“So you have to do it?”
“I have to do it.”
“Well, I think you’ll be great,” I said, putting a smaller stainless pan on the stove to brown some butter for the sauce. “I have full confidence in you.”
He laughed. “Are you forgetting who I am?”
“Not at all! I know exactly who you are. You got this.” I patted his chest, although he was going to think I was insane if I kept touching him. I wasn’t normally so physically affectionate, but he’d been so good to me tonight, and he looked so cute, and his body was so warm and firm. I wondered what he looked like with his clothes off. He worked out every day—it had to show, right? He was lean, but he probably had nice muscles. Those masculine lines and ridges.
My face heated as I imagined his body above mine. The lights off. The door closed.
Stop it, I scolded myself, turning away and taking a quick sip of cool wine. He rescued you tonight because you’re friends. Because you used the code. Because you begged. You’re not here because he wants you in bed.
But when I glanced at him again, he was definitely looking at my bare legs.
When the brown butter basil gnocchi was done, we sat down at the table by the window to eat.
“So were you shocked when you got that text from me with the encrypted message?” I asked.
“Yes. I’m ashamed to say it took me a minute to recognize it.”
I laughed. “I had to write out the cipher key first.”
“Same.” Hutton picked up his wine glass for a sip. “But I think about that night in the library sometimes.”
I stopped chewing for a second, then swallowed. “You do?”
“Yeah.” He took a bite of his gnocchi. “I remember . . . what you told me.”
“About Carla—my mother?”
He nodded. “Do you ever talk to her?”
“Not really. She reaches out every once in a while, but . . .” My voice trailed off. “It was pretty obvious when she left that Mom was a role she was done playing. According to her, she never wanted it in the first place. At least, that’s what she said that night.”
“That must have been hard. I always wondered . . . never mind.” Hutton took another bite.
“What? You can ask me.”
He hesitated again, but eventually spoke. “I guess I just wondered how that happened. How you overheard it—what she said.”
“I was eavesdropping on a fight my parents were having after I was supposed to be asleep.”
“Oh.” He nodded in understanding.
“There was a huge thunderstorm that night, and those always made me nervous. I used to go to my parents’ room and ask if I could sleep in their bed. Sometimes they’d let me, other times my dad would tuck me back into my bed again and stay with me until I fell asleep. But that night, when I got out of bed and crept into the hall, I heard them fighting.”
“I’m sorry,” Hutton said quietly.
“They fought a lot back then.” I reached for my wine, but I knew nothing would ever fully take the sting out of what I’d heard that night. Not wine, not distance, not time.
I took another swallow as their argument replayed in my head, as clearly as if they’d had it last night—my dad telling my mom they couldn’t afford her out-of-control spending, my mother lashing back about being neglected and ignored, my dad shushing her so they wouldn’t wake up the kids, my mother calling him horrible names and accusing him of favoring his daughters over his wife . . .
You’re drunk, Carla.
So what? What do you care? You don’t! You’ve never cared about me. You don’t love me. You only married me because I got pregnant! You did your duty after you knocked me up!
Knocked her up? That had thrown me. Had my daddy hit my mommy? Is that how you got a baby?
I did the right thing for our family, he insisted.
Fuck you, Mack! I never wanted your kids in the first place. I hardly want them now.
As I told Hutton about the argument, goosebumps blanketed my arms. “I heard her say, ‘I never wanted your kids in the first place. I hardly want them now.’ I remember curling my body into a ball underneath the covers, like I was trying to make myself disappear.”
Hutton reached out and touched my wrist.
“He told her she didn’t know what she was saying. That she didn’t mean it. And she said he wasn’t in charge of her thoughts and didn’t get to decide how she felt about being a mother. She said she was sick and tired of her life. And when he said they could talk about it tomorrow and they should just go to bed, she said she’d already been to bed with someone that night, and it wasn’t him.”