Ever since I’d made it down here, the clubwhores had been giving me shit about fucking them, so I wasn’t surprised when the gagging stopped as soon as Cinnamon caught a glimpse of me, and was doubly unsurprised when she started jiggling her tits some more.
Rolling my eyes at the sight, I strolled down to the back office, then heaved a sigh when I found MaryCat fast asleep on the sofa.
Peering down at the kid in my arms who was also fast asleep, I grunted under my breath.
"Today just keeps getting better and better."
Three
Keira
The following afternoon
This Love - Camila Cabello
"Cyan? You want some lunch?"
When I received no answer for my pains, I felt the nerve in my left eye start to twitch.
I loved my baby girl.
I did.
I really did.
I just wished she weren’t intent on driving me crazy.
When Storm was around, she was an angel.
When he left, she was a nightmare.
In fact, no, screw that.
Nightmare, capitalized.
Nudging through the freezer’s contents, I took out my rage on a bag of carrots that were squished between a pack of chicken and the wall.
When a bunch of ice came flying out, followed by the pack of chicken which, of course, landed right on my toe, I growled under my breath as I did the ‘of all the toes, in all the world, it had to drop onto mine’ dance.
Hissing under my breath, I snatched up the chicken, grumbled at it, then called out, "Cyan?"
No answer.
Six weeks after she’d gotten into that pervert’s car and somehow, things weren’t much better between her and me. Now that Storm was eating here every night, I’d finally figured shit out—Cyan blamed me for us splitting up.
She blamed me when he was the two-timing, cheating—
I ground my teeth together as I shoved up the sleeves on my oversized hoodie. I’d been living in the damn thing since we moved down here, for her, and I just couldn’t seem to get my groove back.
In Jersey, I’d finally felt like I was starting to find my place. My position back in the real world—even if it was on the sidelines of the Satan’s Sinners’ MC.
Now, though, I felt the exact same way I did the day after I’d tossed him out.
I wanted to cry in bed, wanted to wallow and stare at the ceiling and have the TV on and just… God, just do nothing.
I wanted to just do nothing again.
But I’d already let her down once before by turning into a robot after I dumped him.
I couldn’t do it again.
If she hated me for leaving, then I had actual concrete evidence that life really wasn’t fair.
I’d only triggered our separation because I wanted to break the old ways, wanted her to know that a woman didn’t have to take that kind of shit.
That she could and should leave when a man wasn’t good enough for her.
And Storm wasn’t.
He really wasn’t.
Even if he was my darn soul mate, that didn’t mean we were meant to be together.
Soul mates didn’t get a free pass. They had to earn it. Personally, I needed self-respect more than I needed him to lie beside me in bed.
But God, how I missed him in my bed. His heat, his warmth, the way he didn’t take up too much space—just enough. How he’d lie behind me, barely moving all night, curved into me, big spoon to my little.
How was I supposed to sleep for the rest of my life without that?
My throat choked up, and I closed my eyes.
Self-respect.
That was my new mantra.
How can you expect her to respect you if you let a guy treat you this way? And what’s to stop her from letting a man do the exact same thing to her as Storm did to you if you don’t show her another way?
Which led me to a simple conclusion—I was doing the right thing.
My mom had taught me the opposite. She’d taught me that it was okay for men to cheat so long as they kept it quiet, she’d taught me that men had urges a wife didn’t want to withstand. Maybe if Kendra hadn’t… My mouth tightened. I could have forgiven the cheating. It was the betrayal I couldn’t forgive.
Whatever my reasons, I didn’t want her to be like me. Didn’t want her to grow up believing that cheating wasn’t wrong.
If that meant suffering right now, well, I’d suffer.
But I’d probably get an ulcer in the process.
It’d be a righteous ulcer though, right?
Turning away from the fridge where I was trying to figure out what we were eating for the day, I hollered again, "Cyan! What do you want to eat?"
My refrigerator had morphed into a Whole Foods’ store. Everything was vegetarian this and vegan-friendly that.
For someone who loved a good, old-fashioned beef burger, my kid was definitely trying to kill me with all this meat-substitute stuff, but I’d do anything to buy peace.
"Nothing!" she hollered over High School Musical, reminding me that she was still a preteen for all that she had the sass of a sixteen-year-old.
"God help me when she really is sixteen," I mumbled under my breath.
Grabbing some hummus—frickin’ hummus when my ass was alllll about nacho cheese dip, none of this garbanzo bean crap—that was on the brink of going bad, I also hauled some sweet potato chips out of the cupboard and shoved them on the counter.
I couldn’t make her eat.
Only Storm could do that.
Only Storm made her act like the little girl she used to be.
It was annoying and worrying and tiring, all at the same time.
We’d gone from being close to, in the span of a couple months, being enemies.
I knew I was her safe space. I guessed it was a compliment that she could offload onto me, because she knew I’d do my best not to let her down, but the truth was, she was only ‘in the building’ when her dad was.
I was starting to resent the hell out of Storm for that.
He was the reason for our break-up, not me, but I was the one dealing with the fallout. Something that meant that he had to be around if I wanted Cyan to do anything other than be a pain in the butt. That was beyond bittersweet. Being around him when he was like this hurt.
Take Christmas, for example. He’d been fun, Cyan had cheered the heck up, and it had been nice.
Really nice.
It had been like any other holiday before we’d split up.
Except, actually, it had been better.
I knew the truth now.
I knew why his eyes sometimes looked glassy. Why, sometimes, he looked like he felt as if his skin were crawling.
He was hyperactive at those times, moving fast and twitching—God, I should have seen the signs. I should have noticed that wasn’t normal. I’d just thought that was his way.
We all possessed quirks, didn’t we?
I got snappish when I had my period, but when he’d hugged me and held onto me like he’d never let me go, that always burned off my hormonal moods.
Food was a comfort, so I always sank into that when I was grumpy, too, and God forbid the laundry room was messy when I was feeling nervous because I’d organize the heck out of it to clear my mind.
Quirks.
Not addictions…
A whole world apart as I was coming to learn.