guys the next day while I was at the convention. They were permanent fixtures in my mind, always there when I stared off and daydreamed. That was a new phenomenon. I’d been raising Bran by myself since he was born. Sure, I had Sara helping a lot of the time, but that wasn’t the same thing as having another parent.

For the past five years, I’d basically been doing it alone.

But that wasn’t true anymore. With Jordan teaching him baseball and Shay pulling strings to get him into a good school, I felt like I had an entire team backing me up. It was nice to have a real support system.

Beyond that, I actuallymissedthe three men in my life. In fact, I wasn’t sure which of them I missed the most—Lucas, Jordan, or Shay. Each of them created a different bloom of joy in my mind when I thought about seeing them next. I had always wondered if I would have enough room for love if I started dating seriously again, or if Bran would take up all of that emotional energy.

Now I knew that wasn’t the case. If anything, the feelings I had for these three menbolsteredmy love for Bran, supporting it like the flying buttresses on a cathedral roof.

There was just one problem.

I liked all three of them.

Alot.

What was I going to do? It was now undeniable that our foursome at Lucas’s apartment wasn’t just a single night of meaningless sex. I liked each of these guys on a much deeper level. All of them were, for lack of a better term,husband material.

That question tormented me for the remainder of the conference, and on my flight home on Friday. I collected my suitcase from baggage claim, then walked through the newly-renovated Portland Airport to where Sara said she would meet me.

But when I reached the meeting area, it was Lucas who was sitting on a bench with my son.

“Mommy!” Bran said through the microphone of his toy speaker, amplifying his voice across the terminal. “We’re over here!” Mommy!”

Filled with a mother’s love for a son she hadn’t seen in three days, I rushed across the open space. Bran jumped up and slammed into my leg hard enough to nearly make me lose my balance. “I missed you! I missed you!”

“I missed you too,” I said, crouching down to hug him tightly. I never knew I could love something this much before Bran was born, yet our reunion brought tears to my eyes, even after only a few days.

When Lucas approached, I rose and said, “Where’s Sara? I was expecting her to pick me up.”

Lucas didn’t smile. “Don’t freak out… but she’s in the hospital.”

33

Haley

Telling someone not to freak out never had the desired effect. It was like telling a woman to calm down, or to smile.

I sputtered questions at Lucas so quickly my words slurred together.

He put a hand on my arm to calm me down. “She’s fine. The twins are fine. It was just a scare.”

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