Officially Over It - Lani Lynn Vale Page 0,21

it. “What do I do?”

I brought her in after that. Together we made plans for what was to happen next.

First off, I needed to talk to a lawyer.

Which was about the time that my father came in and listened to us explain what was going on.

After processing that bit of news, he pulled out a number from his phone and gave it to us.

“Call this number,” Dad said. “That’s a criminal defense attorney. She’s the best I know. She doesn’t usually do this side of the tracks, but she’s good. The best that I’ve ever run up against in my career.”

After making an appointment with her for an hour from now—which would just barely give me time to change and get there—I looked at my dad and Reggie.

“Reggie,” I said. “I need you to go back to work. Tell me everything.”

She winced. “I’m on-call today. Which means I’ll likely be called in. But I am going to take this up to the lab. I’ll stop by. Ask around. I think that Sierra is working. I can ask her to keep an ear out as long as you’re okay with her knowing everything.”

I immediately gave a nod then looked toward my dad. “You’ll go with me?”

Dad wasn’t my biological father. He was my adoptive father and he was as real as it gets.

Years ago, when I was just a toddler, my real father, who happened to be a cop, was killed. As was my mother and unborn sibling.

I’d been shot in the head and left for dead, too.

But I’d survived. And Wolf had adopted me.

From then on, I’d been his.

And I knew without a doubt that he’d come with me today.

There was no way that I’d get rid of him.

“Fuck yeah,” Dad said. “I’m going. You couldn’t stop me even if you tried.”

I found my first half smile since Reggie had walked up to my door.

“There’s something else you should know,” she said softly, drawing my attention once again toward her.

I swallowed hard. “What?”

She fidgeted with her fingers, her eyes worried.

“She named the baby Stanley Jones Foster.”

Chapter 10

Nathan

“You’d have better luck getting sole custody of this child if you were married,” the lawyer pointed out.

The lawyer, Swayze Jensen, was a little bit of a thing.

She came to about my collarbone, but you wouldn’t be able to tell with her sitting behind her desk looking professional and serious as fuck.

Her blonde hair was pinned back into a severe bun at the base of her neck, and her bright eyes were hard and shrewd.

When I’d been recommended to a criminal defense attorney known as ‘The Bulldog’ I’d already had my doubts. But now? I was having even more.

She was the best I could find, and cost a whack.

She also was very, very open with my odds at winning this case.

She’d already said that the mother had quite a few ticks in the win column. Being the child’s mother being a really big one.

“Turns out, I already am,” I told her bluntly, not bothering to look over at my father who was likely wearing a look of surprise. “Been married for years.”

“And your wife?” she asked. “Where is she?”

I paused, wondering how much I should disclose.

“Just tell me it all.” She waved her hand. “If you don’t tell me, I won’t know how to work with this.”

She had a point.

So I laid out everything, starting at the very beginning.

Not once did I glance over at my father.

“When I was in high school, I was dating Eerie,” I explained. “We dated on and off for a year, but our relationship was always toxic. She hated that I was ‘friends’ with Reggie—that’s my wife—and always went out of her way to be a complete and total asshole to Reggie. I got pissed about it, and we broke up. But, like I said, our relationship was always toxic. So we were back on and off quite a few times. Throughout, Reggie—I have to stress here that Reggie and I fight like cats and dogs. Ever since we were young. We continued to have a problem being in the same room together without verbal sparring.”

The lawyer nodded and waved her hand at me to continue.

“Reggie and Eerie fought like cats and dogs, too. But worse. Way worse. Then one day, it really just was enough for me. I said I was done, and meant it. Only, about a year later Eerie came to me telling me that she had an aggressive form of cancer, and that she needed