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)
And although I had Darius’s number, and I texted him every day, and spoke to him just because on occasion, and he always took my calls and never left my texts hanging, we were no closer to the important things.
Like telling his family he had a child.
Like telling my family he was in my life.
Like introducing him to his son.
Oh sure, I had excuses.
First, it was having a kid and studying for my degree and having a full-time job, and those were all good excuses.
Then, it was my kid growing up and getting into activities, while I was still studying for my degree and having a full-time job while shuffling him to peewee football and junior basketball and piano lessons (don’t ask me, my mom made us do it, Liam hated it, but we both promised her two years, and he was closing in on the end of year two, so we just had stick it out).
Then it was interning, and a full-time job, and a kid, and activities. Then having a new job and needing to put in the hours, which were extensive, to make myself part of the team.
In the mix of all that was keeping a house, groceries in the cupboards, good, cooked food on the table, time with my boy and his homework, laundry, the oil needing changed on the car, yadda, yadda, yadda.
I mean, life was life. It was full. Things got away from you.
But this was getting ridiculous.
“They’re worried,” Toni said.
I mentally shook myself out of my thoughts and asked, “Who’s worried?”
“Your mom and dad,” she said, eyes across the way on her hubby, who had little Talia on his hip.
“Worried about what?”
She looked to me. “That you don’t date. That you work and hang with Liam. Hang with Tony and me. Hang with Lena. And go home alone. And you do it like it’s all good for you, when they don’t know it is all good, because the man you love is in your life in a super weird way, but still, he’s in it. And I gotta say, they know you took a big pay bump when you got your new job, but you were living pretty large on a court reporter’s salary, and they aren’t dumb.”
Oh boy.
She kept at me.
“Then you put the money down on that new build in Stapleton, whomp! Down payment on a brand-new house in a cushy development, and you didn’t even blink.”
Maybe I hadn’t been as smart as I should have been about using Darius’s support to take care of Liam and me.
On the one hand, if I’d made us go without to keep it from them, Darius would lose his mind.
On the other hand, no way was I going to accumulate tens of thousands of dollars in my panties drawer and make my boy go without.
Okay, so maybe that was the same hand.
But I probably should have pretended I won the lottery or something.
“I think they’ve figured it out,” she muttered.
“Oh my God,” I whispered, horrified. “You think they have?”
Slowly, she turned her head to face me. “I respect them, Malia. And I’ve been lying to them by omission for years.”
I bit my lip.
“I love you,” she went on. “And I gotta trust you know what you’re doing, but something’s going to break on this, and your family is good people. They don’t deserve this deception.”
I felt badly, I truly did.
But I knew what I was doing.
I hoped.
“I bought a nanny cam,” I told her.
“Say again?” she asked.
“I bought a nanny cam. It’s Eddie who breaks in and gives me the money.”
“Whoa,” she said.
“I left a note for him last time and told him to stop breaking in and stay for a beer. He wrote back, ‘We’ll see.’”
Toni’s gaze was far away, keeping company with her thoughts. “Love my man, but I could do a beer with Eddie.”
Yeah, via the nanny cam, I learned he just got better with age.
But we needed to focus.
“I can tell them that,” I suggested. “If I tell them, they’ll know what I know. It’s from Darius. And maybe, when the time comes, they won’t…have a problem with him.”
“When the time comes for what?”
“When the time comes we can be a family.”
A guard slammed down on her face, but her mouth didn’t quit moving.
“Are you holding out for that, sis? Because, sure, I can see that. You love the guy. But also, no. He’s got it made. He comes and gets his business, then he goes, no strings, no commitments.”
Oh no.
Now I was getting mad at Toni.
Or maybe I was getting mad at the situation because it was dragging on forever.
But still, I was getting mad at Toni.
“You don’t know how it is.”
“Do you?”
That was the ten-million-dollar question.
I looked away and took a sip of my mojito.
“Unh-hunh,” she mumbled.
“That envelope I get every month doesn’t say no strings, no commitments,” I sniped.