in her chair, oblivious to how loud she was being and that it made me have to raise my voice. That fucking girl.
Maybe everything had happened for a reason.
But here was the only moment where I had felt shame. Because I had thought yeah, right, bish, when an ex-girlfriend or ex-fuck buddy showed up at the gym trying to reconnect with one of the guys. I had felt embarrassed for them and how they’d been ghosted and thought how sad it was that they were trying to hold on to these men who didn’t want them anymore. I had pitied them.
And then I had been put into their shoes, and it wasn’t a party. It wasn’t nice. It made me angry. It made me feel ashamed… of myself.
I had tried so hard my entire life to not ever be embarrassed by anything I did. Whatever I did, I did for a reason, with no regrets, even the shady shit. Yet, I had been there. Because of a guy.
Because of a man who had grinned, blushed, and told me cheers after I’d helped him.
“I even tried contacting his brothers and sisters, but they must have thought I was a stalker or delusional or something,” was as far as I told Peter and Grandpa, not wanting to go into details. “I never heard back from any of them. Or him, obviously. Or his teammates. You know most of the rest of the story after that. I found out about Mo when I was there, came home. I gave him one last chance when she was born, and then I stopped trying to contact him. A few months later, articles popped up that he was coming back to finish his contract with the Paris team…. And he still never reached out.
“All I know is that he’s here now, and he’s pretending like he didn’t read a single one of my texts.”
Bitch.
“Or hear a single one of the voice mails I left him.”
Double bitch. He was lucky I knew it was possible to delete all of your messages without actually listening to them. Even if that possibility was pretty far-fetched.
“Or wasn’t a professional athlete with endorsements and under contract and try to claim he didn’t check his email. Or maybe it was just my emails he didn’t want to read,” I finished, thinking fucking bitch again. “So I don’t know what to believe.”
Grandpa’s fingers had already been pinching the bridge of his nose before he started talking. “He can believe I’m going to—”
All Peter had to do was glance at him, and that had Grandpa instantly pressing his mouth together and literally hunching over, hand still in place between his eyes.
That had me raising my eyebrows, and when Peter glanced at me, the slightest hint of a smile crossed his mouth. Oh yeah, I was going to have to ask him what he’d said to get him to chill out. It was impressive.
“I don’t need you going back to your coven of vampires or your Grandpas Gone Wild clique and getting them all riled up—” I started to say before the sound of a phone vibrating on the counter had all of us looking around. It was Peter who frowned down at his cell, which I guess had been resting on his thigh or something, because he got up and walked out of the room before answering it.
Grandpa slid a look toward the door my other dad had just walked out of before saying, in a strangled voice that said how much self-control he was using, “I made a couple of calls and got Big Mike to give me the number to the lawyer he used to get custody of his girls.”
It was no wonder I loved the shit out of this man.
“I started looking some up online today, but I couldn’t really find any information on what would happen since he’s not a U.S. citizen or even a resident, so that was a good idea,” I said, sensing the heaviness coming back into my stomach and chest. “I’ve tried not to worry about it too much because I know that I haven’t done anything wrong. I have proof I tried to reach out to him, and that there’s no way I would lose Mo if he tries to… be active in her life. Between all of us, I know that we’ve got this. And I know that I should be happy that, if he was going to come back, it’s now, before she