Five
DANE
The house was dead quiet when I walked in.
Lyla was already tucked into bed, and Betsy was sitting on the sofa with Everybody Loves Raymond flickering across the television.
She grabbed the remote and killed the volume.
“Lyla fell asleep about thirty minutes ago,” she said. “She tried to stay up for you.”
I gave her a tired nod and rubbed a hand over the back of my neck.
“Sorry I’m late, Betsy. I had something to take care of after class.
” Truth was, I’d been hoping to be doing someone, not something, the devil in my head muttered.
I pushed the thought away. “I really appreciate you filling in for Summer on such short notice.”
“Don’t worry about it, Mr. Matthews. I’m happy to pitch in anytime you need me.”
Betsy stood, stretched her arms over her head, then moved toward the front door to slide on her shoes.
I reached into my pocket, pulled out a couple of twenties, and handed them over.
“Here’s a little extra. Like I said, I appreciate the last-minute save.
” After she left, I locked the door behind her and headed down the hall to check on my daughter.
Lyla was curled beneath her blanket, one small hand tucked under her cheek.
I bent down and kissed her forehead, and she stirred.
“Daddy?”
“Yeah, monkey. It’s me.” I brushed a strand of hair away from her face. “Sorry I got home late.”
“S’okay,” Lyla mumbled, the word soft and slurred with sleep. Her eyelids fluttered once, then she drifted right back under.
I stepped into the shower and let the hot water beat against my shoulders, trying to scrub the stench of cigarette smoke out of my skin.
That was the part I hated most about bars.
You could leave the place behind, but the smell followed you home like a bad decision.
I hadn’t spent time in a bar since before I met Evelyn, my second wife.
Lyla’s mother and I had been high school sweethearts.
We married young, and Lyla came along fast, so there had never been much room for partying or being carefree.
I worked two jobs to keep food on the table and the bills paid while my wife stayed home with our little girl.
Then she died, and whatever life I thought I had shattered overnight.
I became a single father to an eleven-month-old baby before I even knew how to stand up straight under the grief.
The first year nearly broke me. My parents and in-laws gave me a roof, a bed, and help with Lyla, but nothing could carry the weight for me.
Losing my wife was hard enough. Living with the guilt of making the decision to take her off life support was something else entirely.
Guilt like that didn’t sit on your shoulders—it dug its claws deep into your soul.
By Lyla’s second birthday, I had to stand on my own.
Life had to go on. I left for work at four in the morning and didn’t drag myself home until around one in the afternoon.
Thank God I found a sitter willing to handle those brutal hours, because finding another job wasn’t an option—not when this one paid as well as the one I had.
One night, a buddy talked me into going out to a local dance club, where I met Evelyn.
She was older than my twenty-five years, with a teenage son of her own, and for a while we got along well enough.
Looking back, I could admit the truth: I wasn’t in love with her.
She filled an empty space I didn’t know how to live with, and I convinced myself she could be a good mother figure for Lyla.
After a few months, I asked her to marry me.
We had only been married two years when everything went to hell.
I came home one day and found guns and drugs in my house—my house, where my daughter slept, ate, and played.
Evelyn took her son’s side, and he pressed assault charges against me.
Luckily, the judge seemed to understand why I had reacted the way I did.
Since my stepson had just turned eighteen, I was charged with assault instead of child abuse.
The moment it happened, I knew Evelyn and I were done.
If she couldn’t see the danger in her son bringing drugs and guns around my daughter, then I couldn’t respect her enough to stay married.
I’d wanted Lyla to have a normal life with two parents, but not at the cost of her safety.
I filed for divorce as soon as I got out of jail.
If one good thing came out of that mess, it wasn’t anger management classes—it was meeting Katrina because of them.
The first day she walked into the room, it hit me like a hard punch to the chest. She was barely five foot two, a tiny brunette with cautious eyes and a body on the thin side for my usual taste, but damn if she didn’t grab every ounce of my attention.
Our eyes met, and I saw the fear she was trying so hard to hide—the tight set of her mouth, the guarded way she held herself, like she expected the world to swing first. Something in me recognized the haunted look in her eyes.
Week after week, I made it my goal to get to know her.
Not in some smooth, practiced way—I watched, listened, paid attention.
I wanted to learn what made her tick, what made her smile, what made her pull back behind those guarded eyes.
The more time we spent together in class, sitting under those harsh lights with other broken people pretending we had ourselves under control, the more I knew I needed to be around her.
It wasn’t like when I met Evelyn. No, this wasn’t about filling some empty spot in Lyla’s life or handing my daughter a woman and calling her family.
Lyla and I were solid. She didn’t need a mother figure.
But I needed someone beside me, someone real, even if all it ever became was friendship.
The problem was, as the weeks passed, I fell harder.
I wanted more, and I was running out of time.
Inviting Katrina out tonight was a long shot, and I knew it.
Part of me hoped she’d respond to my flirting, let down those walls, and give herself to me.
But if she was the woman I believed she was, I knew she’d tell me no.
I had needed the answer before I let myself want her any more than I already did.
I had to know if she was someone I could trust—or if she was the kind of woman who would cheat.
After all, she was married, even if he was the reason she was sitting in those damn classes in the first place.