Page 86 of Truck Stop Titan

In the torturous seconds that followed, I debated apologizing for my slip, blaming the heat of the moment. Denying my sincerity would make me a liar. So, I let his silence brew into a poisonous concoction of unspoken truths. The fact being, I’d crossed a line that Dane wasn’t ready to breach.

Dane’s breath hitched. He pressed his lips into my hair, lingering for painful seconds, then laid me down, and left the bed.

My body would be bruised after what he’d just done to me, but my heart? My heart. Oh, God.

Crushed. Battered. Shredded.

How could I have been so careless?

I listened, eyes pinched, while he shut himself in the bathroom, ran the water, came back out, shuffled around for his clothes, then stomped out of the bedroom. He paused by Mim’s door, then continued, out the front door, dragging my heart and guts along for the ride.

The locks engaged, and I was left alone.

# # #

“Dr. Anderson said you did great yesterday.”

Mim smiled, a dribble of milk forging a path down her chin as she chewed her Lucky Charms.

“Tomorrow is Saturday. We get the whole day together. What do you think we should do?”

Eyebrows scrunched, lips puckered, she looked to the ceiling, then raised a finger, hopped off her chair, and skipped to the counter to rummage through the stack of junk mail. She returned with a full-page flyer for the mega baby store in town and pointed to a picture of a crib.

My eyes burned, threatening to spill over. “You want to go shopping for the baby?”

She nodded, studying my face with bright, hopeful eyes.

Fireworks erupted in my chest, carving new grooves, making space for all the extra love. “Oh, Mim. That sounds like fun.”

Shopping was the furthest thing from my mind, but how could I deny that sweet face? “Maybe we can go to the toy store, too, and find you some new puzzles.”

For a brief moment, I allowed myself to think that maybe Dane would want to join us. However, after theI love youslip, aside from a text saying he would be out of town for a few days, he’d pulled a Houdini. Honestly, though, what did I expect? We’d only known each other a few weeks. In that short period of time, he’d had a six-year-old girl, an emotionally unstable woman, a baby surprise, and anI love youthrown at him like a Molotov cocktail. The whole situation was crazy and unbelievable.

Any sane person would cut and run.

I couldn’t blame him. Didn’t mean I wasn’t hurting. After all, he had begged me never to leave him, no matter how bad he messed up. But the moment I’d blurted my feelings? Poof. Gone. Leaving me to choke on a black cloud of bad boy dust. That was bullshit. And dammit, I had every right to be angry.

The doorbell rang.

I checked the clock. “That must be Rocky and Slade. Hurry and go brush your teeth. They’re taking you to see Leticia today.”

Mim dashed to the bathroom while I answered the door. Slade wrapped me in a warm and much-needed embrace, while Rocky shouted, “Hi, Moriah. Where’s Mim?”

I pointed down the hall, and he disappeared.

“Please tell me you have coffee.” The smile I’d grown accustomed to seeing on Slade’s face hid behind worried eyes.

“I have coffee.”

Slade followed me to the kitchen and made herself comfortable at my small table. “So, how are the two of you settling in?”

“Mim is doing so well.” I pulled a mug from the cupboard and shoved a K-cup into the coffee machine. “Much better than I expected. Although I have you and Rocky to thank for that. If I’d had to find childcare, I don’t know what I would’ve done, or how she would’ve handled strangers.”

“Rocky reminds me so much of Tango when he was young. So protective.”

“That’s what she needs.” I set her coffee on the table.

Slade blanched, eyes going liquid. “You know, Dane has always been that way, too. Only, he was subtler about it, almost as if he were ashamed, didn’t want to make a show about caring for people.”

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