Chapter 9
ELLIE
The entire next week feels surreal. I keep expecting to wake up in my old bed back in Georgia, horrified to find out it was all a dream and I’m still trapped.
Instead I wake up every day in a bright, sun-filled room with cheery yellow walls and the softest white down comforter I’ve ever felt. I wake up knowing that Lucas is right downstairs in his own room, sleeping soundly.
And Jonah is downstairs, too.
We haven’t slept together again since that first time the day he asked me to move in. He hasn’t even kissed me. I’m not sure if he’s lost interest or if he’s just trying to make sure I’m comfortable while we all adjust to this new reality.
Not that it takes much adjusting. The most surreal part of all of this is how easy it feels.
I’m closer to the medical billing office here, making my commute even shorter on those days I need to be there in person.
When I work from home, there’s a nice sturdy desk in my room and the internet is much faster than Trisha’s.
And Lucas loves it here. He loves his room—“two doors down from Jonah, Mom! Isn’t that cool?”—and the basketball net on the garage outside. Most of all he loves the three strapping Barlowe boys who call this place home.
I guess he’s never really known any decent men.
The kind of men who let you jabber on in your little kid way and never tell you to shut up.
The kind of men who take you to the park and play Candyland with you.
The kind of men who let you pick ten songs in a row on the jukebox in their bar when you go there for dinner and bring you extra fries and endless glasses of root beer.
The kind of men who don’t get pissed when you spill a glass of chocolate milk on the kitchen table.
Part of me worries I’m setting him up for disappointment. This arrangement is only temporary. At some point we’ll be going back to Trisha’s, or maybe even getting our own place. But he seems so happy when they’re paying him attention, I can’t bring myself to try to keep them away.
Plus, I have a feeling these Barlowes won’t cut him out, even after we’re no longer staying here. Even if nothing else ever comes from my relationship with Jonah.
A relationship that might already be over, if I’m being honest.
I turn slightly in the passenger seat of his truck so I can look at him while he drives.
Lucas is in the back seat, chattering up a storm, per usual.
Jonah is listening to it all, a fond smile on his face.
Every once in a while his eyes go to the rearview mirror to look at my kid and that smile grows.
It’s enough to make a girl’s ovaries hurt, the way he acts with my son.
Today was Lucas’s first day of kindergarten, which means he’s even chattier than usual.
It also means he’s tired and overexcited, and I have a feeling that’s going to bite me in the ass before the evening is over.
We had promised him dinner at the pizza arcade to celebrate his first day of school.
It probably wasn’t the smartest choice, but there’s no going back on it now.
He’s been talking for days about the games he’s going to play with the twenty quarters Jonah promised him.
I know we’re in for a rough time as soon as our waitress brings a steaming hot pie to our table. “Mom,” Lucas whines. “I don’t like those meatballs on my pizza.”
“You get ground beef on your pizza all the time, buddy.”
His face turns mutinous. “It doesn’t look like that.”
He’s right—instead of beef crumbles, this restaurant’s toppings are more like mini-meatballs. Which under any other circumstances, I’m sure he would love. But it’s been a long day, and Lucas has always had a short fuse when he’s tired and overexcited.
“We can take them off,” I tell him easily, knowing the best way to deal with him like this is to stay calm.
“I want a new one,” he says, crossing his arms.
“We’re not getting a new one, Lucas.” I give him a look—the one that says you better close your mouth—and he sighs loudly but doesn’t argue anymore. He does spend the next five minutes picking meat off his pizza while pouting.
“Just ignore him,” I mutter to Jonah.
“He looks tired.”
I give him a weak smile. “This might be a long meal.”
A few minutes later, Lucas proves me right. “I’m full,” he says, setting down a slice of pizza with a single bite taken out. “I want my quarters now.”
“You haven’t eaten dinner and that’s not how you ask.”
“But Mom.” When I just raise an eyebrow he sighs and looks over at Jonah. “Can I have my quarters, Jonah? You promised.”
I bite my lower lip, wondering how he’ll handle this. Jonah has been a bit of a pushover with Lucas—he seems to like nothing more than giving the kid whatever he wants.
But he merely shakes his head at Lucas. “You need to eat, buddy.”
I have to admit, that felt really good to hear. Jonah backing me up without undermining me or trying to take over. I smile at him over my own slice of pizza and he smiles back.
And then Lucas knocks over his glass of Sprite.
The waterworks start immediately, as I knew they would. “It ruined my pizza! I wanted to eat that! Now I don’t have any soda!”
“We can get you some more,” I say, going to work with a handful of napkins. The mess isn’t very big—he drank most of his Sprite before the food even arrived. But from the way Lucas is carrying on you’d think he’d just unleashed a gallon of soda across the table.
“I want my quarters now!” he continues to cry, working himself up into a full-on meltdown. “You promised.”
“Let me get this,” Jonah says, taking the napkins from my hand. For a moment, I’m surprised—Kevin never once helped me clean up a mess, not even his own.
I wonder if I’ll ever get used to the fact that Jonah is nothing like my ex.
I let him sop up the mess while I go around to Lucas’s side and kneel so we’re eye level. “Take some deep breaths, buddy. You need to calm down.”
“I don’t want to calm down! I just want my quarters!”
“I’m not giving you quarters while you’re throwing a fit. This isn’t the way a big boy behaves at a restaurant.”
