Push

29. She Found Some Hope

GWEN

Toby and I settled into a new normal.

One or two days co-parenting around my new job had suddenly turned into over a week. Noah was adjusting to daycare. He caught his first-ever sniffle and was a miserable snotball for a day or two, but after extra cuddles and a night snoozing on Toby's chest, he was all tiny toothy smiles again.

I spent most of my time locked away in the study. Days were long but predictably dull—most of the time. The lunchtime dash across town to The Red Room—a strip club in Kings Cross—to hand over a new client contract wasn't exactly the shake-up to the daily routine I was after, though.

Liam only smirked when I shoved the papers at him. He looked more than comfortable as he lounged back at the head of a velvet-lined booth filled with the worst kind of men. Me? The quicker I got out of that run-down dive, the better.

"Temper, temper," Liam cooed. "I did warn you this might happen."

I leaned over his shoulder to keep our latest war of words just between us. "This is where you sign up new clients?" My skin crawled just looking at the stains on the scuffed wooden floor. "Explain to me why men want to do business here."

"Look around." Liam waved his hand absently at the haze as he scribbled his initials at the spot my finger was pointing. He had the fanciest fountain pen I'd ever seen. "The decor may be a touch outdated, but my client and his friends have hardly noticed. I believe men quite like looking at half-naked women."

"Some men," I pointed out. "You haven't even glanced at a single one."

Liam's chin lifted. A darkness clouded his cold eyes. "Shh, my clever Gwen. You notice too much." His lips curved into a smile before he whispered to me, "Keep that our little secret."

Whatever the hell that meant.

Toby was nothing like my boss. He never talked in riddles. He was easygoing and genuine and determined to keep himself busy every second of his forced vacation.

He disappeared sometimes. He went to his psychologist appointments twice a week, and he hung out with Zach. Mostly, he pottered about the house, searching for things to fix, before heading off to his favorite new hangout—the hardware store.

He went on a lot of trips to the hardware store.

One morning, he was hovering beside his car on the driveway. The passenger door was open, and he had his hand braced on the roof, scowling at... something. I balanced my KeepCup on my purse and bent over to unlatch the gate. Toby didn't look up. Usually, he'd wander over and start chatting about his plans for the day. Something was distracting him. 

I snuck up behind him and tapped his shoulder.

He shot ten feet in the air. He blinked down at me, shocked, before recovering to flash a smile. "Oh, hey!" He scrambled to grab a cardboard box off the front seat, then slammed the car door as if he couldn't shut it quickly enough. "How was your walk to the coffee shop?"

I shrugged. "Better than staring at an inbox full of boring stuff." I stood on my tiptoes to get a peek at what he'd bought. "What you got there?"

"Just a couple of things I needed from the hardware store." Toby squared his shoulders, chin held high, and proudly declared, "I'm fixing the side gate today."

"Cool." It was. That rusty old thing had never shut properly. One of the many joys of buying a house with 'nostalgic charm.' I craned my neck to see how much junk was needed to fix a gate. A lot, apparently. My eyebrows popped up. "Don't you have a hundred screwdrivers already?"