Free All He Ever Desired by Shannon Stacey

her, the thought of seeing Ryan again made her feel jittery, like a schoolgirl who knew she’d see the boy she liked as they passed between classes.
    But it was Andy Miller who walked Nick out to her car and leaned against her door. She rolled down the window while her son got in the passenger side. “How’d he do, Andy?”
    “Pretty good. Ryan had him painting shutters—so, nothing too physical, but it was nothing the rest of us wanted to do.”
    “Good. The more tedious the work, the more reluctant he’ll be to get in this kind of trouble again.” She glanced sideways at Nick, but he was smart enough to keep his eyes on his hands.
    He was quiet all the way home, actually, and it worried her. Feeling guilty and being contrite, she expected, but she didn’t want him to beat himself up, either. And they didn’t dwell on things, as a rule. If there was a crime, there was punishment and they moved on.
    “My dad went to the lodge,” he said as she pulled into their driveway.
    “Today?” Why was Dean at the Northern Star?
    “Ryan said he wanted to pay for the damages, but he wouldn’t take the money.”
    Lauren didn’t think Dean had that kind of money to waste, but his son working off a debt to Ryan Kowalski probably dinged his pride. “Did you talk to him?”
    “No, he was leaving when I went around the front of the house. He peeled out, too. Gravel went everywhere.”
    So he’d left mad. “Don’t worry about your dad. You’re doing the right thing now and that’s what’s important.”
    That seemed to pep him up a little, and he told her about his day at school while they ate the stew she’d dumped in the slow cooker that morning. They’d be using that a lot, she thought, until Nick was let off the hook at the lodge.
    “Do you have homework?” she asked when he went straight to the television after dinner and turned on the game system.
    “I did it at the lodge. Rose checked it for me.”
    She didn’t think he’d lie about that since it was too easy to get caught, but she made him show it to her anyway just so he’d know she was watching. Then she went down to the basement and started another load of laundry before going back out to the car to get the book she was reading from the backseat where she’d tossed it.
    The cell phone in her pocket rang as she reached in and she almost hit her head on the roof of the car. Muttering under her breath, she pulled it out and looked at the incoming number. It was Ryan.
    She desperately hoped he hadn’t changed his mind about Nick, because she really needed new snow tires. Even if she and Dean went halves on the damages, it would be tight. “Hello?”
    “Hey, you busy?” Even if his name hadn’t come up on the caller ID, she would have recognized his voice. It was the one that made her shiver.
    “Nope.” She grabbed her book and went to sit on the front step. “What’s up?”
    “Dean stopped by today.”
    “Nick told me. Said he sprayed gravel everywhere when he left, too.” She stopped herself before apologizing for it. Dean’s behavior wasn’t her problem.
    “He wasn’t happy.”
    “He’s probably embarrassed and doesn’t want to feel like he owes you.”
    “You never told him.”
    It took a few seconds for his words to sink in, and when they did, she caught herself clenching the phone in her fingers. “You told him?”
    It shouldn’t matter. She and Dean had been divorced for eight years, but she felt guilty for not having told him at the time. She should have let him know. What Ryan had done was wrong, plain and simple, and Dean had a right to know.
    But there was some guilt because she’d thought about Ryan—started playing the what-if game—while still married to Dean. When things were tough, she’d think about that day and imagine saying yes. She’d picture their home and the big backyard for Nick, and she’d imagine Ryan holding her in bed instead of belching and falling asleep like her husband. It was safe and