Joke’s on You by Lani Lynn Vale Page 0,4

all tense and angry. We just don’t mention your name anymore.”

I ran my hand over my child’s full head of dark hair.

“This is going to be a mess as it is, Delanie,” I told her bluntly. “We don’t need your dad here making it worse.”

She snorted out a laugh. “You have no idea how true that statement is.”

Hours later, while Delanie was feeding Asa, I invited Bourne and Dillan back in.

Neither of them were talking, but they were still there, waiting to be let back in as if they knew that I’d cave.

Dillan stormed past me, a glare on her face, and I smiled at her in amusement.

Bourne watched her go then turned to me.

“I know that I don’t have a right to ask this of you,” I said softly. “And you might very well hate me but...” I licked my lips. “Can you stay? Can you hold off on going into the Navy?”

Bourne had been intending to go into the military with me eight months ago.

Instead, he’d been in a motorcycle wreck and had broken his foot the day before we went to the recruiting station. Instead, he’d stayed home. With the intention of following behind me when he’d gotten the all clear.

Except, thing after thing went wrong with his foot, and even now he was walking with a slight limp.

Though, that was likely due to him having surgery about ten weeks ago.

Bourne’s eyes met mine.

“I’ll stay,” he said. “Until you can get back, I’ll stay.”

I breathed a sigh of relief.

“Make sure that he knows me, Bourne,” I said. “I have this really, really bad feeling that he’s gonna have no idea who I am.”

And I was right.

Though Bourne had done his best, the next five years were some of the worst of my life.

Sadly, it wasn’t anybody’s fault but my own.

Chapter 1

I used to be cool. Now a tiny person shows me his asshole to make sure that he cleaned the poop off well enough.

-An actual conversation between Booth and his mom

Booth

Five years later

“Daddy, can we go see Uncle Bourne when we get home from school?” Asa asked. “He promised me that we could go get ice cream.”

I tried not to let my irritation show.

“Asa,” I said as I gathered up his school lunch. “Do you remember what happened at school yesterday?”

Asa narrowed his eyes. “Yes, sir.”

“And do you remember me telling you that you wouldn’t be going anywhere after school when you asked me that exact same question an hour ago?” I continued.

“Yes,” he said, looking quite a bit more sullen. “But I was hoping that you’d changed your mind.”

I didn’t smile, but it was a close thing.

Sadly, though I found his antics on the bus hilarious, his bus driver did not. Nor did the school.

Some little kid had started to pick on him due to his size.

Asa was small. Much smaller than the rest of his friends in his class.

He was normal, according to his doctors, but the kid just wasn’t a big guy. He was a small little guy, with a squeaky voice that kids loved to make fun of when they weren’t being watched as closely as they should be.

When I’d met the bus at the bus stop yesterday, his bus driver had informed me that he had a three-day suspension for fighting with the other students.

My kid may be small, but he knew how to hold his own.

“I want to go to Mommy’s.” He stomped his little foot.

God, when he showed his temper, he looked so much like me that it hurt.

“I know you do, kid.” I ruffled his hair. “But Mommy is in Kansas at a convention. She has to be there for work.”

Delanie normally kept Asa during the week while I kept him Friday through Monday morning when I would drop him off at school.

Though it sucked because both Delanie and I really wanted to have him full-time, it worked for both of us.

Delanie was super busy with her very successful company that she’d started a few years back. When I was deployed for the fourth and final time, she’d opened up a new business that helped match men and women who suffered from PTSD—post-traumatic stress disorder—with a dog that could help them combat it with their companionship.

It’d taken off, and now she was so successful that she was traveling all over the place.

Our schedules had changed a lot since she’d started traveling, and now I was keeping Asa more during the week, and she was keeping him just as much