Page 65 of Designed for Disaster

I crossed the room, kissed her on the cheek, then slid into the chair. She passed me a page from the newspaper. I had no interest in reading it as I kept her company, my thoughts too heavy. “How’re you feeling?” I asked.

“Oh, fine,” she said. I knew she was lying. She lifted her phone in my direction. “Look at these.”

It was a group chat between Dee, Piper, Chloe, and Cora. An errant part of me wondered if Natasha would one day be part of the group. Then a horrible thought entered my mind, and I wondered if Dee would even be around long enough to add her.

“The girls have been sending me photos from yesterday,” Dee explained. “Doesn’t Hailey look precious?”

I tried to focus on the pictures, to be present with Dee at this moment and not think about losing her. “We should frame that one of you and Violet.”

“I agree.”

We scrolled through the rest of the photos. Natasha and I featured in a lot of them, too lost in each other to even realize there were cameras pointed our way. I’d clearly spent too much time wrapped up in her and not enough time keeping an eye on Dee. That didn’t seem to matter to Dee though. She simply beamed down at the photos.

“They look happy, don’t they?” Dee said, pointing out Stacy and Dominic in one of the photos. “She’s a nice girl. You know she’s a costume designer?”

I nodded. “You don’t think it’s a little soon for him to be moving on?”

“No,” Dee said simply. “They seem to get on well. She was positively doting on Hailey yesterday. What would be the point in Dominic denying himself that happiness?”

“I obviously want to see him happy. I guess I just got used to seeing him unhappy all the time, thanks to the custody drama. It hasn’t been that long since the divorce finally wrapped up. I figured he’d be happy to fly solo for a while.”

“Life doesn’t just stop moving when we lose something,” Dee said.

I swallowed hard, glaring at the wall across the room. I knew she wasn’t talking about herself, but I couldn’t help thinking that lifewouldstop when Jimmy and I lost her.

“He’s closed the door on Amanda. If Stacy’s here now, why not see where it could go? Love doesn’t operate on any kind of timeline,” Dee said.

No, the only one with a timeline here was her. I gritted my teeth. “I guess.”

She reached out and squeezed my hand. “Soon none of my Lost Boys will be lost anymore. Especially you.” She looked deeply pleased at the thought.

“I wouldn’t say I was lost,” I muttered.

“Oh, please.” Dee waved off my comment. “Natasha’s brought you to life. I’ve never seen you more excited to get into the office or to talk about furniture lines.” She lifted her hand, placing it on my cheek. It was soft and weathered and wrinkled. She seemed so fragile. My heart clenched. “I’m so glad you haven’t let your past experiences keep you from finding love, Trent.”

Yeah, sure. Whatever. As long as I glossed over the whole fake part of my relationship with Natasha, we could say I’d been looking for love. I cleared my throat. “Well, I had a terrific example in you and Papa Davis. Even if things weren’t as great at home, I always had you two to look up to.”

“I’m glad we could give you that,” Dee said. “I know how much you struggled.”

I shrugged off her comment. “It’s ancient history now.”

“But we carry that history with us whether we realize it or not. And I think it’s important you do acknowledge that, to make sure it doesn’t affect your relationship with Natasha.”

She’d been there to comfort me through my breakups with Tessa and Katie, but I knew she wasn’t thinking about them. No, she was referring to my parents.

They’d never had much interest in parenting. Growing up, they’d always been cold, dismissive. Distant. Work was all that mattered to them. They figured they’d done their parental duty by hiring nannies and housekeepers to make sure I was fed and clean. They would mostly just check in to make sure I was keeping my grades up and not doing anything to embarrass the family. By the time I was a teenager, I started acting out on purpose just to get a reaction out of them. I’d thought that negative attention would be better than no attention, but insteadof cracking down to get me to toe the line, they just washed their hands of me. Without Nana Dee and Papa Davis, I’m not sure where I’d have ended up.

Jimmy was the oopsie baby, conceived during a “second honeymoon” where they tried to patch up their failing marriage, away on an island, far from all the other women Dad wouldn’t stop screwing. But instead of bringing them together, Jimmy just gave them another reason to snipe at each other until everything finally fell apart five years ago.

“I’d never treat Natasha the way Dad treated Mom,” I snarled, disgusted at the thought of his rampant, flagrant cheating. “Or the way Mom treated Dad.” Mom wasn’t a cheater—she was a needler, picking at every flaw, every insecurity. Turning everything into a fight. They’d both poisoned their relationship in their own ways, and I wanted none of it. Just like I wanted nothing to do with either one of them.

Dee patted my hand. “I know. I’m so proud of the man you’ve become, even if I wish your parents had done more to help you along the way.”

I snorted. “I’m glad they didn’t. I was better off without them. I’d be even better off now if they’d go back to leaving me the hell alone.”

Dee let out a sigh. “I think it’s hurt their pride, how well you’re doing with the company after they had to be kicked out for running it into the ground. They just want to feel like they’re still a part of things—and the only way to do that now is through you.”

“There’s no way I would ever follow any advice from them,” I scoffed. “But if they’dtakesome advice from me, it would be tostop calling me and start calling Jimmy. He’s the one who could really use some love and support right now.”

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