“Okay, then do I look like a man who wouldn’t recognize he’s got what he wants when he finds it?”

Ohmigod!

My chest started burning and I forced out another, “No.”

Mitch held my eyes and drew in a short breath.

Then he said, “I’m not talkin’ about tomorrow. I’m talkin’ about January. I was already thinkin’, come November, it was time for me to make a move. That wasn’t about you but now you and those kids are in my life, it’s become about you so you’ll need to be in on this. Shit goes down between us that’s not good, which, baby,” he gave me another squeeze, “is not gonna happen, then you all still have your place. But if it doesn’t, six months from now or before, if we’re ready, you either jump your lease or give it up and we keep on keepin’ on but in a house we own where we got privacy and those kids do too.”

I stared at him.

Mitch allowed this for two seconds then prompted, “You with me?”

“You think I’m a Ten Point Five,” I blurted on a whisper.

His brows drew together again and he asked, “What?”

“Or, at the very least, an Eight,” I blathered on.

“Uh, baby…what?”

I stared at him some more.

I felt his arms around me while we were standing in my bedroom. A bedroom his sister helped me decorate. A bedroom where his kickass sports jackets and shirts were in my closet, his boxers and socks in my drawers and our conversation was about moving in together even though we’d semi-kinda-already moved in together.

So I let it all hang out.

“You’re a Ten Point Five,” I informed him.

“Baby…what?” he asked, slightly confused, slightly impatient, slightly annoyed because, I figured, he knew what I was saying.

“Mara’s World has zones, Ones to Threes, Fours to Sixes and Sevens to Tens,” I told him quietly, his face registered less confusion more annoyance but I powered on. “You’re a Ten Point Five.”

“Mara –”

“Mom convinced me I was a Two Point Five.”

Mitch fell silent but he did this while his face darkened ominously.

I studied his face before I felt tears stinging my nose again and I whispered, “I’m not a Two Point Five, am I?”

“No,” he stated, firmly and immediately.

My eyes went unfocused as my mouth breathed, “I’m not a Two Point Five.”

Then I felt his hand glide up my neck into my hair and I refocused to see his face super close.

“First, honey, people are people and every single one of them is different. You wanna classify them, okay, but in the real world people do what they do, each one making their own decisions which define their lives. Some are good, some are bad, some are a combination of both but every single one is different and they’re subject to change. So, second, the decisions you’ve made in your life define you and if you can’t look inside and see who you’ve created then you need to open your eyes, baby, and look around at the people who care about you and see through them who you’ve created. If I need to make my point by talking about this bullshit classification you’ve come up with then, no, you are absolutely not a Two Point Five. You are nowhere near a Two Point Five and to say it pisses me off even more that your bitch of a Mom and those assholes in that town you grew up in twisted your head to make you think your whole life you are is putting it mildly.”

He was right. Lynette said it. Mr. Pierson acted it. Roberta did too. LaTanya, Derek, Bradon, Brent…even Billy and Billie loved me, trusted me, liked being with me and weren’t afraid to show it.

And neither was Mitch. In fact, from the minute he walked into my house to look at my faucet, he gave no indication whatsoever he thought I was a Two Point Five, just that he not only didn’t mind being there but he wanted to come back for pizza.

Oh God! I was such a dork!

Therefore, I replied, “I’m a dork.”

Mitch shook his head while looking at the ceiling, his arms going way tight then he looked at me and stated irritably, “Jesus, Mara, you are not a Two Point Five and you are also not a fuckin’ dork. Somethin’ else, it does not make me happy to hear you talk about yourself that way. And, last, you gotta look out for two kids and they gotta learn to have confidence in themselves, to make the right decisions in order to define their lives the right way and the person who needs to teach them that is you. You can’t do that, baby, if you don’t see who you are and how beautiful that woman is.”

“You’re annoyed with me,” I pointed out the obvious.

“Uh…yeah,” he confirmed the obvious. “But I’ve also had more than my fair share of experience with people and with women…”

Hmm. He could say that again, especially the latter.

Mitch kept talking.

“And I’m clued into the fact that no matter how hard I can make you come, no really good orgasm is gonna erase your perceptions of yourself and replace them with how I see you. I know what I got on my hands. I also know that most women who look like you have their heads up their asses in a different, far more annoying way. So the bright side is, what happened to you, even though you’re as beautiful as you are, you’ll never think your shit doesn’t stink. And I gotta say, sweetheart, I get your sweet, I get your attitude, I get your mouth and I get all that without conceit and you thinkin’ you can lead me around by my dick, so this is not a bad thing at all.”

“Well, it’s good you can look on the bright side,” I muttered, my eyes sliding to his shoulder and then they flew back to his face when he burst out laughing, his arms closing around me so tight the breath went out of me.

Then he quit laughing, his arms loosened (slightly) and his face got in mine. “Been seein’ a lot of the bright side for a little over a month now,” he whispered and I got a belly whoosh.

“Mitch –” I whispered back.

He cut me off saying, “We got kids to feed. So, gettin’ back to the matter at hand, me buyin’ a house, you and the kids in on that, are you with me?”

I stared into his gentle, soulful eyes, eyes I’d woken up to every morning for over a month, eyes I wanted to wake up to every day for the rest of my life and I knew I was with him. I was with him then, I’d been with him since the first time I told him I was weeks ago and if I could manage it, I would be with him until I took my last breath on that earth.

“Baby, are you with me?” he prompted.

