Chapter 21 Lofton
LOFTON
“I can’t find it,” Zoey announced as she dropped to her knees in the middle of the blanket and unzipped her little backpack.
“I know that face,” Brooke said, watching me over the rim of her coffee mug.
“What face?” Avoiding her scrutiny, I kept my eyes on Zoey as she began excavating the contents of her bag.
“Here,” she said, extending a crumpled juice box straw to her mother.
Brooke opened her hand, palm up, and kept right on staring at me. “You know the face.”
“I really don’t.”
Zoey passed me a single googly eye.
“The freshly fu—” She glanced at Zoey and then rephrased. “The freshly goodnight face.”
My cheeks flushed warm. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.” A graham cracker corner emerged from the backpack. Zoey examined it, deemed it worth keeping, and then placed it in Brooke’s hand.
“You’ve had it since breakfast. Devon’s got it too, though his is more of a twitchy jaw situation.”
“Nah, he always looks like that.” A small plastic dinosaur missing one leg landed in my hand next.
“Lofton.”
“Brooke.”
“Oh, look!” Zoey giggled. She unfolded a piece of paper and then lifted it in the air for our viewing pleasure.
It was a crayon drawing of what I could only assume was supposed to be a horse, though the four legs were coming out of the top.
Which either said something profound about Zoey’s artistic vision or suggested she’d been holding the paper upside down.
“Is that Snickers?” I guessed.
She curled her lip. “It’s a jellyfish.”
“Duh, Tofton,” Brooke teased before sucking in her lips to stifle a laugh.
I placed a hand over my heart. “Obviously. It’s stunning!”
Zoey handed it to me. “You can have it.”
“Hey, thanks.” I took the paper, folded it back up, and slid it into the back of my denim shorts. “We should start looking into art schools now. I see a future for this one.”
Zoey went right back to digging through her bag. And without missing a beat, Brooke’s eyes came back to me. “Don’t think you can change the subject. He looked like he was afraid for his life yesterday. Clearly you did something to change his tune.”
A smile split my mouth. “Button-down. Louboutins.”
Her mouth fell open. “Lofton Beck, you are terrible. That man didn’t stand a chance.”
Zoey perked her head up. “What man?” With great seriousness, she handed me a seven of clubs, torn at the edge.
“Mr. Devon,” Brooke answered.
“He smells good,” Zoey announced, going right back to her bag.
“See? She gets it.”
Brooke rolled her eyes and stuck out her tongue at me.
“Awww,” Zoey drawled as she pulled out a slightly wrinkled photograph. She looked at it for a moment and then held it up toward us.
Marty’s face filled one side of it, his arm around Zoey at her last birthday party, both of them mid-laugh at something off-camera.
Zoey hugged it to her chest before passing it my way. “I miss Marty.”
Brooke pressed her lips together and gave her daughter a squeeze. “I know, baby. We all do.”
I took the picture and looked at it for a long moment. The grief was still sharp, but the day-to-day pain had softened into a sort of denial where I could just pretend he was on vacation and not gone completely.
“He loved you. You know that right?” I said quietly.
Zoey nodded.
Brooke looked at me. “He loved you too.”
I smiled because he had. One hundred percent absolute love.
I had no doubt that Marty was going to be a gaping wound in my heart for a long time.
But as I sat there, holding the photograph in one hand and the torn playing card in the other as we watched Zoey dig to the bottom of the bag for whatever she was actually looking for, I thought that maybe this was what healing felt like.
Not the absence of grief, but finding Marty’s face in a four-year-old’s backpack and actually being able to smile about it.
“There it is!” Zoey exclaimed, suddenly producing a tube of chapstick.
It had no cap and as she rolled it up, it was flattened on one side as if it had melted at some point.
She applied it with surgical precision, assuming the surgeon was blind.
And then rubbed her lips together with a satisfied grin.
She quickly began repacking everything. Straw. Googly eye. Dinosaur. Playing card, and last but not least, the picture. She kissed it before dropping it back inside so unceremoniously that it made me laugh.
“You know we have to clean that out soon. You’re going to end up with ants,” Brooke told her.
I assumed it was a threat Brooke made often because Zoey gave no reaction. She zipped the bag, slung it on her back, and then ran off toward the fence where Beans was standing, desperately hoping she was bringing him a treat.
