My head hit the base of the car door, and I saw stars.
When I next came to it was to hear arguing.
“…give her to me!” Toot bellowed.
“Get out of here, man,” I heard another male say. “She hasn’t been here in weeks. That photo was of the day we took her. It’s not my fault that you’re a complete dumbass and didn’t recognize that she was wearing the same shit she was abducted in.”
“Then I’ll take her back,” Toot ordered frantically.
I would’ve laughed had this situation been even remotely funny.
‘That’s not how it works, Toot!’ I wanted to shout.
Instead, I stayed silent, hoping that I was forgotten.
Spoiler alert: I wasn’t forgotten.
Not even a little bit.
“Beckham Spurlock,” I heard some random male say. “This was in her purse, do you think that it’s real?”
“It says FBI,” another murmured. “What did you bring us, Toot head?”
“She’s just a girl. She was a cop for our Halloween party.” Toot decided to lie.
He was really bad at lying.
Shit.
“It looks pretty freakin’ official,” someone denied his words. “You brought us a toy.”
“Oh, goody,” another male clapped. “Now, leave and don’t come back. We won’t be here when you come looking for us.”
“But my fiancée…” Toot said.
“She’s gone, man,” yet another male said. “Just give up. And don’t tell anyone. You’re boned now. We read up about you. Giving some girl, your buddy’s girl, to us in exchange for yours was a shitty thing to do. You wouldn’t want your friend to find out, right?”
A kick to the stomach had the breath leaving my body in a rush.
“Now get gone so we can have some fun.”
The worst feeling in the world was to hear that car start up and drive away.
• • •
Crying snapped me out of replaying anymore of that memory.
I hurried toward the room where Hiro was wide awake and smiled down at him.
I’d moved him to his own bed last night.
Not because I didn’t like him sleeping in the same room with me, but because the nightmares woke me up, which inevitably woke Hiro up.
The one person that didn’t need to worry about getting enough sleep—me—had the one perfect baby that slept through the night.
My mom said that I was lucky. That most people didn’t get that.
But I didn’t feel lucky.
I felt sick to my stomach.
All the time.
And when I woke up from my nightmares, I wanted to hold something that I knew was beautiful and pure. Sadly, each time I picked Hiro up, I woke him up, and then he was awake for the next couple of hours.
Which made me feel like shit because he would easily sleep through the night if I didn’t wake him up because I was in need of comfort.
I looked at my son and smiled.
“You ready to go see your daddy?” I asked our boy.
He gave me a chubby, gummy smile.
That smile made the tear inside my heart—the one that’d been rendered when Janie had said that Trouper didn’t want me there—again—mend just a little bit.
I didn’t care what Trouper wanted.
I didn’t care what he thought we needed.
I knew what I needed.
I had a pretty good idea what my son would need.
And that was his father.
Which happened to be why I was standing where I was standing an hour and thirty minutes after getting my phone call.
Funny enough, my child was insistent about one thing, and one thing only. Eating.
He ate like a damn horse, which meant I was breastfeeding him when Trouper exited the tunnel.
Tears hit my eyes, and I straightened up and moved away from Trouper’s car.
Trouper’s car that I’d turned into a mom mobile.
He didn’t see me at first.
His head was down, and his long hair was covering his eyes.
He had a duffel bag over one shoulder, and the muscles in his arm was popping and bulging due to the effort he had to extend to hold it there.
He was wearing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. Ones that were his from the day that he’d gone into prison and didn’t come back out again.
My son smacked his tiny hand against my skin, and I knew what that meant. It was time to burp him and switch sides.
He pulled off with a grunt of frustration, and I couldn’t help the tiny laugh that escaped me.
That tiny laugh was what snapped Trouper’s head up.
His hot gaze landed on me and slowly lowered to my exposed breast that I just had hanging out there for everyone to see.