“But it ruined my pizza!” he shrieks. “I wanted to eat my meatballs!”
I struggle not to roll my eyes. Ah, the logic of a five-year-old.
“We’re going to clean up the mess and get you more Sprite. Then you’re going to eat a new piece of pizza. After that, we can discuss arcade games. Got it?”
“Nooo!” he wails. “I want chicken nuggets instead!”
I sigh. Those are real tears coming out of his eyes, not the crocodile kind, and his face is turning beet red. Logical or not, he’s truly upset, and I’m not going to be able to get him calmed down here.
“Mind if we take this to go?” I ask Jonah.
“I’ll get a box.” He squeezes my shoulder as he passes.
Half an hour later, we’re back at home and Lucas is passed out in his bed.
I managed to get half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich into him once he stopped crying, so at least he’s not going to bed starving.
Just as I expected, he’s asleep within seconds of climbing into bed, his face still red and his eyes swollen.
Feeling pretty damn tired myself, I make my way to the kitchen. Jonah has our pizza reheated and is pouring glasses of red wine for each of us.
“You’re a lifesaver,” I mutter as I join him at the table.
“I thought you might need it.”
We eat mostly in silence—a nice break from Lucas’s increasingly fake wails all the way home. When we’re finished, Jonah takes our plates to the sink and I join him, picking up a towel to dry as he washes them.
“That didn’t embarrass you?” I ask after a few moments of working side by side in silence.
His eyebrows furrow. “Why would I be embarrassed?”
“Because Lucas had a meltdown in public.”
He just looks over at me like I’m crazy. “I mean, I don’t have a whole lot of experience with kids, but that seemed pretty normal to me. Don’t they throw tantrums sometimes?”
Emotion hits me right in the chest, making a lump come to my throat. I have to swallow a few times. “Yeah,” I finally manage to get out. “It’s totally normal.”
He takes the dishtowel from me, using it to dry his hands while he studies my face. “What’s going on in that head of yours?”
Why the fuck can’t you ever keep that fucking kid quiet? I can’t even get ten minutes of peace to watch a ball game when I get home after working all day? God damn it, Ellie, shut him up or I will.
I shudder, closing my eyes. I hate that I can still hear his voice so clearly. Shouldn’t it have started to fade by now?
Suddenly, Jonah’s hands are on either side of my face, cradling it gently, his thumbs wiping under my eyes. I didn’t even realize I’d started to cry.
“The ex used to get mad about stuff like this?”
I nod. “He said I was a shitty mother whenever Lucas was upset. Especially in public.” My breath catches. “Even when he was a baby. Any kind of crying just set him off.”
Do you not understand how fucking hard I work all day to provide for you? You’re the most ungrateful bitch I ever met. And you wonder why I get pissed off.
Jonah’s hands tighten on my face. “Hey.” His voice is low and rough. Strained. “Look at me, please.”
My breath catches when I open my eyes. He looks equal parts furious, sad, and fiercely protective. “He was the one with the problem. Not you. Not Lucas. You never have to apologize for your kid being a kid. Not to me.”
I nod, trying to get it together. It had been such a nice day, even with the melt-down. I don’t want to ruin in now by rehashing all this bullshit.
“Sometimes I just need to remind myself that the things he told me were almost all lies, you know? You hear that stuff enough and you start to believe it.”
His eyes turn blank and he drops his hands from my face. “I know.”
Something about the way he said that makes me think he’s not speaking abstractly. “Do you, um, have experience with something like that?”
He looks away, his jaw clenching, and I wonder if I overstepped.
“Our parents were pieces of shit,” he finally says, in a gruff voice I’ve never heard from him before.
“They were addicts. We had sketchy people in our house all the time. Sometimes Mom and Dad would just take off.” I watch his throat bob as he swallows.
“Honestly, those were the best times. So long as we could figure out how to get some food, I think we all preferred for them to be gone.”
My throat aches as I look at him. He’s obviously trying to be stoic, but I can hear the hint of what must be terrible pain underneath. “When they were around, they were pretty, um, abusive. Used to knock us around and shit.”
“Jonah,” I whisper. “God, I’m so sorry.”
He shrugs, but there’s no way he can play this off.
“They kicked Mac out first. He got in between my dad’s fist and Lawson’s face.
He started working, saving up money for the bar.
Lawson left next. Sawyer and I stayed around, because there was no way we were all leaving Jules.
But then, when she was sixteen, they just didn’t come back one day. ”
“How old were you?”
“Nineteen.”
He can try to sound as tough as he wants, but that’s still really young to lose your parents, even shitty ones.
“Honestly, I was much happier,” he says, as if reading my mind. “I wasn’t alone, you know? I had my older brothers. Jules to look after. The bar. We did okay.”
“You did amazingly well,” I tell him, voice thick.
He manages a small smile. “Anyhow. When I first met Lucas, I think I knew what was going on before I even opened that box. He had this look in his eyes when he mentioned his dad…I know that look.”
“I hate that he had to be affected by this,” I choke out.
He brings his hands back to my cheeks. “I know, darlin’. But he’s gonna be okay. I can tell you from experience, kids are real resilient. He’ll have good people in his life and pretty soon he’ll get used to feeling safe and loved.”
“God, you make it sound so easy.”
“Not easy,” he says, eyes intense as he looks down at me. “But you won’t be alone.”