Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 82060 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82060 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
“I could have given you money,” he bit out.
“I don’t want your money, Darius,” I retorted. “I wanted you to be Liam’s father. Which was why I was at the bar for Shirleen to see me tonight. It’s time for you to be his father.”
“I’ll get you money, how much do you need?”
“Darius—”
He threw a hand my way. “You got this, obviously. You don’t need me.”
All I could do was stare.
“There were ways, woman,” he went on. “You made your choice, don’t put that shit on me.”
“You can’t be serious,” I whispered.
“I didn’t disappear for three fuckin’ years.”
It felt like he’d punched me in the throat, the pain so bad, I couldn’t speak.
And the look that came into his eyes, the look of disgust…no, revulsion, nearly brought me to my knees.
He was also whispering when he said his last.
“Fuck, the one person in my life I didn’t think would carve a piece out of me cut off the biggest piece of all.”
And with that, he walked right past me and out the door.
* * * *
Three days later…
The envelope was on my kitchen counter when Liam and I got home that evening.
It had my name on it, written, and I didn’t recognize the handwriting.
Inside, in fives, tens, twenties, a few fifties and two hundreds, was three thousand dollars.
I could buy a toddler bed with that money.
I could feed both of us for three months with that money.
I was still furious at Darius. How our conversation went three nights ago was not okay. This wasn’t about him. It wasn’t even about me. It was about Liam.
I was so furious, I wanted to take that money to that bar, hand it to Shirleen and tell her to tell Darius from me he could go jump in a lake.
The thing was, this wasn’t about me.
It was about Liam.
He needed a toddler bed, and he was going to need a room that it would fit in.
So I took the cash, stuffed it in my underwear drawer and went about my evening, making dinner and being certain my kid didn’t figure out how to pull the childproof plug from an outlet and electrocute himself.
Chapter Three
Playground
Rock Chick Rewind
Still some time ago, but not as much…
“Do I need to make my feelings about where we’re standing right now official?” Toni asked.
I didn’t move from my position of leaning against the trunk of my car next to Toni where it was parked at Shirleen’s bar on Colfax.
I also didn’t answer.
“Okay, don’t get mad…” she started, but didn’t finish.
However, her words made me take my laser beam stare off the front door of the bar and turn it to her.
“What?” I pushed when she still didn’t speak.
“I kinda talked to Tony about…you know.”
As fate would have it, the guy we met the last time we were here was named Anthony and went by Tony.
It was cute, Tony and Toni.
It was also good, since Tony might hang out at rough bars, but he was a good guy and way into Toni, so they’d been seeing each other for the last four months.
Though, it was bad because now Tony knew Toni was only twenty, which meant he was not down with her going to this bar for two reasons. One, it was illegal, and two, he was protective and didn’t want her anywhere near the joint.
What was also not good was that I knew what “you know” meant.
This was why my voice was pitched two octaves higher when I asked, “You talked to Tony about Darius and Liam?”
She shook her head.
“No. Not Liam. I just asked him about Darius. I was real casual, I promise,” she didn’t quite assure me. “I said I was friends with him back in high school, since, you know, I was, and wondering after what went down how he was doing.”
Okay, maybe this wasn’t so bad.
And now I was interested.
“What did he say?”
It appeared she didn’t want to say what she was going to say next, but she said it.
“He said steer clear. He didn’t know him back then, but now, he’s one serious bad dude.”
I turned my attention back to the front door because I already knew that. The “bad dude” leaked all his bad dudeness all over my living room four months ago.
I’d also come home to an envelope sitting on my counter like clockwork the first day of every month. The first two were three grand, the last two were four.
All cash.
“So, you know,” Toni went on, “he made it clear he was in for child support, which is good, right?”
I didn’t answer, because I’d told her all about Darius’s visit, and the envelopes I kept getting, and it didn’t need to be said that fourteen thousand dollars in cash was good when you made a salary that was semi-kinda okay for one but didn’t really stretch to two.