“Wow,” I whispered, and my whisper encompassed a lot of things and even more feeling and I watched Hop grin.

But his face got serious and his arms got tight when he continued, “You need to take two things from that. What you obviously took and that you do not bury shit because you’re worried about my reaction to it. You need to get it off your chest, lady, I’m here. It starts messin’ with your head, your sleep, your enjoyment of the work you do, that’s when I’ll expect to have our conversation. You down with that?”

It was my turn to grin but I suspected it was less of a grin and more a beaming smile.

“I’m down with that, Hop,” I agreed.

His eyes moved over my face and his grin came back. “Good. Now the dishes are done. You wanna watch TV or you wanna go upstairs and f**k?”

Fight over and the way Hop ended it, a way I liked, liked in a way I knew I could like for a lifetime, I melted into him and asked, “Do we have to go upstairs to f**k?”

He dipped his face closer and answered, “In the mood to dominate, babe, and not big on givin’ my old lady carpet burns.”

He was in the mood to dominate.

Yes.

It just kept getting better.

I smiled at him and slid my hands up so my arms could round his neck before I suggested, “How about we break in the couch?”

His eyes flared and his lips hit mine.

“That works.”

An hour later, I found Hop was right.

It worked.

We worked.

We so worked.

In a lot of ways.

Chapter Eleven

Safely Locked Inside

A week and two days later…

I was in my office and running late.

I had to go home, change, and then meet Hop and the kids at Beau Joe’s for pizza.

This wasn’t big but this was bigger than my “surprise” showing up at a dance recital.

I was meeting them there. This meant, even the kids at their ages would soon get that them seeing me occasionally at Chaos family events then suddenly seeing me everywhere meant something.

I wasn’t nervous, as such. I knew they liked me.

But liking me as Lanie, some woman their dad knew and liking me as Lanie, their dad’s woman, were two different things.

So even though I wasn’t nervous, I still kind of was.

To get home and change, I should have left ten minutes ago. But the new client was taking a lot of time, my day had gotten away from me (in all fairness, this had happened before the new client and it happened frequently) and I was considering, since Hop had his kids for the weekend, coming in on Saturday and getting caught up.

This wouldn’t exactly be breaking my rule of not working weekends since I was already breaking my habit of working late into the evenings.

I had Hop to go home to, eat dinner with, and go to bed with. With that to look forward to, staying late at the office had lost its allure.

I was closing down programs on my computer, at the same time shoving stuff in my purse when I sensed movement so I looked out my wall of windows.

At what I saw, my breath froze in my lungs.

Tack was walking my way, his eyes on me, his face serious.

Tack had been to my office on several occasions, usually when I had plans with him and Tyra to go out to dinner after work, which meant he always drove so Ty-Ty and I could tie one on if we felt in the mood. Therefore Tyra always came with him.

He’d never been here alone and unannounced.

He knew about Hop and me.

Oh God, he knew about Hop and me!

I sat immobile, staring at him walking my way, my insides inexplicably seized with panic.

His gaze never left me as he walked through the open door, but once he got inside, he greeted, “Hey Lanie.”

“Uh, hey Tack,” I replied. “Is everything okay?”

He stopped in front of my desk and answered, “You tell me.”

I blinked.

“I’m sorry?” I asked.

“You tell me, Lanie. Is everything okay?”

Oh God, he knew. Damn! He knew!

“I, uh…”

God!

What did I say?

Tack moved to one of my chairs, sat in it and again looked at me.

His voice was soft when he said, “Gave it time, babe. A f**kuva lot of time. After dinner at your place a while back, thought on it and decided I can’t give it more.”

Okay, now I was confused. That didn’t sound like he knew about Hop and me.

“Gave what time?” I asked.

“You,” he answered.

Right, now I was really confused.

“Me, what?” I queried and he leaned toward me, his eyes intense, searching but kind.

“You and Belova,” he replied and I felt my insides seize again. “You were not movin’ on. Years passed, you didn’t move on. Tyra, she was not good about this, babe. She might get pissed at me sharin’, seein’ as my woman doesn’t know I’m makin’ this stop, but you gotta know. She’s been worried and when I say that I mean worried. She just didn’t know what to do. She didn’t wanna say somethin’ and set you off. She didn’t wanna not say somethin’ and watch you waste your life away. Now she’s even more worried, that photo’s gone, what that might mean. And you haven’t said shit about it.”

Oh.

This was about the photo.

“Tack—” I started and he shook his head.

“That path, Lanie, that path that leads to healing, you can get blinded, think there’s only one path to choose but there isn’t. There are lots of different paths but some of them don’t lead to healing. They lead to other shit that is not good and, darlin’, you’ve been on the wrong one.” He leaned into me and his voice dipped quieter, rougher, “Trust me on this, I know, watchin’ you go through it and watchin’ my daughter go through it.”

I swallowed.

About a year ago Tack’s girl, Tabby, had lost her fiancé suddenly in a car crash only three weeks before their wedding. It was tragic and Tabby put on a brave face, but everyone knew she was suffering. How could she not? But with that brave face, it was hard to know what path she was on.

Unless you were as observant as Tack.

He leaned back and kept talking, “Shit you endured, Red, me, all of us had to put on kid gloves with you. I don’t wanna freak you but, that frame gone, means you made a decision, a decision you aren’t communicating about, so those gloves gotta come off.”