“She hasn’t taken that backpack off since he died,” Brooke said, as we watched her run away. “Marty gave it to her for her birthday. She loved it then, but now? She thinks it’s magic.” She shook her head.
“Did you ask her therapist about it?”
“Yeah, she told me it was normal. Kids don’t always process trauma like we do. I need to go online and see if I can order another one so I can at least clean it every once in a while.” She took in a deep breath, as if she could pack down her emotions.
“I’m glad she’s seeing someone.”
“I wish I could say the same for you.”
I crinkled my nose. “I promise I will…eventually.”
“It’s always eventually with you.” She flashed me a smile. “Anyway, enough with the heavy. Let’s get back to you and Devon.” She bumped me with her shoulder. “You have the face.”
“I know,” I admitted.
The oak shifted patches of sunlight across the blanket, and for a moment I just let myself exist within the memories of the night before.
“It was a really good night,” I confessed.
“Shit,” she breathed.
I glanced over to find her watching me with an expression that wasn’t quite disapproval, but wasn’t far from it either.
This wasn’t unexpected. All she knew of Devon was that first day at the hotel in LA when the two of them had gone toe-to-toe.
She hadn’t witnessed the slow beauty of his demeanor softening.
She hadn’t seen his secret smiles, or felt his gentle touches, or watched the way a single look from him could talk my nervous system down from a ledge.
“Say it,” I told her.
She squinted one eye. “I don’t think you want me to.”
“When has that ever stopped you?”
She exhaled. “He’s your bodyguard, Lofton. He is literally employed to keep you alive. There are about seventeen different reasons this is complicated, and I’m genuinely concerned you’ve ignored all of them because he has a nice ass.”
“It’s not because of his ass.”
“I wouldn’t judge you if it were. He’s hot. I understand the appeal. But this is wildly unprofessional. I can’t believe Devon was willing to cross that line.”
I shot her a smirk. “What line?”
“Okay. Forget unprofessional. You said he made you cry three times in the first week.”
“He also took me to say goodbye to Marty in the middle of the night when nobody else thought to even tell me about his funeral.” I looked at her steadily.
“He fed my horses so I could sleep. He called you.” I gestured broadly at the farm, at Zoey still at the fence conducting what appeared to be diplomatic negotiations with Beans. “He did all of this.”
“I know.” She picked at the loose thread on the edge of the blanket. “I know he did. And it was a genuinely sweet thing to do. But we’ve been here before, remember?”
I narrowed my eyes until understanding dawned.
I hadn’t been there before. But she had.
And that man had absolutely wrecked her.
“You’re talking about Jason.”
She didn’t answer right away. She didn’t have to.
I’d been there for every horrifying moment of her relationship with Jason.
Jason Horton had been one of Arrow’s new recruits. He’d been absolutely thrilled when Marty had brought him for a job at my birthday party. Those stars in his eyes had died when Marty threw a pink flamingo float at him and told him not to let any of the drunks drown in the pool.
Brooke had been one of those drunks, and while he did not let her drown, he did let her climb him like a tree in my guest room.
Nine months later, Zoey was born.
And one year after that, he signed away his parental rights, causing me to throw yet another party.
“He was a good guy,” Brooke said.
“He was drug addict. Devon is nothing like Jason.”
She held up a hand. “Okay, but think about Jason before the drugs, he was just—” she searched for the word “—intense. You know that type. They look at you like you’re the only woman they’ve ever seen.
It’s intoxicating. Right up until it isn’t.
I’m not comparing them. I promise you, I’m not.
Jason was a disaster and Devon is—” she waved a vague hand toward the barn “—whatever Devon is. But men like that, Lofton. Hyper-focused, protective, all hot and alpha. It’s a lot to absorb.
And when you’re scared and isolated and grieving, it can feel like the answer to every single thing that’s been wrong. ”
I held her gaze. “And?”
“And he’s an asshole.”
I rolled my eyes. “He’s not.” I swayed my head from side to side. “I mean, he can be, but he’s not with me.
She laughed. “Of course he’s not. How else would he get the chance to sleep with Lofton Beck?”
I jerked as if she’d physically slapped me. Almost wishing she had because it definitely would have hurt less.
“I’m a person,” I hissed
Clearly surprised, she leaned away from me. “I never said you weren’t.”
“Yes, you did. You used my name like I’m some kind of commodity and not a woman with thoughts and feelings and qualities that a man could find desirable without my fucking name attached.”
“Whoa, that is not what I meant at all.”
