Then I look back at the bedroom window where Amelia and August are sleeping in my house.
Not fake.
Not anymore.
I fold the bulletin carefully.
Slowly.
Because rage like this deserves manners.
Then I tuck it into my back pocket and smile into the rain.
Pearly Gates wants to talk about family.
Fine.
Hell answers sermons in fire.
Chapter Thirteen
Amelia
I wake up with my mouth remembering Derby.
That is the first problem.
Not Jeremy.
Not the fact that I’m sleeping in a biker’s bed with my son sprawled beside me and a new dinosaur night-light glowing on the dresser. Damn, the women went all out.
Derby.
His mouth. His hands. The rough sound he made when I bit his lower lip and he told me to do it again. The way he touched me like every inch was a question and waited for me to answer. The way he stopped when August made one small sound from the hall, like my motherhood did not ruin the moment, only mattered more than it.
I lie still under the dinosaur sheets and stare at the ceiling while heat crawls up my neck.
I should feel ashamed.
I do.
A little.
Not enough.
That is the second problem.
I kissed a man who isn’t my husband. A dangerous man. A biker. A man I barely know, if knowing can be counted in motorcycle rides, terrible sandwiches, locked doors, and one brutal story about a boy with a baseball bat sleeping outside his mother’s room.
But I also kissed a man who asked.
Who stopped.
Who told me wanting wasn’t the same as taking.
Who let me climb off the kitchen counter and go to my son without making me feel like I owed him the rest of the night.
That is the part that makes me close my eyes.