Page 68 of Empowered
“Where are you going, Angel?” Lucas plopped his laughing son down on the couch and approached her. Not fast enough. She already had her purse over her shoulder and one of her shoes on her feet. “The night’s still young.”
It was almost nine-thirty, but he could keep telling himself that. “I need to get to bed early. I have a meeting at… well, you know.”
“So stay here tonight.”
“Where would I sleep? The couch?”
Lucas put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. Damn him for making her feel better, right? “He’s going to sleep on the couch tonight. Not with me.” Before Sarah could protest again, he continued, “He’s pretty excited to sleep on a couch. It’s his first time.” Lucas leaned in closer, hand blocking his mouth from any listening five-year-old ears. “He’s a big kid now, okay? Can’t be sleeping with his parents, he says.”
“Uh huh…”
“Please, Sarah. If you really want to leave, I won’t stop you, but could you at least say goodbye to him?”
“Right. That would’ve been rude of me otherwise.”
“Believe it or not, he actually likes you.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because he hisses at the people he doesn’t like.”
“What?”
“You heard me. He hisses. Has since his teeth grew in. You should see him around my mother.”
“I…”
“I’m just saying, Sarah. He hasn’t hissed at you yet.”
Sarah hung her purse back up. “All right. I’ll stay. As long as you promise I don’t have to sleep on the couch.”
“Not unless I’m sleeping on it with you. Who knows? The little prince out there might want my bed all to himself.”
“It would be rather snug on your couch.”
“I don’t mind snug.”
He tipped her chin up and planted a soft kiss on her lips.
“Can I use your shower?”
Lucas grinned down at her. “Of course. Take as long as you need.”
She did. She needed a damn long time to herself in his shower, doing nothing except sitting on the bench beneath his showerhead and drowning beneath warm water and wishing it would wash away the negative thoughts trapped in her head.
Since agreeing to be his girlfriend a week and a half ago, Sarah had moved in a few personal items. Not just a spare toothbrush and flosser, but changes of underwear, a couple spare blouses she could switch out between shifts at work – and nobody would notice. While she didn’t have pajamas since she planned on spending most nights naked with her boyfriend, she found a smaller pair of Lucas’s boxer shorts and a loose-fitting T-shirt that nobody could claim corrupted a small male child. (What his father sexualized was a different matter entirely.)
She half expected to find Lucas arguing with his son about bedtime, but Victor was already asleep – on his father.
The two snoozed on the couch, son sprawled across his father’s broad chest, rising up, falling down, and drooling on the T-shirt beneath him. Lucas, whose head was propped up against the arm of the couch, lightly snored with one arm thrown across his son’s tiny shoulders.
Quietly, Sarah snuck into the kitchen and got herself a glass of water before going into Lucas’s bedroom. Fifteen minutes later, right before she finished replying to her texts for the night, Lucas ambled in, yawning and pulling his shirt over his head.
“Guy’s all tuckered out. So am I.”
“Is he asleep?”
Lucas left his bedroom door unlocked. A sign that nothing besides sleeping together was happening that night. “All nice and snug under a blanket on my couch. I made sure to hide the TV remote. Wouldn’t be the first time he almost watched somethingwaytoo adult for him at four in the morning.”
