“I’m sorry if my distance hurt you.”
“Well, it did.”
“I’m sorry. And it won’t happen again. I swear to you. I’ll never lie to you again. I don’t want us growing apart.”
“I don’t either, and I know why you did it. I understand it now. And I’ve got your back. But my God, Cecelia…I’m still crazy numb. Like, this shit is real?”
“One hundred percent, and mostly because of him.” Tobias glances over at the two of us after uncapping a fresh beer Josh offers him. Tucker runs up to us, bundled in his winter coat.
“Mommy slide, pease, pease, Mommy!”
In a flash, he’s pulled from the ground and hoisted over Josh’s shoulders. His sweetheart eyes shining down on us with apology. He’s a considerate husband and knows our time together is limited. “Daddy’s got this.” Josh bends and kisses Christy, and I can see her inwardly swoon. She’s happy, truly happy, and I briefly wonder if my life will ever resemble hers in any form. But the truth is, I don’t care, as long as I have them both in it. As long as I have the man who looks at me now with flaming eyes of observance, no doubt wondering the same thing as he looks to Josh wrangling his son and then to me.
I try to picture us in her scenario, in the suburbs and it doesn’t at all compute. And I know for certain it won’t be us, not anytime soon.
“So, what will you do now?”
“We’re going back in.” I sip my wine.
“Seriously?”
“With the protection and aid of the government, we’re going after them—all of them Any we can get to while Monroe is still in office. We’re not going to poke the bear. We’re going to fucking bitch slap him.”
“This is…so crazy.”
“I know, I came in somewhere in the middle of this, and it took me years to fully wrap my head around it all.”
“I really should have ignored you and came up to see you anyway.”
“Christy, I had to protect you.”
“I know. I’ll try not to hold a grudge, but it will take some time. But we’ll be fine. You and me, we’ll always be fine. And I’m behind you a hundred percent. But,” she shifts her gaze to me, her tone growing serious, “shouldn’t there be some perks to this arrangement?”
“Like?”
“Think you can get us out of paying taxes?”
We both burst into laughter, and two curious male heads turn our way. Tobias reads my expression and gives me a whisper of a smile before going back to his conversation with Josh.
“What in the world could those two be talking about?” Christy contemplates watching them interact. “What could they possibly have in common?”
I study Tobias, who’s at this point, completely at ease in suburbia with a practical stranger. He’s here for me because this family, these people, matter to me—because he loves me. And hopefully, our future consists of more gatherings like this even though our future doesn’t look a thing like the Baldwins. “You see a refined, nearly impenetrable man in an expensive suit. And he is that, but I don’t see that anymore. I see a boy that started as an orphan determined to protect his brother. Just a poor kid living on a bad street, intimidated by a world he didn’t understand and determined to change it for himself, for his brother, and for us. I see the man he’s grown into, who’s never forgotten where he came from and how it shaped him, no matter how much he’s evolved.”
“It’s admirable…he’s truly…he’s some kind of man.”
Tobias’s gaze drifts over to me as electricity spikes in the air between us.