It wasn’t good enough for her.
Maybe to torture myself, I stare at her Instagram page. She’s a model now. Lives in LA and is technically still married to me. I haven’t signed the divorce papers and won’t until she gives me what I want.
Sometimes I don’t want her on my mind, but tonight, maybe I’m weak. Her memory hangs on me, like cobwebs on a ceiling. Between promises, and ones broken, she’s not entirely to blame for leaving. Rebellious and restless, I didn’t make the best of decisions back then.
I click on the latest one she posted yesterday of her and another guy, and the rock on her finger. Pain hits my chest thinking about the day I slipped a ring on that same finger. I was eighteen, about to be a dad, and thought you married the girl you knocked up.
My gaze moves to the skin of her collarbone, the spot I used to taunt with slow kisses and heated words. From her blonde hair to the blue eyes, she’s the definition of pure beauty. The kind you don’t see often but appreciate. She doesn’t need makeup plastered to her skin, the lip injections she clearly has, or the name-brand clothes. I remember the girl wearing jean shorts and my flannel, clinging to my shoulders in the back of my truck, scared for the life inside her stirring. I’m haunted by the way my name used to sound on her lips, and her kiss filled my mouth.
I can’t pinpoint when we went from “I can’t get enough” to “I can’t stand you,” but it happened in a blink of an eye.
With a heavy sigh, I stare at the Hollywood playboy I’ve seen in a couple movies next to the girl I thought was my forever. I shake my head, anger pulses through my veins. “Good luck, man. You’re gonna need it.”
Setting the phone down, I catch the photograph on the counter of me and the girls riding in the four-wheeler in the back fields last Christmas—their laughter heard even in the stillness now.
Without a doubt, I got the best part of Tara. These girls.
And what does she have?
Hollywood, I suppose. Fancy cars. Money.
Sure, I struggle with them, and they don’t have the best things money can buy. They have a roof over their heads and a dad who loves them more than anything else in the world. She can keep all those material possessions. I’ll take the “I can’t sleep, Daddy. I need you,” because that’s so much better than anything money can buy.
Am I bitter now?
I can’t say I’m not, but I know I have iron in my veins, and there’s not a damn thing I can’t endure. My stare moves to the envelope on the counter, and the papers I’m sending back unsigned, covered in my greasy fingerprints to remind her I’m a hardworking man. And no, this isn’t that movie Sweet Home Alabama. My reasons go far behind being in love with her.
Fuck her.
I’m not giving her what she wants until she gives me what I’ve been asking for. Two can play this game, and I’ve never been fair when it comes to losing.
Story of my life.
BARRON
Reaching for the envelope on the counter, I set it by my wallet and keys.
“What’s that?” Camdyn asks, curiously staring at the envelope.
I eye her over my shoulder and smile. “None of your business, little girl.” These kids are always in my business. There’s no privacy, and if I’m in the bathroom for more than five minutes, they’re knocking on the door, wanting to know when I’m coming out. Forget alone time. It doesn’t exist in this house.
Camdyn stares at me, then loses interest when she notices I’m making them breakfast. “I don’t want syrup,” she notes the very second I pull the toasted waffle from the oven. “It’s too sweet.”
“I likes si-rup,” Sev adds, climbing up on the barstool at the kitchen island. “I have it?”
Camdyn sighs, rolling her eyes. “Syrup.”
“I say that!” Sev grumbles, scowling at her big sister, her hands flat on the counter like she’s going to launch herself over it to prove her point. I wouldn’t even be surprised if that happened.
“No,” Camdyn corrects her, always needing to be right. “You said si-rup. There’s no I in it, dummy.”
“No!” Sev screams in her face, tears forming as she stands up on the barstool. “I not! I not dummy.”
Remember when I said they didn’t get along? Truth. Every damn day is like this. They’re eighteen months apart, and it shows on days like today. Sighing, I turn to face them. “Sev, sit down on your butt. Cam, lay off your sister.” I pour syrup on Sev’s waffle and not on Camdyn’s. “She’s three.”
“Stop calling me that.” Camdyn hates her name shortened to anything but the original. She also follows the directions on everything to a fucking T, and if you miss a number during hide and seek, she will call your ass out every time. “My name is Camdyn.”
“I named you.” I level her the dad stare and slide a fork her way. “I’ll call you whatever I want.”
Frowning, she takes her fork and pushes brown curls from her face. “She started it.”
“No, you did. Now eat, or we’re going to be late for school.” As I watch her angrily cutting her waffle and then giving up to eat it with her hands, I smile at how different these two are. While Sev has blonde curls, blue eyes, and a personality bigger than her tiny body can handle, Camdyn is more reserved yet wild in her own ways. Loves horses, wears cowgirl boots everywhere, hates her hair brushed, and wears as few clothes possible. She once went a whole day without pants before I realized she wasn’t wearing them. We went to the fucking bank like that, and I had no idea.
Gentle by nature, yet unforgiving, she’s got my brown hair and has beautiful dark, mysterious eyes with long thick eyelashes that curl up toward her eyebrows. She never wants to admit defeat, will argue until she can’t breathe, and you also never know what she’s up to. Always scheming and looking for trouble.
It’s funny that both of them have equal traits from me and Tara. While I was the wild hell-raiser of the South, always into trouble and cared little for rules, Tara was by the book, yet pushed her own boundaries.
Look at me talking about her in the past tense, as if she’s dead.
To me, she might as well be.
“Daddy?”
Sev draws my attention to hers. “Yeah?”
“I go to school too?”
“No, you’re hanging with me today.”
It’s hard to believe she’s old enough for this, but Camdyn started preschool this fall because she wasn’t quite old enough to start kindergarten this year. Turned five three days after the cutoff, and believe me when I say I heard for weeks about how unfair this rule was. She only goes half the day, but half the time spent at the shop with me is better than nothing. They need someone other than a bunch of roughed-up mechanics and cowboys as role models.
Still eating her waffles, Camdyn shakes her head, her eyes focused behind me. “Vader’s on the counter again.”
I scowl at the cat and hold up the butter knife in my hand. “Get down.”
He simply looks at me as if to say “try it, motherfucker. I’ll kill you in your sleep.” And I wouldn’t put it past the bastard either. I hate that cat. He’s Sev’s cat, and I wish someday his nine lives would be up.