was losing control of its direction. Despite her best intentions, she found herself flirting back with him, playing the game, encouraging him. He made it too easy to let down her guard. And that night on the phone made him too hard to forget.
But it was all fantasy. She had to remember that.
Pike was not some single dad down at the PTA meeting. He wasn’t some guy looking to date her and see where things went. He was a drummer in a successful band. A guy who toured the country and most likely the beds of many, many women.
She had to get that message through to her misguided libido. It was easy to trick herself into thinking Pike was some normal, dateable guy because she was seeing him out of his element. Hanging out at her house, eating in dive restaurants, volunteering at a charity. But this wasn’t his life. This was a small diversion in between his real-life activities.
This needed to be a strictly professional relationship. Tomorrow, she’d take Reagan to his concert. Reagan would love it, of course, but Oakley was going for herself, too. She needed to see the real Pike, remind herself what that world was like. This had already gone way too far. And it probably had less to do with Pike and more to do with the fact that she’d shut down this side of herself for so long.
Now that interest was stirring again, maybe she needed to open herself up to dating. Regular dudes. Guys who would take her to dinner and a movie. Ones who would bring her flowers—not send her a box of nipple clamps and butt plugs.
She inhaled a long breath, feeling better now that she had a plan, and sat up to shove all the toys back into the box. Tomorrow she’d fix the Pike situation. Tonight she’d take a necessary leap.
She grabbed her laptop from her desk and sat on the bed. She had a little while before she needed to sign in for her shift, so she opened up a site she’d never thought she’d visit. Perfect Match. She’d seen the commercials enough times to know it was a pretty popular one. Before she could let herself chicken out, she opened up an account, uploaded a pic, and filled out the profile information. When she was done, her finger hovered over the button that would make the profile active.
Nerves crawled up her throat. She’d never truly dated in the normal sense. The only long-term relationship she’d ever been in had been bent from the start. And after that, she’d been a teen mom. Not exactly the type who’d be hot on the dating market. She’d tried a few years ago to go out with a guy she’d met at the grocery store. Things had gone well for a while, but then he’d asked about her night job when her schedule kept interfering with dates. She’d been dumb enough to think honesty was the best policy. He’d been so disgusted, he’d left her in the restaurant to finish her dinner alone.
Hell, maybe she wasn’t even capable of sustaining a real dating relationship. She had no idea. But she only had five minutes before she needed to take a call, and this was how people did it now, right? She closed her eyes and hit the button. A perky dinging sound let her know her profile was live.
She kind of wanted to vomit.
But she didn’t have time for a full-scale freak-out. Work awaited. She closed the window for the dating site and signed in for her nightly shift.
Strangely, there was some comfort in putting on her headset tonight. This was predictable. Safe. Once she was on duty, the only men she needed to worry about were the ones who were paying.
They could be annoying and needy and misogynistic, but at least they couldn’t rip out her heart when the line went dead.
Oakley eyed the concert tickets she’d set on her bedside table as the first call connected. She’d take care of everything tomorrow night. Life would get back to normal.
Whatever that was.
Oakley squinted through the orange rays of the setting sun, keeping an eye on the two kids in front of her. Reagan was bouncing on the balls of her feet and rapidly talking with her younger cousin, Lucas, as the stage crew turned over the set between bands.
“Mom,” Reagan said, peeking back at her and talking too loud, “I can’t believe you’ve never taken me to one of these. This is awesome!”
Oakley pointed to her ears. “You still have your earplugs in, baby. You’re talking loud.”
“What?”
She waved her hand. “Never mind.”
Reagan gave her a toothy grin and turned back toward the stage.
“She really loves this stuff. It’s like she’s on some music high,” Devon said from beside her. “You used to be like that. Remember when you had that complete breakdown after Mom found your Alanis Morissette CD and confiscated it? It was like you’d lost your religion.”
Oakley tucked her hands in her back pockets and smirked at her older brother. “And she made me go to church every day for two weeks to pray for forgiveness. I didn’t really know what most of those songs were talking about at the time, but I felt them in my bones. I knew I needed to write music like that.”
“You were an angst factory for sure. I think Mom still blames Alanis for your defection from the righteous path.”
“Yeah?” She bumped his shoulder. “And what does she blame your defection on?”
“Group showers at church camp? George Michael?”
She rolled her eyes. “Right.”
Devon shrugged, his blue eyes shifting toward the stage. “Nah, she only blames me. And maybe Jake Walton, the neighbor she caught me making out with behind the cow pasture when I was sixteen.”
“God, I had such a crush on him. He had these lips …”
Devon smiled broadly, adjusting his baseball cap over his dark hair. “Yes, he did.”
“It’s not nice to gloat. And good thing Hunter isn’t here. You look a little too wistful about young Jake Walton.”
“Nah, Hunter wins on every level. But you never forget that first one, that first time.”
Oakley went cold at the words and wrapped her arms around herself. Not everyone remembered their first relationship so fondly. “Yeah.”
Devon made a sound under his breath. “Damn, sis, I’m sorry. I didn’t think …”
She put her finger to her lips and shook her head, reminding him that Reagan was only a few feet away. “It’s fine.”
Devon was one of the few who knew the whole story. The ugly one. The one she hoped she’d never have to tell her daughter. Of all of her six brothers and sisters, he was the only one who she trusted to love her no matter what, to listen without judgment. Her other siblings were good people, but they hadn’t strayed from the very conservative lifestyle that her parents had raised them in. Home-schooling. Church. Unbendable rules about right and wrong.
Most of them still lived within a hundred miles of her parents’ farm in Oklahoma. Only she and Devon had bailed. Devon had gotten a scholarship to attend college in California and had moved out before her parents could realize that whole kissing-a-boy thing hadn’t been a drunken whim but a life plan. And Oakley had followed him out to California shortly
