The man that had been the only shining star that had to do with my grandmother.
Our Granddad had been gone for eight years now, and not a day went by that I didn’t miss him.
But he made sure that my grandmother couldn’t hold our trust funds over our heads like she was doing now—at least not for long.
Whether she liked it or not, that money was mine in a year and eleven months.
“We’ll see about that,” she snapped. “Greevis. Time to take me home.”
I rolled my eyes and watched as my grandmother strolled proudly out of my sister’s house. Greevis, her driver and altogether helper for anything she might ever need, gave us a look that clearly said ‘sorry.’
I waved him away and then waited until the door shut before my sister looked at me. “I’ll help if you need it. She didn’t cut me off.”
I rolled my eyes. “If I don’t touch it, it’ll all the more money in the long run. Granddad invested it well.”
Fran looked down at my stomach. “I can’t believe you’re pregnant.”
I placed my hand on my belly.
It was still flat, but it was hard and very unusually weird feeling from the inside, so I knew that the pregnancy test was true.
If all was correct in my calculations, then I was twelve weeks along.
That meant that I knew the exact day that the baby was conceived.
“Did you really talk to Bayne?” she asked.
Bayne Green, the hot shot country star that’d been spawned by Paris, Texas, was my child’s father. And he didn’t want anything to do with my baby.
To the point that, when I’d called him, he’d offered me money to ‘take care of it’ and then had hung up the phone.
“I did,” I confirmed. “But when he found out, he told me to ‘take care of it’ and then sent me a few abortion clinics in the area.”
Her eyes rolled. “I swear to God. How did you step into that pile of shit?”
“Bayne is hot, and I had my beer goggles on that night,” I defended myself, then I let her have it. “I wasn’t having a good day. The day that I got pregnant, I was at that bar because of you,” I explained. “You’d had a bad day. You’d had a panic attack in the grocery store, and you wouldn’t calm down, so I had to force feed you your anxiety meds. And…I just wanted to escape for a while. Which was why I was at that bar that night. Why I slept with the guy in the band.”
Her eyes went haunted for a few seconds, then she dropped her head and looked at her hands. “Shit.”
Shit was right.
Not wanting to pour salt on a healing wound, I hoped to distract her with my next words.
“Sadly, I have to go to work.”
My sister grimaced.
“I wish you still worked there,” I sighed. “It sucks without you.”
“I know,” she admitted. “But it was toxic after the ‘incident.’”
It was.
My sister had worked at the hospital with me as a nurse on the same floor, but an error on another nurse’s part had made it to where she couldn’t handle being there anymore, so she’d left.
I’d stayed because right around the time that I’d decided enough was enough, nobody fucked with my sister, I’d found out that I was pregnant. And, knowing my Grandmother’s attitude was going to be this particular outcome, I’d made the difficult decision to stay at the hospital. Only after having the conversation with my sister, though.
She’d decided that I didn’t need to leave because of her dealings with the hospital and the staff—not that I agreed—but ultimately I took her assurance that she would be okay with me staying to heart.
My sister and I did not lie to each other.
We were the only thing each other had.
“What time is your appointment?” she asked.
I looked at my watch.
“In thirty minutes. Do you want to go?” I asked.
She snorted. “Of course.”
CHAPTER 1
First rule of CrossFit: Always talk about CrossFit. Second rule about CrossFit: always talk about CrossFit.
-Coffee Cup
MURPHY
I knew who she was the moment that she walked into my shop looking so down and dejected.
At first, when she offered me her hand, I considered not taking it.
I mean, she was the reason that I was homeless for four years.
But then I decided to just play as if what she’d done hadn’t shaped the man that I was today.
“Hi,” she smiled. “I’m Mavis.”
I hadn’t needed her to introduce herself.
There was no way that I’d forget those blue jean-colored eyes in that pretty face. Nor the long blonde hair that obviously hadn’t been cut much since she became an adult.
She hadn’t changed a single bit since I’d last seen her all those years ago.
“Murphy,” I grumbled. “What can I help you with?”
She opened her mouth to say something when my mother’s voice called out from the office.
“Alessio! You have a phone call!” Mama yelled.
“Alessio?” she teased. “I thought you introduced yourself as Murph?”
I would’ve replied, but my mother chose that moment to come outside and hold the phone out to me.
Instead of staying rooted to the spot—the same spot I’d been standing in since I’d seen her pull up into my driveway—I turned my back on Mavis and walked to my mother, taking the phone from her hand.
“Murphy,” I said.
“Hi, this is Justin from the moving company,” Justin said. “I’m here with all of your things.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose.
Fucking finally.
They were only two days late.
I’d been living in a four-bedroom house with empty rooms for four days now.
“Great,” I said. “Can you get it in by yourself, or do you need someone there?”
“I think we can get it all in by ourselves. I know that you said that you had to work,” Justin replied.
That was the only thing saving him from not getting a tip.
The man had proved to me a million times over that I’d been stupid to hire him.
He’d come cheap and recommended by a friend, so I hadn’t hesitated to use him at first. But after him flaking off on me a couple of times before the move, I should’ve just said ‘fuck it’ and found someone else.
But my mother had recognized another broken soul and had informed me that I needed to allow him to do his job. So I had.
And then we’d been sleeping on the floor since because of her kind heart.
“Good, if you have any questions on where anything goes, shoot me a text of the piece, and I’ll tell you where I want it,” I ordered.
Justin cleared his throat. “Got it, Boss.”
I rolled my eyes and hung up, turning around to address the elephant in the room to see my mother hugging Mavis.
Son of a bitch.
“Mom,” I said. “Our movers are going to text you if they have any questions on where any pieces are going. Make sure that they put all your stuff in your house, okay?”
My mother pulled away from Mavis with a large smile on her face, and my heart pinched.