“Well, I’m likely a better choice for that than Thomas.”
Shit, he hadn’t meant to go there, but her wording had raised his hackles. Like he was some kind of hands-on app to help Daralyn learn how to date.
Elaine’s lips pressed together, but before she could say anything, he closed a hand over hers. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t need to say that.”
“The truth is the truth,” she said.
He’d reversed their hands, was holding hers firmly. “I’m nervous, and that turns me into an inconsiderate jerk,” he said. “She matters to me, Mom. I’m not doing this as a community service.”
“I know.” Elaine took a breath. “I’m just…I’m trying not to do what I did with the two of them. Make you feel like I’m expecting something that doesn’t fit with what you truly want. Who you truly are.”
Fair enough. He should have known better than to react to everything through the lens of what was going on with him. That was a surefire method to convince himself he was being treated differently because he was in a chair. Sometimes yeah, it was that, but a surprising number of times, it wasn’t. It just took stepping outside his own head to see it.
“Think I should take her flowers?”
Elaine looked toward the kitchen table. She’d already assembled a small bouquet for him from her flower garden, the base in a damp paper towel wrapped with green paper, tied with a yellow ribbon. “Will that do?”
She really hadn’t meant what he thought she had. From the light in her eyes, he could tell she was genuinely happy about him and Daralyn spending the evening together.
“Thanks, Mom.”
“Anytime. I’m off to my book club. Have fun.” She managed to bite back, “Don’t be late” before she said it.
Once he’d passed twenty-one, plus achieved the physical shape where he could have lived on his own if he’d chosen to do so, he’d had a sit-down with her. As a grown man, his comings and goings were his decision. But because he knew she worried, he usually texted her his ETA, and updated it if it changed. A compromise, him respecting her love for him, and her respecting his age and independence.
But as she picked up her purse and looked at him, he could tell there was something else, and he addressed it. “I’ll have a care with her,” he said. “I wouldn’t do anything in the world to hurt her.”
“I know that, son.” She took a breath, gave him a quick smile, and slipped out the door.
He could feel her worry. For him and Daralyn both, and for so many things. But though he and his mother still butted heads at times, her care was a gift he’d learned never to take for granted. And not just for himself.
Daralyn had never experienced the gift of a mother’s love, not until she was fifteen. It had helped save her. For that reason and so many more, Rory would never give his mom too much shit for being a mom.
Finally growing up had given him the skills and resources to take care of those he loved. Which meant not just the obvious things, but their feelings, too.
When he didn’t see Marcus’s car at the house, Rory remembered he and Thomas had driven to Charlotte earlier in the day for some art party networking thing. They’d be back later tonight.
Daralyn was standing by the road waiting for him, something she’d have done to be considerate to him. Which he appreciated, but he’d be telling her not to do that in the future when he picked her up for a date. She deserved to have a man come to the door for her, just like any other woman.
The look of her got his heartrate going. Maybe there were more glamorous women in the world, but he couldn’t care less about that. She’d left her hair down, as he’d requested, and it was in loose curls on her shoulders and down her back, shorter pieces wisping around her face. She wore a yellow dress with a V-neckline and little buttons down the front. He imagined getting a glimpse of sweet curves cradled in lace when she bent over her menu. He didn’t think that in a creep kind of way. It was just another part of her he appreciated, that unconscious femaleness that made her Daralyn.
As he slowed next to her, he saw she also wore a gold necklace with a pendant on