The Strength of the Pack (Suncoast Society #30)(13)

“I pepper spray him.”

“Good girl.” He leaned in and kissed her forehead. “Then you run and call me, not Tilly—”

“Because prison orange isn’t Tilly’s color.”

“Exactly.” He stared down into her eyes. “But I have a good feeling about him. I’ve always liked him. He’s very…calming.”

“Yeah.” She wrapped her arms around him, hugging him. “Thanks.”

“For what?”

“For moving in here with Jesse. Maybe one day I’ll be able to live apart from you guys, but for now, I want Laurel with you two. She needs you two. I need you two.” She made the admission she suspected he already knew. “After what I did…honestly, I wasn’t sure if I trusted myself to be strong enough. I think I’m stronger now than I was, but…I’m glad you’re here.”

Leo stroked her back. “I told you, as long as you want to live with us, you can. And if you want to live here with someone else in the future, then great. Or we can always buy a new house, a larger one. Or build one. With the three of us, and the insurance settlement Ed’s working on, we could probably build a house with two separate master suites. Everyone can have their privacy.”

She looked up into his blue eyes. She would always love him, but lately, if she was honest with herself, she’d felt the shift from being in love with him to simply loving him. Especially when, every day, she could see the difference between him and Jesse from what she’d had with Leo.

Leo had given up so much to stay with her. He tried so hard. Even though she sometimes still struggled with anger over the whole thing, it was gradually getting easier to admit Leo was right to leave. She couldn’t expect him to live his life trying to fix her when only she could do that.

And as long as Leo had been there, carrying the weight of not only their relationship, but trying to buffer her from the world, she’d had no reason to change or chip away at the concrete cocoon she’d attempted to encase her painful past in.

“What if he thinks I’m batcrap crazy and decides he doesn’t want anything to do with me and it messes up you seeing him for treatments?”

“Whoa.” He stepped back and caught her hands and held them against his chest. “Stop. Do not let your thoughts go there, for starters. Don’t set yourself up to fail just because you expect you will. Secondly, you let me deal with my relationship with him. If on the off chance he decides that, well, there are other people out there who practice acupuncture. I honestly don’t think he’s like that. It would shock me greatly if he let a personal relationship get in the way of a professional relationship. Not after everything I’ve heard about him.”

She finally nodded.

He kissed her forehead. “Get going, sweetheart. You’ll be late.”

Jesse sat at the dining room table with Laurel. He was helping her with her math homework.

“You look pretty, Mommy,” she said.

“Thank you.”

“You going out on a date?”

Eva felt her face heat even as the two men shared a knowing smile. “I’m having dinner with some friends,” she said, leaning in to hug Laurel. It wasn’t a lie, it just wasn’t the full truth.

“Okay. Have fun.”

“I might not be back before you go to bed, so good-night. Love you.”

“Love you, too. Good-night.”

Leo walked her out to her car and gave her a final hug. “You’ve got this. It’s a baby step. No expectations, remember? Good or bad. Just go have dinner with friends.”

“Yeah. Dinner with friends.”

As she approached the restaurant fifteen minutes later, she kept repeating that mantra.

Dinner with friends…dinner with friends…

Yes, she’d gone out a couple of times with guys after Leo left her. The truth was, she’d never slept with any of them and never had any intention of doing so. They were more experiments than anything, for her to see if she was so horrible that no man wanted her.

Then Leo’s accident happened, and Jesse had forced her to take a cold, hard look at herself in a way she never had before.

She hadn’t liked what she saw there. Because she realized that she couldn’t hold on to righteous indignation and keep a moral high ground when she’d spent over twelve years using Leo as her emotional life preserver.

Literally.

June, Scrye, and Nate were standing outside the restaurant when she arrived. Scrye held one of those beepers they handed out to let people know their table was ready.

“Hey,” June said, offering her a big smile and a strong hug. “You’re right on time.”

“Good to see you again,” Scrye said, engulfing her in his embrace. Probably the only man she’d ever hugged who could make Leo’s hugs feel tiny by comparison.

“Thanks for coming to dinner with us.” Nate offered her a warm smile and she initiated the hug instead of making him try to figure it out.

It felt good hugging him. “Thanks for putting up with Tilly’s interference,” she said.

He laughed. “If I didn’t know her—and Eliza and June and Marcia—it might have been awkward. I sort of feel honored to know I’ve passed their muster. Like I’ve been admitted to Hogwarts or something.”