Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
He jerked up his chin.
Yeah.
Mountain man.
“To end, my issue is not about her getting herself some. And I don’t think it’s regular the men come to her place, but it happens. My issue is, one strange guy in the house with my kid, or Ledge, gives me the shivers. But also, she’s a mom and she needs to be home with her kids, not every second, but she’s at a bar nearly every damned night. If she wants to live her life unencumbered, she can give them up so they can have a parent around. I don’t want my son, when he isn’t with me, raised by a babysitter I also have no hand in picking,” Storm finished.
“You want me to give you a heads up if I lay my thoughts on her?”
Storm shook his head. “You do you. If we decide to team up when we take her to court, we’ll start sharing more closely.”
“That also works for me,” Riggs said as he stood. He stuck his hand out again, and Storm rose and took it as Riggs said, “Thanks for the offer of a beer. But I need to go get my boy so he can sort himself out to go to Dustin’s.”
“Right,” Storm replied, following us to the door. “Thanks again for coming.”
“Thanks for the heads up.”
“Nadia, good to meet you.”
I offered him my hand, and he took it, but when he gave it a firm squeeze, he cupped his other on top of it. This was fleeting, but added warmth to the gesture that I thought was nice.
Totally liked this guy.
“Hope to see you again,” he said when we broke.
“We’re having a get-together at mine next Saturday. You wanna come, you’re welcome,” Riggs invited.
“Viggo’s back with Angelica then, so might come over for a few.”
“Great.”
“Look forward to it.”
“Later.”
“Later.”
“Bye, Storm,” I bid, and Riggs threw his arm around my shoulders and guided me to the truck.
We were in and on our way to wherever Ledger was with Jace and Jess when I asked, “How angry are you about the men coming over?”
“Scale of one being you, cute with your hair a sexy bedhead, getting in my shit about having a loud party, and ten finding out my friend and my baby momma colluded to trap me into being a father, I’m at a two thousand and fifty-three.”
“Mm,” I hummed.
“You’re a woman, and I can’t say I knock myself out, but I give a passable try at not being a chauvinist asshole. Are Storm and me off about this?”
“Well, on the one hand, you say she’s a good mom and loves her kids, so my hope would be, she also wouldn’t bring anyone dangerous to the house. On the other hand, I’ve only had one interaction with her, and it wasn’t good, something that significantly skews my opinion about her, so I feel ill-equipped to have any opinion on this.”
“If you had a kid, what would you do?”
It was my turn not to answer.
“Honey, this is important,” he prompted.
Shoot.
“First, I’d like to make it official on behalf of my entire gender that, even though it seemed for Storm this wasn’t the issue, I doubt he lives his life like a monk, and I know you don’t, I’d take grave affront if either of you went on attack because she enjoys a healthy sex life.”
“To confirm and save you that affront, I don’t give a shit who she fucks. I give a shit if it affects my son and Viggo.”
Good to know.
“Okay then, onward,” I continued. “I think with this situation it’s important to note, even though you didn’t ask about this part, I’m a teacher and I have intimate knowledge that Storm’s right. Parents should be home to parent their children. At their ages, they go to bed early, but they should do it, for the most part, feeling safe that Mom’s home should they need her.”
“Yeah,” he grunted.
“Getting back to your question, I would never have a man in my house who I didn’t know well, hadn’t spent a good deal of time with and felt as safe as I possibly could that he was okay to be around my child. And this would happen only if I was in a relationship with him, and he and I both understood that relationship was going somewhere.”
“And you hesitated to say that to me because…?”
“Because one, I’m not Angelica. Two, I don’t know Angelica, and you’re right. This is important. So I’m uncomfortable judging Angelica for the decisions she makes in her life. And last, I’m sleeping in your bed, and it isn’t like we’ve been seeing each other for a month and have had several, deep, heartfelt conversations about when to introduce the idea of a future of us that included Ledger. Nor did we give Ledger very long to get used to that possibility.”