Eric (Men of Honor 2)

She’d wanted her freedom more than the pittance I had or the little rundown house I owned back then that had been a fixer-upper I’d bought cheap and made into a home for my little family and me. It was rough as shit back in those days. Trying to get a fledgling business off the ground while raising my son, who was dealing with the heartache of being abandoned by his mother.

I’d taken him everywhere with me in those first days, and we grew even closer than we already were. I knew I had to play the role of both parents, which was challenging, especially in those situations that called for good cop bad cop, and I had to play both. Somehow we helped each other through it and came out on top.

It wasn’t easy, and it didn’t happen overnight; in fact, I kept the fact that I was doing so well under wraps for a very long time. My only interest was in giving my son a better quality of life, and once I had my shit together, I put everything into play to make sure of that. It was a fluke or dumb luck that had taken me from where I was to where I am now, but that’s for another time.

Once I sat down with my boy and explained that daddy could now afford to get him better jeans without holes in them and shoes that didn’t pinch, we were on our way up and out. Since I didn’t need to tell my ex where we were going since she’d given away all her rights, I bought the sprawling mansion across town, changed Ty’s school, and took him on his first trip out of the country for his eleventh birthday.

Somehow his mother got wind of it and started sticking her nose in my shit. It only took seeing the house and my new luxury SUV for her to start seeing dollar signs, and I had to send her packing more than once. I’d laughed my ass off about the third or fourth time when she said she knew I was still in love with her because I never remarried.

“Wrong, when you waltz with the devil once and are lucky enough to walk away unscathed, you strike that shit off your dance card and keep it pushing. You are the reason I won’t get married again, true, but not because of any love I have for you. I just absolutely hate evil. My son and I are fine without it. As you can see, once we got rid of the demonic presence in our lives, everything started going fine.” It was a shit fuck thing to say to the woman I’d once thought myself in love with, but I don’t owe her shit, so there you have it.

She’d done a good impression of Regan MacNeil from the exorcist that day; I even expected her head to spin the fuck around on her neck and for green bile to come spewing out of her trap. I just walked away and left her screaming on my driveway, threatening to stay there until Tyler got home from school. That’s when I went postal on her ass for the first time since she left and let her know in no uncertain terms what I would do to her if she fucked with my kid.

“He’s my son too.”

“The fuck he is. You threw him away for some dick, now get the fuck outta here before I toss your ass over the hedges.” That had been a dark day. I’d tried since the day she told me she was leaving and called me a loser not to lose my cool with her, not to give her the satisfaction of seeing how much her actions hurt me.

Funny thing is, it didn’t even take three days for me to not miss her and to admit to myself that once I got the hang of things, my son and I would be better off without her toxic ass in the picture. After that fiasco, she’d stayed her ass away from me. She’d tried running game on Tyler a time or two, but I didn’t raise no fool, and my boy had let her know what’s what. She got the message when he started calling her Janine, and we got some much-needed peace after that, until now.

This trick has got it into her head that she has some sort of say in how I live my life. When she first heard that Justine and I were getting married, she’d thrown a fit, then claimed she didn’t want another woman around her son. Ty was already seventeen at this point and had spoken to her maybe three times in the last couple of years. I doubt she even remembers when his birthday is.