He nodded, all man of the house, and moved away.

I watched my kids handling this situation so splendidly, better than I was, and suddenly was overwhelmed with an enormous feeling of relief. Relief that I’d done such a good job raising them (admittedly with Conrad also being a good father). Relief that they survived the “hurricane” as Mickey described it and its aftermath and then settled right back into the great kids we’d raised.

This was coupled with the hope that if my kids could survive a stormy breakup of their parents and move on the way they did, that Mickey’s kids would do the same.

And taking this in, I was no longer a wreck. I was a woman in the warm, friendly home I’d created for my family, with said family and my handsome wonderful boyfriend having dinner.

I looked up at Mickey. “You want to take a seat while the kids and I start putting dinner together?”

“Rather help out,” he replied.

I beamed up at him.

His beautiful blue eyes moved over my face before I saw warmth and pride shine out and he lifted a hand to run his knuckles briefly along my jaw before he dropped it and asked, “What can I do?”

“Mickey, you can help me grill the buns and we’ll get the fries in the oven,” Pippa bossed. “Mom, you cut up the pickles. Auden, get out the cheese platter and coleslaw. And make sure you grab a serving spoon for the slaw.”

We all hopped to, moving around the kitchen doing our assigned tasks. While Mickey and Pip did theirs, he asked how she was liking high school and that was all he had to do. In mile-a-minute speak, Pippa answered, telling him even more than what I knew about how she felt about high school (in summary, it was awesome).

We got dinner together and were seated, Mickey at the end of the bar, me, Auden and Pippa down the front, and Mickey told my son that I’d told him Auden wrestled.

“Yeah,” Auden confirmed.

“You any good?” Mickey asked.

“Made all-county and won regionals last year,” Auden answered, his tone bordering between proud and humble.

My good son.

“You’re good,” Mickey muttered, took a forked-up bite of his pulled chicken sandwich (the only way you could eat it since it was piled high with cheese and slaw). He swallowed and his eyes slid to me. “And this is good.”

I grinned at him. “Thanks, honey.”

He gave me a moment to take in his eyes dancing before he looked back to Auden. “Obviously, you’re gonna wrestle again this year.”

“Yeah,” Auden replied. “We’ve already started conditioning.” He looked at me and teased, “You don’t have to come, Mom.”

I rolled my eyes at him and shoved a forkful of sandwich in my mouth.

“Why wouldn’t you go?” Mickey asked me.