Toren grinds his teeth. I can see the shock and hurt in his eyes, but I tell myself that I don’t care. Maybe right now, it’s true, and I’ll be able to block it out when the adrenaline wears off too.
“I was protecting my son,” I hiss. I reach for the first thing I can find, which is the basket of utensils. I curl my hand around it menacingly, and Toren’s eyes widen like I’m going to shove a spoon up his nose or attack him with a butter knife. “Your mom did an incredible job raising you,” I go on, pushing every button I know he has, not because I want to be cruel but because it’s unavoidable. Telling the truth was always something I did well. “You wanted to be the exception, different from your father. You wanted to be the exact opposite of that man. You wanted to be like your mom and hold your family together. You wanted to choose hope, you wanted things to work, and you never wanted to give up. You wanted to get it right until you didn’t. It was like you woke up a different person overnight, and none of it mattered to you anymore. I didn’t matter.”
“So you wanted to punish me.”
“No.” My fingers clench the utensils so hard that they ache. “I wanted to protect my child. I thought him never knowing you would be far less hurtful and harmful than if he did.” There, I said it.
Toren isn’t prepared for that blow. His mask, which isn’t a black silk or lace mask like the servers here have, isn’t strong enough to withstand it. He stares me down, breathing so hard that the table is literally shaking with every in and out movement of his big chest. And then, his anger slips. His stormy eyes cloud up, and something I’ve never seen happens. Raindrops. Tears. They roll down his cheeks.
Holy pickles. This is Toren Cromwell. Ridiculously intelligent, silent, educated, powerful, successful, rich, and broody. This is the man who broke my heart without blinking. I mean, he probably did blink because that conversation went on for a good twenty minutes or longer when it happened, but he did keep a stony expression. He’s as big as an old freaking New Orleans historical house. He’s also hard when he wants to be, and soft if you know how to reach those parts, but it’s easier to reach in and pull a rat out of its secret lair twenty feet down in some ancient sewer than it is to get to his soft spot. He closed up the good bits of himself long before he broke up with me, and I should have seen it coming, but I was too naïve, hopeful, and in love. This is Toren Cromwell. The ex-love of my life, father of my child, and a man I thought was bulletproof because he threw on all those vests to keep himself safe. Toren Cromwell, in short, is normally impenetrable and unflappable.
And now, he’s sitting at a table across from me with his face wet and eyes leaking, and he’s doing it openly all over the place.
Did I seriously just make Toren Cromwell cry?
And why is the lobster at the next table looking at me with such lobster-like disdain in its dark, beady, little, already cooked eyes?
CHAPTER 4
Toren
Well, this is mortifying.
Something is happening with my face. It feels like it’s on fire, and there is eye leakage happening. I haven’t done this in…well, good gravy, I can’t even remember the last time it happened. And now it’s happening. In public.
“Oh. Oh, jeez, I…” Luna is looking at me in horror. All her steamy rage has melted away, and now she’s just concerned and sad.
I can say I brought every bit of this on myself, but it’s still over the top embarrassing that I’m having a moment here in the middle of a restaurant that smells like salty, garlicky crustaceans and lush lobster. Oh, and mistakes. The stench of those hangs heavy in my nostrils. Actually, that’s about all I can smell.
Luna acts fast, grabbing the napkin dispenser at the edge of the table. She rips out a wad and passes it to me like I’m bleeding out all over the place, and it’s a matter of life or death.
Right then, the humiliation gets real.
Because suddenly, an older woman is turning around from the table beside us. She passes Luna a tissue out of her purse and smiles at me softly, like she would a kid who just fell down and scraped his knee. “There, there, sonny, it’s going to be alright.”
Luna passes the tissue over as well as if the napkin was not enough to staunch whatever is coming out of my eyes.
Right as I reach out to curl my hand around it, an elderly man walks past our table. He’s stooped heavily over a cane, and he looks to be about a hundred and twenty years old. I think he’s just going to go past us, but he stops and turns. He has the largest blue eyes, the baldest head, and the sweetest smile. “Darn, son, that was a messed up thing you did, but mistakes are meant to be learned from. I’m sure you’ll treat this special lady right in the future.” He grins a huge, toothless grin at me that is nothing short of utterly adorable, then turns and nods at Luna.