And after they made up, they’d stop hiding things from him so his mom could protect him like she did when that bad guy effed her over so bad.

Then…

Then…

Then Merry would be around all the time.

And she’d finally be happy.

Chapter Nine

Hangin’ in There

Cher

Wednesday Morning

I was in my living room, vacuuming, an activity that for some reason in a house with only a thirty-four-year-old woman and a ten-almost-eleven-year-old kid living in it, had to happen more than once a week.

As was my way, to take my mind off something that was not my favorite activity, not to mention it was right then officially a week (and a couple of hours) since I’d let loose on Merry, fucked up everything between us, and I hadn’t seen or heard from him at all, I had my music up loud.

I liked rock ‘n’ roll.

There was some guitar-twanging country that didn’t drive me up the wall.

But my personal little secret was that I was a diva queen.

I certainly had a gift with banging my head to some Quiet Riot.

But with my vacuum in my living room, I was a goddess ready for the Vegas stage, belting it out with the likes of Aretha, Tina, Whitney, Donna, Linda, Janet, and Cher (the other one, who could actually sing).

And at that precise moment, I was killing it, accompanying the fabulous Celine in her version of “River Deep Mountain High.”

The music was too loud with a dual purpose. First, I loved that song, and it needed to be loud so I could hear it over the vacuum. And second, it drowned out my voice so I could kid myself about the fact that I could accompany Celine without sounding like a howling cat who would make the real Celine take off running on her two-thousand-dollar Valentinos.

I was preparing to let go of the vacuum in order to have both my hands free to do the air bongos (something that any living being should do when Celine’s bongo guy lets loose on that track) when, suddenly, the sound cut out completely.

I looked to the receiver in my media center. Then my senses, no longer being interfered with by the brilliance of Celine, refocused and I whipped around.

Merry was standing by my coffee table, my remote in his hand, looking at me, mouth curled up in a smile, his tall, lean body shaking with silent laughter.

Fuck, I hadn’t locked the door after I came home from taking Ethan to school.

Fuck! How had I forgotten to lock the damned door when I came home from taking Ethan to school?

Fuck! He knew my diva secret!

Fuck, fuck, fuck! He’d heard me singing!

I turned off the vacuum.

“Celine?” Merry choked out.

I stared at him.

“You, my brown-eyed girl, who’d see Tommy Lee lookin’ at her rack and smack him across his face for bein’ forward, causin’ him to write a song that’d have millions of women throwin’ their panties at him, listens to Celine fuckin’ Dion?” he asked.

His brown-eyed girl?

Garrett Merrick’s brown-eyed girl?

Me?

Garrett Merrick, estranged from me because I’d been a foul-mouthed, overreacting crazy lady, was standing in my living room calling me his brown-eyed girl?

I kept staring at him.

Then I whispered, “You’re here.”

The humor fled from him completely, his handsome face turned beautiful, and he replied, “Got your text, baby.”

My insides convulsed.

My text?

Oh shit, had I somehow accidentally sent my text?

Before I could play my life in rewind to figure out how that might have occurred, Merry bent and tossed my remote to the coffee table and walked my way. When he got to me, he pulled the vacuum out of my hand, swung it aside, and got in my space, chin dipped into his neck to look down at me.

“Your apology was sweet.” He grinned a small grin. “Your brand of sweet, considerin’ you dropped the f-bomb twice givin’ it to me. And I appreciate it, Cherie.”

Cherie.

Not Cher.

Not the dreaded Cheryl.

He gave me back his Cherie.

A weird but not unpleasant warmth I’d never felt started to creep over me.

“I appreciate it, but you didn’t need to give it,” he went on, lifting his hand to cup my jaw and bending so his face was closer to mine. “I knew before I left that you were sorry.”

I stared into his blue eyes that were looking into mine, communicating amazing things.

Somehow, that text got sent and there he was, in my living room, accepting an apology I didn’t know I gave.

Here was another boon that life had thrown at me.

And before I could think better of it, I latched on ferociously.

“I overreacted,” I blurted on a whisper.

The pads of his fingers dug into my skin gently. “I get that.”

I held his eyes and gave a careful shake of my head so I wouldn’t lose his hand on me. “No. Ethan and me…the way things have been…how our lives are…” My quiet voice dropped quieter. “I only ever get his mornings guaranteed.”

“I get that, honey,” he repeated. “I stepped over a line. It might not have been right how you communicated that, but that doesn’t mean you weren’t right to be angry.”

I gave another cautious shake of my head. “No, I was totally out of line being that ugly.”

“Cher, you love your kid and that’s your time. Lots of shit is goin’ down, not the least of which I was pushin’ at a time when I should have been goin’ gently. You’re you. You reacted like you and like the mother you are. It happened. It’s done. You apologized and I’ve admitted I didn’t play that right. We’re movin’ on.”

That was good. I wanted that. I wanted us to move on. I wanted the quiet understanding he was giving me. I didn’t want him to be angry. I wanted him back in my life.

I also wanted to explore where his manner was saying we were going.

But what I needed was to get him to understand completely.

“It was ugly and it might have been right why I did it,” I told him. “But it was also wrong. Ethan talked to me about it and he liked havin’ you around.” I saw a flare in his eyes I liked, but I didn’t take time to let it register deep. I had to get this done, so I powered forward. “He liked you two doin’ somethin’ together to look out for me. He gets that I look out for him all the time and he’s a good kid. He wants me to have that sometimes too. And he liked doin’ that with you for me.”

Merry didn’t say anything, but he did glide his thumb along my cheek to edge the bottom of my lip and then back.

That meant he actually did say something, and what he said was unbelievably sweet.

I fought pressing my lips together or leaning in and pressing everything to him.

It was difficult, not only with his touch but the soft way he was looking at me. Another something from Merry I’d never gotten from another man in my life. And I was glad. I was ecstatic. Because staring into his eyes, getting that from him, if I knew that kind of thing existed and I went for days, weeks, years not having it aimed at me, I didn’t know if I could keep breathing.

This feeling caused me again to blurt out more words.

“I texted you the next day.”

I lost the look as his brows drew together in confusion.

“I didn’t send it,” I told him quickly. “I erased it. But I apologized. I explained. Then I erased it all.”

The look came back, and in those mere seconds from losing it to getting it back again, I became a junkie, knowing down to my bones I’d do anything—any-fucking-thing—to get that look as often as I could aimed at me.

So I kept fucking talking.

“I texted you more. I told you I’m worried I’m not feedin’ my kid right. I told you I tried to get him to eat carrots. I told you that didn’t work.”

Humor mingled with that look in his eyes and, fuck me, that was even better.

“I told you other stuff too,” I shared. “I texted you all the time, without texting you.”