Total pages in book: 59
Estimated words: 75754 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75754 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Although I was happy to have those, and would need them to access my driver’s license and bank accounts, it would’ve also been smart of me to grab my purse that was on the same damn hook.
“Watch your step,” a man said in front of me.
I looked up and smiled at the man.
He was wearing a black polo and jeans, and on the black polo it denoted him as a member of KPD SWAT.
“Thanks,” I said, stepping down off the curb.
“No problem,” he muttered.
I kept walking until I arrived at the bus stop that I’d spied last night, then took a seat.
My car had been totaled right along with my house, and with only liability insurance on it, I wouldn’t be getting a new one anytime soon.
I watched as car after car drove by, so lost in thought that I didn’t realize some man had stopped his car in front of me until he finally yelled.
“You need a ride?” He asked.
I blinked.
The man looked familiar.
Very familiar.
“No thanks,” I said automatically.
Then with a shake of his head, he left, and I was left to contemplate the cars once again.
I wondered how long it would take the bus to get here.
Couple of hours? Twenty minutes?
I was in Shreveport; surely the bus ran constantly.
Then the bench shifted as someone sat, and I looked over to see the man who’d stopped his car in front of me earlier.
“I saw you at that club, Halligans and Handcuffs, the other night,” the man started.
I nodded. “I saw you, too.”
And I still thought about the man, even a week later.
There was just something about him that had me curious.
He reminded me of someone from my past, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
“So I did some research and found out you worked there,” he said.
I nodded.
Did work there. In the past tense.
Not that he’d know that.
I also couldn’t figure out why it didn’t freak me out that this man had stopped to talk to me, and had looked into me.
I just knew that he was a good man.
A nosy one…but a good one nonetheless.
“Okay…” I said.
My bus chose that minute to pull up, and I stood. “Well, I gotta go. It was nice talking to you.”
However, I dropped right back down on my ass the moment the next words came out of his mouth.
“And I realized that you were who I’d been looking for fifteen years,” he said. “My daughter.”
***
My father looked down at the cell phone that hadn’t stopped ringing in over thirty minutes.
“You gonna get that?” He finally asked.
I shook my head.
I’d turned it on to look the man, Able Spiers, up.
He was an oil man who was worth tens of millions of dollars, if not more.
And I’d grown up dirt poor.
I’d gone to college on student loans…and unsurprisingly still had them even though I’d been on the inside for years.
I ignored Sterling’s phone calls.
“Can you say that again?” I asked.
I was sitting at a table in Cracker Barrel, stunned beyond belief.
The man in front of me with his strawberry blonde hair, and gray eyes just like mine, was the man I’d been hoping for since I was a young kid.
A man that never showed when I needed him.
A man that I used to lay in bed at night and think about saving me from the monsters of my past and present.
“I have a trust fund for you…it’s something I’ve been putting into an account for you since I knew you were mine,” the man said.
I ignored the ‘trust fund’ part of his statement for the more important part.
“You knew I was yours? How?” I asked sharply.
And if he’d known…why didn’t he look for me? Why was I left to suffer in a foster home with parents that didn’t want me?
“Your mother. She told me about you, and then gave me a sob story about how you were scared of your own shadow, and that I should get to know you first, let you trust me before we told you that you were mine,” he answered.
“Listen, Able,” I said. “I don’t know what you think is happening here, but it doesn’t inspire hearts and flowers in my soul to know that you knew about me but didn’t try any harder to find me.”
“I tried for the last fifteen years, darlin.’ I just couldn’t find you. Your mother…whatever the fuck happened to her…was dead, and nobody knew where you were. All your mother’s neighbors never even knew she had a kid,” Able said.
I rolled my eyes.
My mom was a whore at the best of times. And having a kid cramped her style.
She didn’t like people knowing she had a kid.
‘Kids ruin your pussy,’ she’d say. ‘Gotta make them think that you’re not here.’
Which was also why I never got toys, and rarely ever went out during the light of day.
Something I still remember vividly to this day.
When I started school, once I was abandoned, I was very behind on my learning. So behind that I had to start school in the third grade instead of the fifth.
But I worked my ass off to get back on track, something that I got complimented on quite a lot when I was trying to get back to my grade.
I even managed to graduate six months early, which, for me, was quite impressive.
Guess anyone could do wonders if they’re let out of their house.
“That’s true,” I amended. “My mother didn’t like letting people know I was alive.”
I didn’t want to ask why my father had known my mother in the first place.
It was bad enough to know that someone like this man slept with someone like my mother.
Had she trapped him? Forced him? Blackmailed him?
The list of possibilities was endless, and I hated that my ‘father’ had fallen for my mother’s shit…just like man after man had fallen.
My mother was what you’d call a ‘manipulative bitch.’
She was good.
So good.
She knew how to act to get the maximum attention from any man.
She could walk into a bar and instantly know which man was the richest in the room, and after studying him for only minutes, know exactly what to do to get him to latch onto her.