“He asked her how much she normally made in tips in a night, and when she told him, he paid her double and said the rest of the tables could fend for themselves for the night. Neither of them was stupid. They both knew she had to make money for the night, and Carter wasn’t going to send her home empty-handed, even if it didn’t go anywhere between the two of them. We were still there an hour after the bar closed and all the other customers had been kicked out before he finally asked her to join him in his hotel for the night, and she’d accepted while giggling. I don’t think either of them left that room for two or three days.”
“It was probably her dream come true,” I told Lucas with a smile. She’d found her prince charming, even if it was only for a couple of nights. “Even when I laughed at the silly movies she liked to watch, she’d never given up believing they were possible. I guess now I know why.”
Lucas took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. He glanced over at the now blank screen for a long while before finally shaking his head. “I know Carter regrets not having taken care of the two of you properly. But I want you to know; I did try. I’d shown up at her house a couple of months after you were born. She recognized me immediately from that night at the bar. She and Carter had met once after that night when she told him she was pregnant, and I knew they’d already come to a decision for him not to be part of your lives to keep you both safe. He’d already asked me to watch over the two of you as well, and after everything he’d done for me, I felt like I should return the kindness. I gave your mother a check for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
My eyes went wide, and I couldn’t breathe. To Lucas and Wes, that was probably just pocket change. To me, that was enough money for us to have lived on for a lifetime in Compton. With how frugal Mom had always been, I had no doubt she could’ve made that money last for nearly forever.
“She wouldn’t take it. She said she wasn’t a hooker to be bought off, that she respected Carter’s wishes to keep his distance, but she didn’t need money from him or me. She’d made it this long on her own, and she’d continue doing it.” Lucas sighed. When he looked at me, I could see the sadness in his eyes. “I know you probably don’t want to hear this, but I’d yelled at her for being an idiot, and I still think she was stupid for not having taken the money. She could’ve easily taken it and gone somewhere else, raised you somewhere away from all the violence and drugs. But your mother had her pride, and she wouldn’t accept a handout, no matter how much it made sense.”
I snorted, then started laughing. Christ, that really did sound like Mom. Just once, couldn’t she have sucked up her pride and taken the money? She could’ve done so much with that. Bought us a house, made sure we always had food, hell she could’ve put it away in a college fund for me!
“I don’t blame you for calling her an idiot. If she was still here, I’d call her an idiot, too,” I admitted. I loved my mother more than anyone else in the world, but that didn’t mean she was perfect. Mom wasn’t a saint. “Did she know Carter was arrested?”
“She did. It was all over the news when it happened. I’d been busy doing what I could for him and hadn’t been able to reach out to her, but she called me out of the blue. I hadn’t even known she’d kept my number when I’d given it to her after our argument. At first, I thought she was calling to ask for the money I’d offered her before, but she just wanted me to pass a message along to him. She wanted him to know she loved him, and that she would keep their daughter safe for him, no matter what. I guess she wanted to help him keep his hopes up while he was going through the trial.”
I brushed tears from my eyes. Even knowing the man was a gang leader, knowing all the things he’d been accused and eventually been convicted of, she’d still cared about him. She’d seen beyond all of that for the person underneath.
And there I was, having judged Wes and them as spoiled rich kids. I hadn’t even known them, and I’d already made up my mind about them all. I may not have been as outward about my assumptions as Wes had been with his, but I was no better than him. Mom would’ve been ashamed of me.
“You ready to go home?” Wes asked when I’d been quiet for a while.
Lost in my thoughts, I nodded. Wes put his arm around my waist and pulled me tight against him as Lucas led the two of us back downstairs to where Thomas was waiting. I wasn’t sure I’d have gotten through any of this without him by my side, and I vowed to make up for the way I’d treated him when I first showed up.
Chapter 20
“You okay?” Wes asked. His voice was soft and quiet as he pulled me tighter against him. The two of us were curled up under the blankets in his room. I was so emotionally drained after finally getting to meet my father, hearing about how he’d met my mother, and then taking a deeper look at myself that I just hadn’t wanted to be alone. “You’ve been awfully quiet since we left Dad’s office.”
“I’m okay,” I told him, not quite lying. It would take a little while for me to fully go back to my normal self, but it was nothing time wouldn’t fix—that and being close to Wes. Somehow, just being near him seemed to give me strength these days.
“Do you regret having met your father?”
“No, not at all. I’m glad I went through with it. And I hope Lucas can arrange another meeting with him soon. I wanted to get to know him better, but I think I like him.”
Wes let out a soft laugh. He started to rub my stomach with one of his hands; soft, soothing circles that helped put me at ease. “It’s hard not to like Uncle Carter. I mean, I guess he’s a different person when he’s ‘at work,’ but all the times I’d met him, he was just a nice man who’d showed me some affection. He really always has felt like a kind uncle to me, not a murdering gang leader, you know.”
“If you keep letting that hand of yours wonder, you just might get to meet the murdering gang leader side of him,” I teased as Wes slid his hand up under my shirt. Not that I minded his wandering hand, of course, it was just fun to tease him. “You heard what my father said about being untoward, didn’t you?”
God, it still sounded strange to say the words “my father” out loud. I’d never been close enough to any of Mom’s boyfriends to ever consider calling them my father. None of them had really stuck around long enough to get that far. But now I had an actual biological father. And that wasn’t even counting Lucas who’d been more of a father to me in the last couple months than any other man ever had.
“Oh, are you going to rat me out?” Wes leaned over and nibbled on my ear, making me moan softly. Christ, that man knew just how to push my buttons. His hand slid higher up my shirt at the same time until it came to rest on my bare breast.
“I just might,” I replied, closing my eyes and trying to get myself under control. I knew I’d never do any such thing, though. I didn’t want Wes to stop, not really. If anything, I wanted him to do more, so much more.
I’d been waiting for so long for the right moment for a time when it would be special to have my first time. Maybe I’d paid more attention to Mom’s cheesy movies than I thought. Wes wasn’t Carter, though. He wasn’t a Prince Charming, there to sweep me off my feet and whisk me away to his fairy tale castle.