Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 77415 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77415 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
My momma didn’t raise no quitter.
But first, I sent his old phone a text message just for good measure.
I might not be able to say to him in real life what I was thinking, but over text messages I sure as hell could.
I fucking hate you so much right now. I miss you, and you’re so close that I can practically taste you. Stop being so mean to me.
***
Jessie
I watched her walk away from me in the rain, then looked behind me at her car into the backseat where I could see her belongings packed to the very top of the roof.
So, as I rode off into the rain, the wet rain stinging my cheeks, I decided that no matter what it took, I’d keep my distance.
No matter what.
Obviously, though, I didn’t factor in the words or the tears. Because had I, I would have realized sooner that it was futile to resist her.
***
“Well that backfired,” I muttered darkly after arriving back at my house. “Fucking fuck.”
I threw my wet shirt in the corner of the room, and then started on my pants.
My cell phone hit the floor with a loud thump, and I cursed as I snatched it up.
The phone turned on as it did whenever it sensed movement on my part, and I stared in fear at the number on the screen.
Shit.
Did knowing that I shouldn’t be reading the messages, messages that were so personal that only the sender should be privy to the words, stop me from reading this one and the previous five? No.
I fucking hate you so much right now. I miss you, and you’re so close that I can practically taste you. Stop being so mean to me.
My stomach plummeted as I read the words, and I closed my eyes as horror washed over me.
I was being mean to her, and I couldn’t even help it. It was a knee-jerk reaction at this point, and I couldn’t figure out how to stop to make it all better.
More, though, it had to do with the phone calls I’d started receiving a little over four months ago. Ones that I never thought I’d have to deal with again.
Margot.
Linc’s mom.
My baby mama.
The woman who almost got my child taken away from me by the government. Not once. Not twice. But six times over the last sixteen years of Linc’s life.
The first two times were while he was still a baby, less than two years old.
And here’s the real reason I was staying away from Ellen: Margot felt like she owned me. Margot was my first girlfriend. She and I were in high school when we first started dating.
I’d met her at my father’s house, and at the time, my young, naïve self didn’t put two and two together. For example, her showing up at my house for drugs. I was instantly smitten with her, and I never really thought about why she’d been at my house. I’d only been thinking with my dick, and what my dick was thinking was all I thought I needed at the time. We only had unprotected sex once, but apparently, just like I learned in my sex ed class, that was all it took.
But once she got pregnant, and I realized that Margot had a serious drug addiction, I finally wised up.
I didn’t leave her, though.
No, I couldn’t.
Who could just leave a girl who was pregnant with your child? An addict who used anything and everything against you?
I’ll kill myself if you leave. I’ll kill our baby, too.
I’ll take these drugs if you’re not here to stop me.
I’ll purposefully run off this road and kill us all if you don’t stop threatening to leave.
All of those things, and more, were words that she gave me at one point in time or another.
The instant that Linc was born, though, I filed for custody of my child and won. At seventeen, I’d had to move out of my parents’ house and into a trailer in their backyard. At eighteen and a half, I had my own piece of rental land for my trailer, assistance from the government, and a full-time job.
And all of that time, Margot was there, dogging my heels, despite my insistence that she needed to stay away.
Without the pawn of our child to use, she was unable to force me to do anything.
So, instead, she amused herself by fucking with my life. Such as trying to pick Linc up from daycare, and later school. Or calling my job and telling my boss that she was my wife, and that something had happened, and she needed me to come home immediately.
Things like that. Little things that were enough to drive me insane.
But then, things would slow down, and she’d leave me alone.
Which was what allowed me false hope when I’d first met Ellen.