Downfall(54)

It took him a second, but eventually he turned his hand over so our palms slid together. I was beginning to really like the rough feel of his skin against mine. It made touching him tangible and real. It proved he was more than a dream, more than a figment of my imagination. I was still having a hard time believing that someone like him existed, but when we touched, it made him seem more attainable and human.

“My name is Solo, and it’s always been fitting. I’ve been a one-man show for a long time. I’ve never been much for teamwork, but I will try to do better in the future.” He shook his head slightly and muttered, “But if I think something needs to be done for your own good, I may move without asking you first. I don’t care if you end up hating me, or if it means we don’t end up together. If you’re safe, if nothing happens to you and Noble, I can live with the consequences of acting first and asking later.”

I sighed again and briefly closed my eyes. He was a steamroller and I was a dandelion. “Like I said, I know your heart is in the right place and that makes forgiving your high-handedness fairly easy. I would like it if you took a second to put yourself in my shoes. A conversation is all I’m asking for and I don’t think it’s an unreasonable request.” I didn’t tell him there was no way I could hate him. I hadn’t been able to from the start, even when all of my instincts told me I should.

“It’s not unreasonable. I’ll try to do better in the future, but for now, will you please stay here for a few days until we have a solid game plan on how to deal with Vincent?”

I nodded. “Yeah, we can stay for a few days, but I don’t want to hear any complaining when you see how much stuff you need to get from my apartment to keep Noble entertained.”

He finally chuckled under his breath. “Deal.”

We both jumped and cranked our heads around toward the back seat when Noble ordered, “Stop fighting. Fighting is bad.”

I guess we’d allowed our voices to get a little louder than we should have.

I gave my daughter a reassuring grin and reached out to pat her chubby little leg. “We weren’t fighting. We were just talking about something important so it sounded very serious.”

She gave me her three-year-old version of a scowl and kicked her legs. “I don’t like it when you’re mad at each other.”

Solo chuckled again as he levered himself out of the driver’s seat. “Me either, kiddo. It’s pretty much the worst. Wanna have a sleepover for a few days? It’ll be really fun.”

Noble gave him a skeptical look as he poked his head in the backseat and started to unbuckle her from her seatbelt. “Can Riley come?”

Solo paused for a second and shot me a look. I shrugged, leaving him to deal with the pitfalls of a sleepy, grumpy toddler on his own. Noble was far better at putting him in his place than I would ever be.

“Uh, we’ll see if she can come see you one day, but you aren’t going to be here for very long, so you might have to wait to see her until you go back home.”

I hid a smile behind my hand when Noble immediately went into tantrum mode. There were tears. There was kicking and screaming. There were tiny fists waving in the air. And there was a grown man looking like he wanted to run away and hide from the fussy toddler as she continued to wail at him. Solo wasn’t afraid of anything, but he looked terrified as he handed Noble over to me once I finally got out of the car.

He looked at me with huge eyes as I rubbed a soothing hand up and down Noble’s back. I lifted an eyebrow in his direction and told him, “If I could get away with it, I would act exactly the same way when you tell me what to do without asking my opinion first.”

He sighed and dragged a hand down his face. “Point made. We’re on the same team from here on out. Let’s go upstairs and you can give me a list of what you need. I’ll stop and bring some dinner when I come back.”

Noble was still having a fit so I nodded at him and continued to whisper nonsense to my daughter. I told her everything was going to be okay and assured her we wouldn’t be away from home for very long. What I didn’t tell her was we were finally on a winning team for once, and eventually the game I’d unwittingly dragged her into was going to be over.

She was the trophy. One neither Solo nor I had any intention of letting the other side win.





Solo



Orley wasn’t kidding when she said Noble was going to need a shit ton of stuff for a few days. I felt like I cleaned out the little girl’s entire room by the time I was done collecting everything on the list. The other side of that coin was the very few things Orley listed for herself. She really did always put Noble first, and I should’ve known that squirreling her away without running the plan by her first was going to backfire. If Orley only had to consider herself, I had no doubt she would go with the flow and defer to whatever idea was best; she was too smart and too afraid not to. But when her child was involved, she turned into an immovable wall, impossible to get around and hard to break through. Noble was lucky to have someone so determined in her corner. Her mother was not only going to look out for her entire life, but more than that, she was going to teach her how to advocate for herself. I couldn’t remember the last time someone who was so much smaller than I was physically stood their ground and refused to budge, even when I pushed them. Orley was so much stronger than she appeared to be. Tougher than she gave herself credit for.