It was one of those moments you can only have when you’re looking at your own child and thinking, Well, here it is, this is who my child is, and no matter what happens, how they mess up, or what mistakes they make, as people invariably do, I am looking at a decent human being.  I raised a good person.

Pride could be as profound a thing as love.  In its own way, just as powerful.  And God, was I proud of my boys.

It wasn’t lost on me how ironic it was, the pride I took specifically in Raf’s sensitivity.

When he was young, it had manifested early.  As early as three I could remember him just suffering when he saw anyone else in pain, even if it was just a scraped knee.  If he saw another kid get hurt, he was the one that would set up the second ear piercing scream, and I’d run to him, ask him what was wrong.  He’d always say something, in the serious little way he had, something like, “I don’t want my friends to get hurt,” or, “Do you think they’re okay?  Will they be all right?”  Or when he was a little bit older and protective of his kid brother I’d get random outbursts of, “I don’t know what I’d do if something ever happened to Gustave.”

He was the sweetest boy, but it had worried me endlessly how keenly he felt the suffering of others.

But live and learn.  What a beautiful person that too sensitive soul had turned into.

“Will you put in a good word to Gustave for me?” I asked him.  Gustave, my youngest, was more stubborn, less accepting than Raf, but Raf had a way winning him over to his point of view.  “I know . . . the age difference and the suddenness of it all.  It would be totally understandable if it freaked you guys out.”

“I’ll tell him.  He’ll be fine with it, Mom.  I promise.  He—we both just want you to be happy.  There’s not one single thing in the world I want more.”

I turned away from him, busied myself, put my mug in the sink, rinsed it out.  I didn’t want him to see that he’d made me tear up.  He hated, more than anything to see me cry.

But he was silent for so long that I knew he’d seen it.

Without even looking at him, I moved into him, burrowing into his chest to give him a hug.

He’d outgrown me when he was fifteen, but to this day, I marveled at how much taller he was than I was.  I was not by any means short, but he could still fit my head under his chin.

He squeezed me back.

“I love you, bud,” I said into his shirt.  “Oceans deep.  Rivers wide.”

“I know it.  I love you back.  Just as much.  And Gustave is going to take this better than you think.”

“I hope so.”

“I know so.  And it’s a good thing, too, since I invited Heath to have dinner with us here.”

“You invited him to dinner?  Here?  With the family?

“Yeah.  I like him.  I think he’s good for you.”

Did my son have terrible instincts, and I’d just never noticed it before?  Poor judgement on a scale that was until now, unknown to me?

Certainly, where Heath was concerned, I knew I was operating at less than full capacity, as far as brain cells went, but that had everything to do with the fact that I couldn’t be in a room with him and form more than a few coherent thoughts in a row.

What was Raf’s excuse?  What did he see in Heath that made him trust the guy and want him in his beloved mother’s life?

I didn’t think Heath would ever hurt me.  Wrong or right, I felt he wouldn’t.  Felt it deep in my womb, the place where my deepest instincts were grounded.  But that didn’t mean I thought he was a nice guy or even a normal one.  I knew something was up with him.  I knew he was dangerous in a very fundamental and literal sense.  He’d told me so himself, and I knew there was plenty he hadn’t told.

And Raf wanted him to attend a family dinner?  Even the thought was ridiculous, for so many reasons.

“I don’t think he’d be up for that,” I told him, because it was the easiest, shortest way to end the conversation.  Because it was true.

“He said yes.”

Or not.

“What?” I asked, thinking I’d misunderstood.

“Tonight.  I volunteered to help you cook, but he called dibs as your sous chef.”

I honestly thought at first that he was messing with me.

Heath came out from the back of the house right then, fully dressed now and called out, “See you tonight, Raf,” as he walked out the front door.

Unless they were both messing with me, it looked like this was happening.  Tonight.

So much for spending the day in bed.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Raf left a while later, promising to be back for dinner at six.  I’m not sure if I was just being paranoid, but the way he said it sounded ominous.

I am being paranoid, I quickly decided.

I found myself in my closet, wondering what the hell a woman wore for a day like this.  I’d never introduced my boys to anyone I was dating, for obvious reasons.  Most of their lives, I’d been married to their father, and after that I’d been on only a few casual dates with no one special.

And now this.  What was this?  Boys, meet the man I’m sleeping with who, though I’m borderline obsessed with him, may or may not still be around a week from now.

Ideally, I could have avoided this altogether.  Well, maybe that wasn’t ideal because that would mean Heath was gone for good.  But certainly, if I had any luck at all, I wouldn’t be dealing with this quite so early on in a budding relationship with a volatile, unpredictable man.