“Uh…yeah,” he confirmed the obvious. “But I’ve also had more than my fair share of experience with people and with women…”

Hmm. He could say that again, especially the latter.

Mitch kept talking.

“And I’m clued into the fact that no matter how hard I can make you come, no really good orgasm is gonna erase your perceptions of yourself and replace them with how I see you. I know what I got on my hands. I also know that most women who look like you have their heads up their asses in a different, far more annoying way. So the bright side is, what happened to you, even though you’re as beautiful as you are, you’ll never think your shit doesn’t stink. And I gotta say, sweetheart, I get your sweet, I get your attitude, I get your mouth and I get all that without conceit and you thinkin’ you can lead me around by my dick, so this is not a bad thing at all.”

“Well, it’s good you can look on the bright side,” I muttered, my eyes sliding to his shoulder and then they flew back to his face when he burst out laughing, his arms closing around me so tight the breath went out of me.

Then he quit laughing, his arms loosened (slightly) and his face got in mine. “Been seein’ a lot of the bright side for a little over a month now,” he whispered and I got a belly whoosh.

“Mitch –” I whispered back.

He cut me off saying, “We got kids to feed. So, gettin’ back to the matter at hand, me buyin’ a house, you and the kids in on that, are you with me?”

I stared into his gentle, soulful eyes, eyes I’d woken up to every morning for over a month, eyes I wanted to wake up to every day for the rest of my life and I knew I was with him. I was with him then, I’d been with him since the first time I told him I was weeks ago and if I could manage it, I would be with him until I took my last breath on that earth.

“Baby, are you with me?” he prompted.

“Yeah,” I agreed softly.

“Good,” he whispered, I smiled then he asked, “Ready?”

“Yeah,” I repeated.

“Break,” he murmured, touched his mouth to mine then let me go and walked into the bathroom.

I turned and finished rearranging my drawers but I didn’t do it crying.

I did it smiling.

* * * * *

Although things had settled down and…well, just plain settled in huge and significant ways, there was one cloud over our literal and figurative sunny days and this was Billy.

Mitch was right; Billie didn’t care where she was or what she was doing just as long as the people around her that she loved were happy. She didn’t need to blossom, her Teflon-coated delight in the world was invincible.

But something was up with Billy.

He stuck to one, the other or both of us like glue. He was often asking Mitch to toss a ball with him (and Mitch did). He asked Mitch or me to help him with his homework every night. He asked me to teach him how to do the laundry. He did the dishes. He helped make dinner. He kept his room tidy. He dragged out the vacuum and vacuumed the entire house. He inventoried the cupboards and wrote stuff on the grocery list. If you were at the store, he’d dash through the aisles to grab stuff so you wouldn’t have to push the cart down each one. If Billie started to get tired and irritable, he fawned over her. If I was tired, he offered to read her to sleep.

If he was with me and Mitch wasn’t around, he asked about Mitch all the time. Where was he? What was he doing? When was he coming home? Didn’t I think Mitch’s hamburgers were the best? Wasn’t it cool how Mitch could do multiplication questions in his head without writing anything down?

After our first date, four times in one day he asked when he and Billie could go back to Penny’s house to spend the night. Then, two weeks later, when Mitch and I had another night on our own with Sue Ellen looking after the kids, when he got home the next afternoon he asked twice when they were again going to Sue Ellen’s.

Then, three days ago, Mitch and I were having an inconsequential tiff in his SUV, about what, I didn’t even remember. The kids were with us and I felt something rolling through the truck that made me feel weird. I turned to look into the backseat and I saw Billy staring out the side window, his profile hard, his teeth clenched, his hands in fists, his shoulders bunched but his lip was trembling. He looked terrified and near tears.

It alarmed me and I immediately quit having terse words with Mitch, gave him a look and jerked my head toward the back. Mitch’s eyes went to the rearview mirror then they went to the road and his jaw got so tight, a muscle jumped there.

Later, in bed, Mitch pulled me on top of him and stated, “You get pissed, I get pissed, we have our words private, not in front of the kids.”

“You saw it then,” I whispered.

“Yeah, I saw it.”

I told him something I guessed he already knew considering he was a cop and very insightful, “He’s not right, Mitch, something is wrong with him.”

“You live bad, sweetheart, you taste good, you’d do anything to keep it. You know that.”

I really did.

I nodded.

Mitch continued, saying softly, “He’s terrified.”

I bit my lip. “Yeah,” I agreed then asked, “Should we talk to him about it?”

Mitch studied me but he did this thinking.

Then he said, “Don’t know. He thinks we cottoned on, might cause more anxiety. We play it cool and give him day to day good and steady, he might relax.”

“I’m going to talk to Bobbie at work about it,” I told him and it was his turn to nod.

“I mentioned it to Slim,” he informed me, surprising me. “Slim caught on when we played catch, though it was hard to miss.”

Slim was Brock, Mitch’s partner’s nickname.

Brock was good. Brock had two boys. Brock probably had a wealth of experience.

“And what does he say?”

“He says if he thinks we cottoned on, it might cause more anxiety. If we play it cool and give him steady, he might relax,” Mitch said on a grin.

“Great,” I muttered and Mitch’s arm gave me a squeeze.

“Our play, we give him two weeks. He doesn’t settle in, we talk again and decide who talks to him. You with me?”

I smiled and whispered, “Yeah. But if you ready, break me, I’m going to protest the play.”

His head tilted on the pillow and his lips twitched. “Why’s that?”