“But that’s the problem, right? You’re worried he’s sleeping with Lofton Beck.”
She blinked at me for a long second. “You are Lofton Beck.”
“Yep. And I can honestly say that Devon is the only person who doesn’t constantly remind me of that.
He doesn’t look at me like that. He doesn’t touch me like that.
He doesn’t talk to me like that.” I shot to my feet, the words coming faster, overflowing from a place I hadn’t known was this full.
“From the very first day, he was an ass to me. Not Lofton Beck. Me. He didn’t care about the movies, or the awards, or even the money.
He didn’t soften his voice or choose his words carefully because of who I was.
He told me the truth even when it was ugly. ”
She opened her mouth, but I didn’t let her speak.
“And then, when he started being nice, it was the same way. He didn’t bring everyone out here because Lofton Beck needed a PR moment or because it would make him look good.
He did it because he listened to me. Because I told him I didn’t know what normal felt like anymore, and instead of nodding and moving on like everyone else does, he actually heard it.
And then he did something about it. Quietly.
Without fanfare. Without ever actually mentioning it to me at all. ”
I pressed my fingers against my sternum, trying to ease the ache.
“And if you want the truth, he didn’t need to do any of it because the only time I feel actually normal—not performing normal, not chasing normal, not pretending hard enough that it almost works—is when I’m with him.
In the barn in the morning before anyone else is up.
Late at night when he’s telling me about Gerald and some stupid Christmas wreath.
When he even senses that I’m scared and he reaches for me.
And yeah, also when I walk into his room in nothing but one of his shirts and heels, no airbrushing or makeup team, one boob slightly bigger than the other, cellulite on my thighs, and he fucks me like he’s been waiting his whole life to find me.
” I shook my head. “Because I sure as hell have been waiting all of mine to find him. Me, Brooke. Not Lofton Beck. Me.”
My chest heaved as I finished, tears stinging my eyes. The reality of it all crashed down over me. And then all at once, the weight of the admission lifted from my shoulders even as it settled heavy in my chest.
“Babe.”
I froze because that had not been spoken by Brooke.
My back shot straight, and I twirled around, finding him standing only a few feet away. The smile he’d been sporting all night was gone, and in its place was the darkest glower I’d ever seen—even from him.
I plastered on a smile, hoping like hell he hadn’t been listening. “Hi.”
“You good?” His dark gaze flicked to Brooke.
“Yep.”
“You sure?”
I glanced down at my friend, still sitting on the blanket.
She stood up, brushing off the butt of her navy-blue shorts. “I’m good too, Devon. Thanks for checking.”
“Not real interested in you at all at the moment. She’s got tears in her eyes, but I’m the asshole, huh?”
Oh yes, Devon had heard it all.
If he wasn’t already running for the hills, he would be soon.
Brooke pressed her lips together, visibly delighted. “Well, I didn’t know all that other stuff when I called you that.”
“Right,” he mumbled. His long legs devoured the space between us.
I sucked in a sharp breath when he stopped in front of me, my body responding to his proximity immediately.
Looming, with his hands firmly at his sides, he bent forward, bringing his mouth to my ear.
“Had Apollo cut the audio this morning so you could have some privacy with your girl. Not telling you what you can or cannot say, but how about you make it slightly more difficult for everyone in the three surrounding counties to find out I’m fucking you. ”
My eyes flashed wide. “Shit. I’m so sorry. I wasn’t thinking about the audio.”
He righted himself and shot me a grin. “Not your job to think about the audio, babe. I got you. You have fun with your girl. She gives you any more shit, you let me know, and she’s flying home Coach.”
“Oh, please,” Brooke scoffed, but her gaze nervously flicked to me in question.
Ah, yes. Coach. The ultimate threat.
A laugh bubbled from my throat. “I’ll keep you posted.”
“Hey!” Brooke objected.
“You do that.” He spared her one last scowl and then walked away.
I watched his departure, feeling Brooke sidle up beside me. She hooked her arm through mine. “You know I didn’t mean that Lofton Beck thing. I just…worry about you.”
“I know,” I replied without tearing my eyes off Devon. Pure happiness soaring inside me.
“He’s still an asshole, but I do like the way he looks at you.” She slanted her head and joined me in ogling his retreating backside. “And seriously, that ass is spectacular.”
I elbowed her hard, and we both dissolved into laughter, all thoughts of the Lofton Beck dissolving with us.