Right With Me - Stacey Lewis Page 0,52
of I don’t want her, but you can’t have her, so I just know he’s going to show his ass.
He's still sitting in his car when we pull up beside him to park and he doesn’t look our way, probably because Mitchell backs into the spot so he’s between us. I won’t deny I love him doing that. He’s putting himself in the middle like a buffer and protecting me from whatever bullshit my ex-husband decides to spew.
To get this meeting over with, I go ahead and get out of the car so I can let Connor out. By the time I set Connor on the ground, Mitchell’s beside me, taking the diaper bag out of my hand and carrying it himself. He also puts his hand in the small of my back when we start walking around the car to greet Seth, making it clear we’re a team.
Seth doesn’t get out of his car until we come back around to the area between the two vehicles. When he does, he looks Mitchell up and down with a disgusted sneer on his face.
The two men couldn’t be more different. Seth’s wearing a pair of light khaki pants, the last thing he should be wearing to chase a toddler around a park, paired with a pale blue polo shirt that I’m sure he picked because it matches the color of his eyes. His blonde hair is styled neatly, not a single hair out of place.
In contrast, Mitchell’s wearing a pair of faded, ripped jeans, the kind destroyed by lots of washes… not because he bought them that way the way Seth would. His shirt has the Harley Davidson logo on it and barely contains his muscular arms, and while his beard may be cleaned up, he still has it. His deep brown hair is just a shade too long and messy like he ran his hands through it while it was still wet but didn’t bother to even attempt to tame it.
Mitchell is the opposite of Seth in every way and until this moment I didn’t really notice. Not because it isn’t obvious, but because I’ve had other things on my mind than the differences between them.
The other big difference is size. Seth is lean, a runner when he chooses to work out, but one who doesn’t do any kind of strength-training, where Mitchell looks like he spends his time rolling those huge tractor tire things across the parking lot at his shop or bench-pressing hundreds of pounds in a gym.
Don’t get me wrong, he’s not huge, but his muscles are all clearly defined, and he has the body of a man who’s ten years younger than he is. Mitchell also has probably four or five inches on Seth, who’s only three inches taller than me. At least, that’s what he says. I’d say it’s more like one or two inches because we’re almost eye-to-eye.
“Hailey,” Seth says my name like it’s the last word he ever wants to say, or maybe just like he’s pissed I’m not here alone. That makes it harder for him to try to intimidate me, which is most of the reason Mitchell said he was coming. Maybe we should introduce my ex to his ex and let them make each other miserable.
Nah. I dismiss that thought quickly. They’re too much alike, they won’t ever get along.
“Hi, Seth.” I greet him but turn my attention to my son. “Look, Connor. It’s your daddy. Can you say hi?”
Connor ignores both of us, crouching down on the ground instead to run his toy trucks across the asphalt. Seth sighs, exasperated, and probably irritated by the fact that his son isn’t paying any attention, but he’s three. His attention span is about the same as a gnat’s.
When a few minutes go by and Connor still doesn’t acknowledge him, Seth turns his ire on me. “Really, Hailey? You’re just going to let him play in the parking lot where anything can happen to him?”
He did not just say that to me.
Before I can tell him to kiss my ass, I’m staring at Mitchell’s back because he’s suddenly standing between us. “Don’t even start, asshole.” His voice is a don’t-fuck-with-me growl that has the space between my legs turning damp instantly. I love that he’s standing up for me this way.
Letting Mitchell handle Seth would be great, but I know in the long run it will only make things more difficult because he won’t always be here to be the mountain standing