Page 72 of Long Road Home

I fear I’d said something wrong, but there wasn’t time to ask because Toby declared the last waffle done.

While they plated the finished breakfast, I grabbed silverware from the drawer and spread the bamboo placemats onto the table. Jordan brought over the orange juice. Toby carried a platter of waffles stacked sky high and beneath that, three plates for all of us.

We settled at the table. Tears, thankful and grateful and oh so damn hopeful ones, burned my eyes. I looked to my lap and sniffed them back. Hid them. We’d had meals together before, planned ones. Ones with Jordan’s family. This breakfast. This moment was different. This was a family waking up on Sunday morning to waffles and casual togetherness.

“Mom?”

I blinked harshly and grinned at my boy. “Breakfast looks delicious, honey.”

“You okay?” Cute, black ten-year-old boy brows wrinkled together on his forehead.

“Yeah.” My gaze slid to Jordan and back to my boy. My grin shook. “Yeah. I’m happy.”

“Get eatin’, bud. We’ve got balls to go hit when we’re done.”

My head swung toward Jordan. His voice had gone hard and rough, startling me.

The look on his face startled me more. It was as intense as his voice. Harder.

But there was something else there, a heat simmering in his eyes that lit a spark south of my waist.

Yeah. He was happy, too.

He winked at me and cut into his stack of waffles.

Toby mumbled, “Right,” and shoved a bite of waffle into his mouth.

“Hit some balls?” I asked still stunned by Jordan. This meal. My kid taking everything in stride. Could it be this easy?

Warmth fluttered in my stomach.

“Yeah.” Toby talked with a mouth full of waffles, too excited to remember his manners. “Jordan said he’d teach me how to golf.”

“You can come with us,” Jordan said, “I can teach you, too.”

He could barely throw out that invitation without laughing.

I had the athleticism of a drunken one-legged monkey. “I’ll pass.”

“Probably for the best,” Toby said, not bothering to hide his laughter. “Mom would probably break a club. Or the windows behind the driving range.”

I pointed my fork at him and glared. “Watch it, kiddo.”

He laughed harder. “It’s true.”

At the end of the table, Jordan snorted.

“Don’t you start.” I glared at him.

He threw out his hands, well one of them. A fist bump went in Toby’s direction. “I didn’t say a word. But it does seem our boy knows you.”

Toby gaped at him and his laughter died immediately.

The air was sucked out of the room. The intensity of the moment, draining all of us dry. That he not only thought it…but hesaidit. So easily. Like he’d said it every day for the last decade and we’d done this very thing a million times before.

My chest stung, overheated with the need to throw myself into his arms, onto his lap, kiss him crazy and thank himsodamn much, repeatedly, because he’d made this so easy for all of us, like we all fit together andthis was meant to be.

“Yeah.” I winked at Toby who was still staring at Jordan. He was having a hard enough time holding onto his emotions. So clear on his face, his struggle, that need to know his dad and be loved by his dad.

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