Maybe he wasn’t doing that.

Maybe he was running away from disappointment.

He had to get to the garage and I had to get Brooklyn to daycare and then get to the store, so I didn’t have time to get into that.

I knew one thing.

I needed money.

One could say I had a helluva cushion now. But ten thousand dollars wasn’t ten million dollars, and I needed to keep my eye on that ball for me and my boy.

But I also knew I was going to have a conversation with Michael that day about how bad it would be if I couldn’t do holiday overtime.

“You need me to get Brooklyn from daycare Thursday and Friday nights, get him home and do his gig for you?” he asked.

“That’d be great, honey,” I said softly.

“I’ll be on it,” he muttered, and turned back to Brooklyn, who, as I watched, decided in the time between Toby stopping feeding him and Toby starting again, he hated cereal if him giving Toby an ornery face and jerking his head side to side when Tobe tried to shovel some in was any indication.

“You done, bud?” Toby asked my kid.

“Gah!” Brooks replied.

Since I wasn’t even sure what “Gah!” meant, Toby tested it out and lifted the spoon hovering close to his face.

Brooklyn jerked his face away.

Tobe tossed the spoon into the bowl and muttered, “You’re done.”

Then he took Brooks’s bib and rubbed the cereal off his face, doing this also with natural ease, even if Brooklyn wasn’t helping and instead was jerking his head around and shouting, “Dodo! Nono! Fafa!”

Through this, I stood there and watched wondering how life had led me from what I’d had, which, outside my mother being a seriously boss bitch and my sister being the best big sister alive, wasn’t much, to starting things with a good, decent man one day and having him slip into feeding my son breakfast the very next morning like he’d done it since Brooks started eating semi-solid food.

And in that moment I knew Toby was wrong.

Life wasn’t about disappointment.

Life was a journey.

The journey of finding what I’d seen on my sister’s face the night before.

Finding your place.

Finding your people.

And settling in so when those cold winds blew, you had warmth to see you through.

Toby was going to understand that.

I knew it.

No.

I vowed it.

Because I was going to teach him.

“Hey,” Toby greeted when he picked up my call.

“Hey,” I said, on the trot back to the store at lunch after dropping the cards at Macy’s.

“You sound like you’re running,” Toby noted.

“I’m heading back to the store from Macy’s to eat the huge-ass roast beef sandwich you made me before hitting my register.”

“Ah.”

“I talked to Michael.”

Pause then, “Yeah?”

“He says he’s had about ten people come in and ask about a holiday job. He gave me the hours because it’s store policy to give overtime to current employees who request it in times like this. But if I don’t want it, he’s good and the store is covered.”

“Lollipop,” he said, low and sweet. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I know I didn’t. But I want to go to The Star with you and make Christmas cookies and find a job that pays about three times as much as I make now, but I’d take double. I can’t get my résumé together, look for jobs, put in applications and explore the option of making some extra dough doing something I dig by starting an Etsy store if I’m working for bupkis at Matlock Mart.”

“A what store?”

“An Etsy store.”

“What the fuck is that?”

“It’s about selling online craft projects, and I’m not sure with you having a penis that I could explain it in terms you understand.”

He burst out laughing.

I grinned and crossed the street.

When he stopped laughing, I shared, “Michael also put up next week’s schedule and I have Monday and Thursday off.”

“Workin’ the weekend,” he muttered.

“I know. Suck. But we could go to The Star Monday or Thursday night. I’ll ask Izzy or Deanna to babysit.”

“I’ll get a reservation.”

“Righteous.”

“You want company tonight?” he asked.

“Do I need to find time to cut up some faux fur blankets to make our cavemen outfits?”

He said through a chuckle, “No. But I’ll find time to hit that sex shop in Grayburg to get us some handcuffs.”

I experienced a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold.

“Grayburg is fifty miles away,” I reminded him. “The city’s closer.”

“I got a lead foot and the shop in Grayburg is better than anything they got in the city.”

Hmm . . .

Intriguing.

“You’ve done this research?”

“Babe. Life’s about the adventure.”

It was me who was laughing at that, but I was doing it to hide he was turning me on.

I pushed through the doors to the Mart and head down, phone to my ear, listened to Toby ask, “You got a vibrator?”

Okay, I was a girl who could do anything.

Including, apparently, talk about vibrators in the produce section of a small-town grocery store.

“No, I have a selection of three.”

“Now, that’s righteous, baby,” he growled.

“Don’t turn me on by the package salads.”

Another chuckle before, “You’re off at four?”

“Yup.”

“See you at yours at five thirty.”

“Okay, honey.”

“Later, Lollipop.”

“Later, Talon.”

We disconnected.

I ate my huge-ass roast beef sandwich that Toby made me along with the Ziploc bag of chips and a pudding cup.

I felt over-full for the next hour, standing at my register.

I didn’t care even a little bit.

“Don’t come.”

“Tobe.”

“Do not come, Addie.”

I was fingers curled around the iron headboard, unable to move one hand since I had Toby’s fingers curled over mine.

I was also on my knees.

Toby’s other hand was engaged in pressing one of my vibrators going full vibe to my clit.

And Toby was on his knees behind me, fucking me hard.

His beard was brushing my shoulder, his breaths were heavy in my ear, this mingled with his grunts were an aphrodisiac that was a new definition of the good kind of surreal.

“Baby,” I moaned.

His fingers over mine left so he could plant his palm in the wall and get further leverage on the action.

God.

He started rolling the vibrator.

Gawd.

My head fell to his shoulder, arcing my back into a bow so I could keep my ass tipped to take his cock, this pressing my clit into the vibrator.

Oh . . .

Wow.

I took my free hand from the headboard, reached around, grabbed hold of his ass and started panting.

“Take more,” he grunted.

“I can’t.”

“More, honey.”