“Yeah,” I agreed softly.

“Good,” he whispered, I smiled then he asked, “Ready?”

“Yeah,” I repeated.

“Break,” he murmured, touched his mouth to mine then let me go and walked into the bathroom.

I turned and finished rearranging my drawers but I didn’t do it crying.

I did it smiling.

* * *

Although things had settled down and…well, just plain settled in huge and significant ways, there was one cloud over our literal and figurative sunny days and this was Billy.

Mitch was right; Billie didn’t care where she was or what she was doing just as long as the people around her that she loved were happy. She didn’t need to blossom, her Teflon-coated delight in the world was invincible.

But something was up with Billy.

He stuck to one, the other or both of us like glue. He was often asking Mitch to toss a ball with him (and Mitch did). He asked Mitch or me to help him with his homework every night. He asked me to teach him how to do the laundry. He did the dishes. He helped make dinner. He kept his room tidy. He dragged out the vacuum and vacuumed the entire house. He inventoried the cupboards and wrote stuff on the grocery list. If you were at the store, he’d dash through the aisles to grab stuff so you wouldn’t have to push the cart down each one. If Billie started to get tired and irritable, he fawned over her. If I was tired, he offered to read her to sleep.

If he was with me and Mitch wasn’t around, he asked about Mitch all the time. Where was he? What was he doing? When was he coming home? Didn’t I think Mitch’s hamburgers were the best? Wasn’t it cool how Mitch could do multiplication questions in his head without writing anything down?

After our first date, four times in one day he asked when he and Billie could go back to Penny’s house to spend the night. Then, two weeks later, when Mitch and I had another night on our own with Sue Ellen looking after the kids, when he got home the next afternoon he asked twice when they were again going to Sue Ellen’s.

Then, three days ago, Mitch and I were having an inconsequential tiff in his SUV, about what, I didn’t even remember. The kids were with us and I felt something rolling through the truck that made me feel weird. I turned to look into the backseat and I saw Billy staring out the side window, his profile hard, his teeth clenched, his hands in fists, his shoulders bunched but his lip was trembling. He looked terrified and near tears.

It alarmed me and I immediately quit having terse words with Mitch, gave him a look and jerked my head toward the back. Mitch’s eyes went to the rearview mirror then they went to the road and his jaw got so tight, a muscle jumped there.

Later, in bed, Mitch pulled me on top of him and stated, “You get pissed, I get pissed, we have our words private, not in front of the kids.”

“You saw it then,” I whispered.

“Yeah, I saw it.”

I told him something I guessed he already knew considering he was a cop and very insightful, “He’s not right, Mitch, something is wrong with him.”

“You live bad, sweetheart, you taste good, you’d do anything to keep it. You know that.”

I really did.

I nodded.

Mitch continued, saying softly, “He’s terrified.”

I bit my lip. “Yeah,” I agreed then asked, “Should we talk to him about it?”

Mitch studied me but he did this thinking.

Then he said, “Don’t know. He thinks we cottoned on, might cause more anxiety. We play it cool and give him day to day good and steady, he might relax.”

“I’m going to talk to Bobbie at work about it,” I told him and it was his turn to nod.

“I mentioned it to Slim,” he informed me, surprising me. “Slim caught on when we played catch, though it was hard to miss.”

Slim was Brock, Mitch’s partner’s nickname.

Brock was good. Brock had two boys. Brock probably had a wealth of experience.

“And what does he say?”

“He says if he thinks we cottoned on, it might cause more anxiety. If we play it cool and give him steady, he might relax,” Mitch said on a grin.

“Great,” I muttered and Mitch’s arm gave me a squeeze.

“Our play, we give him two weeks. He doesn’t settle in, we talk again and decide who talks to him. You with me?”

I smiled and whispered, “Yeah. But if you ready, break me, I’m going to protest the play.”

His head tilted on the pillow and his lips twitched. “Why’s that?”

I pressed my body into his and told him, “Because I’m comfy.”

“Sweetheart, you can’t sleep on me,” he pointed out.

“Who’s talking about sleeping?” I asked and his eyes flashed.

Then his hands moved. Then my hands moved.

Then our mouths and tongues moved. Then other parts of us did the moving.

By the time we broke, I was way more comfy, in fact, I was nearly catatonic. But, even so, I got up and cleaned up, put my nightie and panties back on and Mitch tugged on his pajama bottoms. We got naked, obviously, but we didn’t sleep naked. It wouldn’t do for Billie to come in and puke and us to be in our birthday suits.

This concerned me. I’d been scheduled for my foster care classes and CPS had not been around again, although Mitch had informed them of the situation with my apartment and told me I could probably expect another visit when we returned to it.

But I didn’t know how they’d feel about me sleeping with my boyfriend every night with the kids in the same house. Even if that boyfriend was nice guy, good guy Detective Mitchell James Lawson. I didn’t need them to have any reason to shake up the good and steady we were giving the kids.

So, curled into Mitch, I sleepily shared this concern.

To which, Mitch, not sleepy at all, replied, “Anyone tries to take those kids from you, Mara, they deal with me.”

I blinked at his shadowed chest then lifted my head to look at his shadowed face.

“Pardon?”

“You got enough to worry about, don’t worry about CPS. I don’t know where they stand on shit like this but they hear you got a sleepover boyfriend and try to place those kids somewhere else, I’ll create a shit storm like they’ve never seen. So don’t worry about it.”