Returning his nod, I smile full force.

“Your only boyfriend, right?”

I roll my eyes and plant my lips on his, kissing him longer than the last. His hand drifts under my shirt, rough but gentle. He moans into my mouth as I bite down on his lip. Then he curses and half-heartedly attempts to push me away. I don’t budge. Not even a little bit. “So this date?” I ask.

He nods, his eyes on my chest pressed against his.

“Where would Tommy be?”

“I was going to ask Kim and Rob to watch him,” he says to my breasts.

I tug on his hair to make him look at me. He just laughs—no shame. “So what if we do have a date… but instead of going out, we stay in?”

His smile fades. He blinks. Once. Twice. Then he swallows. “W-w-we can do that.”

“Okay.”

His eyes drop to my chest again.

“So when?”

“Huh?”

“Josh.”

He finally looks up.

“Focus.”

He smirks.

“When?”

“Next Friday?”

★★★

Josh slumps down next to me on his couch after putting Tommy to bed. “That took forever. He just kept wanting to tell me story after story.”

“It’s cute.”

“The first two, yeah. The ten after that, not so much.”

“What did he say?” I ask, turning to him.

He grabs my legs and puts them over his. “Anything. Everything.”

I fake a smile and somehow he knows it’s fake. He shifts me until I’m on his lap and his arms are around me. “Are you okay?”

I rest my head on his shoulder but don’t look at him. “I’m just tired. I didn’t sleep well.”

With his finger on my chin, he makes me face him. There’s a frown on his face—one I’m sure I caused. “Did you have another bad dream?”

My eyes shut when he holds me tighter and I hesitate to nod because I don’t want him to know how fucked up I am.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not—” My voice breaks, and my hand automatically comes to my throat. “Not really.”

His eyes narrow, his frown deepening. “Is your throat sore?”

I nod again.

He replaces my hand with his. “You been straining it?”

“I think so,” I whisper.

His thumb, gentle and soft, rubs across my neck. “I got this tea for you—it’s supposed to be able to help with that.”

He moves me off him, stands up, and goes to the kitchen. I follow. After pulling out a bag from the pantry, he leans back against the counter and starts reading the instructions on the back.

“How did you know what to get?” I ask.

He shrugs. “I looked it up online and went to this herbal store on one of my lunch breaks.”

“Josh…” I press up against him, my hands on his stomach. “You did that for me?”

“Well, yeah,” he says, like it’s the dumbest question in the world. He touches my neck again. “I know it hurts you sometimes. I just thought it might help.”

With a pout, I wrap my arms around his waist, my face on his chest while I fight back the tears. His hand finds the back of my head and slowly strokes my hair. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah…” I say, picking at his shirt. “I don’t know. I just feel like I spend my days waiting for you to come home and as soon as you get here I’m kind of all over you. I just don’t want you to get sick of me or anything and today—” I break off on a sigh. “I just really missed you today, is all.”

He pushes me back a little and makes me face him again. He’s biting down on his lip but I can still see his smile forming. “And that makes you what? Sad?”

“Scared,” I admit.

“Why?”

I shrug.

He smiles wider. “Becca, I’m buying you herbal tea on my lunch breaks. I think about you all the time. I miss you like crazy when you’re not around. If anything, I worry you’re going to get sick of me asking you to hang out with me. I get it. It’s scary. But it’s mutual, right? So that kind of makes it okay.”

He doesn’t wait for a response, just leans down and kisses me softly. At first. But then his arms tighten around me and his mouth pauses on mine, before slowly lifting to a smile. His lips part and skim mine from side to side.

“Daddy?”

Josh groans, frustrated, and I can’t help but laugh. “Yeah, buddy?”

“I think I’m going to wee in da bed.”

“What?” Josh shouts, his arms tense. “ You’re going to or you have?”

Tommy shouts back, “I’m going to! No. Now I have!”

Ten minutes later, Tommy’s in the shower cackling with laughter while Josh changes his sheets, cursing, and glaring at me while I try to suppress my laugh. “It’s not funny!”

“I’m not laughing because it happened,” I say. “It’s the way he said it. So cute.”

He shakes his head and finishes making Tommy’s bed, then throws the old sheets out in the hallway. “I’m going to wash you and you’re getting right back in bed and going straight to sleep,” he tells Tommy when he walks into the bathroom.

Tommy laughs harder.

“Okay?” Josh says in his tough-dad tone.

“Okay, Daddy!”

I pick up the sheets and throw them in his washing machine and a few seconds later I hear Josh growl. “Tommy! I’m all wet now,” he huffs. I walk out just in time to see Josh’s shirt and jeans flying out of the bathroom. I take them, too, and bring them to the laundry room. I empty his pants pockets before throwing them in. After switching the washer on, I go through the scraps of paper and coins and that’s when I see it.

A note.

A name.

A number.

I stand, frozen, still looking at it when Josh walks in minutes later. “You doing my laundry?” he asks, and I can hear the smile in his voice.

For the first time, I’m glad I don’t speak often because it’s given me the experience to formulate proper words instead of just blurting them out like most people do. Only now, I can’t think of anything to say.

His hand settles on the small of my back as he looks over my shoulder. His breath catches—he knows he’s been caught. “Becca?” he says through a sigh. “It’s not what it looks like.”

Slowly, I turn to him and try to ignore the fact that he’s standing in front of me wearing nothing but boxers. I do my best to ignore the muscles on his shoulders, the ripples of his chest and the dips of his abs, and that perfect V of his that turns my insides to dust. I look back up at him and clear my throat. “Who’s Angela?”

He doesn’t skip a beat. “She’s just this mom from Tommy’s daycare. She invited Tommy over for a play date and gave me her number. That’s all.”

“So… what? You go to her house and drop Tommy off?”

“Well, no. I’d stay there while they played. I don’t feel comfortable leaving Tommy alone with someone I don’t know that well.”