Page 64 of Sacrifice the Knight (Checkmate 6)

“Um…” His question brings me up short, since my whole world has revolved around teenage pregnancy, which isn’t something I particularly love about myself. I love my son, but my choices were dumb. “Uhh… I love to cook?”

He chuckles and turns back to study my profile. “Is that a question?”

“No. I really do love to cook.” I play with his fingers and think back to a lifetime ago. “I was hosting tea parties since I was two and never stopped after that. I was the fourteen-year-old who invited her friends over so I could cook and serve. We were young, and my friends probably wanted to be outside flirting with boys or whatever, but they still came to my home when I asked because I cooked really nice meals.” I think back to my apron, frilly and silly. “I just wanted to make people smile with food. But everyone stopped coming over once I hooked up with Zeke. I haven’t hosted much of anything in a long time, and the most extravagant meals I cook now include burgers with homemade relish.”

“But not lemon zesty sauce?”

I laugh. “Definitely not. Lemon zest is just the relish’s hooker cousin pretending to wear fancy shoes. Relish takes actual skill, cooking, testing, tasting.” I meet his eyes. “You’ll be eating relish for the rest of your damn life, because if you step out and order the slut burger, you won’t live a day beyond that anyway.”

I love the way his lip curls up in silent laughter and the way his eyes flicker and scan my face. He reaches across me and snags a carrot stick. Dipping it, he brings it to my lips and allows me to take a bite. “Now I can serve you.” He follows the carrot with a kiss. “For tonight only,” he whispers, “let me serve you. Then tomorrow, we can argue over the slut burger.”

I chew as elegantly as I can with a man just two inches from my mouth. “Okay.”

He grins. “Okay. Now tell me something else. Something from your heart.”

“Uhh…”From my heart.“Okay. Well, when you say heart, you make me think of my son and my daddy. And since you already know Mac, I’ll tell you about George.”

He smiles as though to saygo onand offers another carrot stick.

“George Blair is probably my best friend in the whole world. Not the kind of best friend where I told him I had a date tonight, or that I’m regularly hooking up with you in dark places, but the kind who would support me no matter my choices. He’d do anything to make me happy or safe. He was straight up bad news when he was a teen, so he knows how to whack a dude with a pipe and walk away. He was raised on Eazy-E, Mac Dre, and Ice-T.” I meet his eyes with faux intensity. “Daddy’s got ninety-nine problems, but his daughter having a boyfriend ain’t one of them.”

“Jesus.” Eric chuckles. “Eazy, too?” He taps his temples. “I’m taking notes and watching my back. I’m not fucking with an OG gangster. They’re the worst kind.” He pauses and studies me with sparkling eyes. “Mac looks like your dad. And the way he speaks to me is kinda reminiscent of the rappers of the nineties, no?”

I laugh, reveling in the way my stomach hurts because I’ve been doing so much of it lately. I don’t remember the last time I smiled so much. “He really does look like my dad. The genes are strong in our family, and apparently, so is the behavior. I don’t know a single Blair who isn’t headstrong, stubborn, and annoying as hell.”

Eric leans forward and drops a gentle kiss on my lips. “Me neither.”

I smack his shoulder but say nothing, since I walked straight into it. “Okay, so George Blair…rumor has it, before I was born, he was pretty wild. Racing cars, bedding women, drinking too much, all that sorta stuff. He had friends and a whole life before me. But when he met my mom, apparently it all went away.” I lift my hands in front of me in a gentle shooing motion. “It was like fog clearing under a sunny sky; he pulled his shit together and straightened up for her.”

“What was your mom’s name?”

“Leah.” I smile. “She was a girl he knew when he was a little younger, but she moved away and never gave him a second thought. Once she was gone, and he thought she was never coming back, he went on with his womanizing ways.”

“But she came back. Was it love at second sight?” He chuckles.

“I think it was unrequited love at first sight, to be honest. I think she was his true north all along, and he was floating, aimless the whole time he was without her. She came back for some reason, so he figured, now or never. He romanced the shit out of her, and voila, here I am.”

Laughing, he pushes up onto his elbow and faces me. His stubble is a week’s worth of growth, but trimmed and neat. His lips are moist and remind me they know exactly how to make me beg for more. But his eyes, they’re watchful. They see everything, and as he studies me closely, he makes me nervous.

“She’s not around anymore? Your mom?”

“No, she died a few years ago. They kept saying how they only had one kid because they hit the jackpot first time around and never needed to try again.” I nibble on my bottom lip in thought. “It’s a cute story to tell, but Daddy doesn’t mention the part about ovarian cancer. Like if he doesn’t say it, then it isn’t true.”

And just like that, Eric’s dancing eyes darken with sympathy. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.” I reach across him and take back my wine. “She was actually a living miracle. She lived much longer than they said she would. So between treatments and work, our little family kind of just holed up together and enjoyed our time as a unit. The friends Daddy had from his wild years kind of fell away as everyone got busy with their own things. Barbecue invitations stopped coming because the answer was often no. Not because he didn’t love his friends, but because if Mom wasn’t feeling up to it, there was no chance in hell Daddy would leave her so he could have a burger and a beer. His friends had kids before he did, so they were already busy. One of his best friends in the whole world, his housemate from forever ago, like, the guy he’d lay his life down for, died in a car accident in his thirties. And that sent Daddy into a kind of spiral. The kind of spiral that might include drugs or alcohol or whatever for some men, but for Daddy, it meant he had to spend as much time with Mom as possible, no matter what.” My black sense of humor raises its ugly head. “I always wondered if she let go in the end just to get some ‘me’ time.”

Thankfully, Eric chuckles and doesn’t consider me a total freak.

“George Blair was insanely in love with his wife, and she was sick for a long time. It wore on him, so in the end, I wonder if it was almost a kind of relief.” I meet Eric’s eyes. “You know what I mean? Relief that the exhaustion could end, that the sickness could be put to rest. He didn’t want her to go, but at the same time, he was tired. She was tired. We were all so tired.”

I take a slow sip to give myself a chance to breathe. To break up my sad story with something else. “I was so sheltered my whole life, I swear; I was born in that apartment. Literally,” I add when his eyes widen. “And I’d barely left. We were just inside people, busy soaking up every minute of each other. The only world I knew outside of that apartment was school, so when this bad boy swaggered in and smiled at me, I figured that was my chance. My daddy was a bad boy, and my mom tamed him, so I kinda figured this was the beginning of my own great romance.” I snort. “Not so. My daddy lived kinda dangerously, but he was never a bum. Whereas Zeke was straight up stupid, but not so stupid that he couldn’t see I was an easy target. So… I slept with an idiot… Just because. ” I shrug. “And that’s how we got Mac.”

I blow out a laughing breath. “Wow, you said to tell you something good. Uh… My point through all of my rambles was that my dad is my best friend, because even though I hurt him, even though I disappointed him, and even after my mom passed, and he was kinda broken, he still picked me up. He helps us march on. Because forward is the only direction we can go.He’s never judged me. He never coddles me because he knows it would piss me off. He’s there if I ever need help; he’s my confidant–”

“But not about your dating life,” Eric interrupts.

I laugh. “Right. Definitely not about that. There are some things he doesn’t need to know about me.”

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