Payton and I had had a good laugh about Luke’s expectation of his child not eating junk food when he wasn’t around. In fact, it was quite comical to see how surprised he’d been at hearing Katy tell him about how good the funnel cakes were. And what type of donut was her favorite, as well as favoring Twinkies over Hostess cupcakes.
“Oh, the pleasure was all mine,” I informed him.
Luke leaned down for a kiss, brushing his lips across mine twice before we heard the sound of a diesel truck pulling into my driveway.
Of course that’d be when Weston came.
Of, fucking, course.Chapter 13If you open your heart to a man, he’ll probably try to stick his dick in there, too.
-Reese to Tru
Reese
November- The week before Thanksgiving
“Hello?” I snapped angrily into the phone.
“What’s wrong?” Luke asked as soon as I answered.
I sighed. “Nothing. Listen, I’ve got to go.”
Silence met my statement, and I knew that lie wasn’t going to go over well with him, but I wasn’t ready to talk about it yet.
I was pissed.
So pissed, in fact, that I was ready to punch something.
Anything.
I’d started my day out sick. As I had for the last eight days. Luckily, I was at the end of my illness.
Sadly, I still had no energy to deal with people’s shit.
I had the flu at the worst possible time. This was the week that I usually started planning my Thanksgiving, but I couldn’t do a single plan when I could barely hold open my eyes.
My mom was still on the road to recovery with after her treatments, so I was the last person she needed to be around with her compromised immune system. Which meant no help from anyone. Mom, dad, or sister. I suffered alone, none of them even knowing I’d been sick.
Although, that was the way of life for a single parent, and I was used to it by now.
So, of course, what better time for me to get the flu?
Saying that I was no longer ‘sick’ wasn’t really accurate. It just meant that I was no longer running a fever, but still having the tiredness and utter lack of desire to move.
I was glad to finally be able to breathe again. That and sleep without my head pounding.
And bonus! Rowen had one more day of school until she was out for break.
Then someone had knocked on my door, and I’d stupidly gotten up to answer it.
My day had gotten even worse when I’d answered it and found Weston on the front porch.
The man responsible for making my life a living hell for the past four months.
At first, it’d only been Weston being Weston.
Then his wife had gotten into the picture, and that’s when my life had gone from awesome to shit. I’d been high on life after the night I’d spent with Luke. Then, from the moment Luke had left, leaving me to deal with Weston on my own, I’d had nothing but trouble out of him since.
I’d started getting anonymous reports about a week later from CPS about my daughter having bruises on her arms and legs from where I’d supposedly ‘beaten’ her with a broom stick.
The bruises had morphed into burns from where I’d held her hands over burners on the stove when she wouldn’t listen. Or stuck her feet into hot, boiling water.
The week after the second report to CPS, Weston and his wife, Anita, moved to Kilgore to ‘be closer to their daughter.’
I’d hated Anita as soon as I’d met her.
She was everything that I wasn’t. And a bitch to boot.
A catty bitch that I didn’t want anywhere near my daughter.
And oh, my God, could she play up the pregnancy card. The more I saw her, the meaner and meaner she got.
I knew she was the one behind the false allegations to CPS.
That was how I’d gotten to know Shiloh. Shiloh was married to one of Luke’s fellow officers, James.
She’d assured me that the false allegations were being investigated, but that still didn’t stop the threats from coming.
One good thing that had come from them moving closer was Weston not pursuing full custody. He’d been happy with having her on his weekends, and I’d been grateful.
I didn’t want my little girl to be in the middle of a tug-a-war match between us. Especially not when she was finally getting to be around her father more, like she wanted.
One good thing to come out of it all was Luke and I getting closer.
He’d been my rock over these past four months.
The shoulder I cried on each time a new false report on me came in; not to mention a great support system.
And Rowen loved him.
However, right now, I just wanted to lay here and wallow.
Then, like the pain in the ass cop that he was, he called back.
“Hello?” I answered.
“Reese,” he said quietly.
Almost too quiet.
“Just…not over the phone. I’ll tell you. I promise. I just don’t want to talk about it over the phone,” I said hesitantly.
“Fine, I’ll be there in five minutes,” he said, and before I could tell him no, he was gone, and I had the sound of dead air in my ear to prove it.
Fuck.
My eyes closed in exhaustion, and the next thing I knew, I was being woken up by a large, warm body sliding into the bed behind me.
Luke felt divine.
I was freezing my ass off, and his body was like a large, not-so-compact, space heater that fit the contours of my body perfectly.
As always, anytime his body was close to mine, especially skin to skin, my body started to respond.
It didn’t care that I was tired.
“You’ll get sick,” I muttered sleepily.
That’d been my argument all week to keep him away from me.
At first I hadn’t even told him I was sick. I was too sick to talk on the phone. The only strength I found in the past eight days was to wake up enough to get Rowen off and on the bus, feed her dinner, and get her to bed.
It wasn’t until the fifth day that Luke had showed up on my doorstep.