her next weekend too.
I cursed out loud.
What do you mean I can put my work before her next weekend too?
I knew the answer before it came.
She can stay with me next weekend. I’ll make plans to see Dawn then. Millie can play with Phoebe to keep them entertained.
My reply was pointless, but I sent it anyway.
I already have plans for Millie next weekend. We’re going to Sea Centre to see the sharks.
And so it came.
I already had plans for Wednesday. I guess we both lose out, don’t we?
I threw the phone on the desk, gut twisting. All these months since Maya upped and dragged Millie away from me, she’d been nothing short of dangling puppet strings. I was a pathetic piece of shit, dancing to her tune, bending over at every whim of hers for the sake of seeing my daughter.
Fuck, how she’d made me fucking bend.
I didn’t even know why she was so determined to kick me in the gut at every opportunity. I didn’t know why she still wanted to hold our little girl as a chess piece in her game of fucking me over into submission.
Even then, sitting at my desk with my whole work week mapped out in front of me, I was tempted to get on the case of bailing out of my Wednesday responsibilities, but I didn’t.
I knew what was coming next before it arrived.
Mother. And once again, I was the asshole.
Will you get your priorities right for once? Maya needs your support.
My fingers were hovering over the screen as a flash of fuck you zipped up my spine. Because that’s what it deserved. One big fuck you.
A fuck you for Maya holding our little girl as a weapon for every time she didn’t get her own bastard way.
A fuck you for my mother always taking that self-righteous cow’s side of every stupid battle.
A fuck you for the whole sorry spectacle of having to jump through hoops every time I wanted to spend time with Millie.
I was done with justifying myself for every breath I took without their seal of approval. So, I didn’t. I forced aside the pain of losing Millie over the weekend, because I’d already stomached plenty of that pain over the past few months. I dug down deep and finally accepted that this situation wasn’t ever going to be resolved by jumping through higher and higher hoops until I was nothing but a show pony, parading around with that spiteful bitch on my back and my mother whooping her cheers from the sidelines.
And finally, with one glimpse of my real self shining up at me from the swampland of Maya demands, I decided that both she and Mother could go fuck themselves. I called up Maya’s message and typed out my response.
Millie is coming with me to Sea Centre this weekend. We’re seeing the sharks. Rearrange Dawn for next week. Self-development afternoon can go fuck itself, Maya.
I tossed the phone amongst the meeting minutes and calmed my breathing until my twisting gut opted to untwist itself.
No. Fucking. More.
I forced the fear, and the hurt, and the self-doubt behind me into the shadows where it belonged. I resolved to sort my fucking life out and find my spine again in the jelly of what I’d become for that bitch.
I pulled those panties back out of my pocket and wrapped them tight around my dick and thought of Anna Blackwell’s pretty little mouth as I fucked her spit out of her.
I thought about her hungry asshole and the way I’d made her take it so fucking rough.
I thought about her dirty little smile and how that made me burn deep.
I thought about her sweet whimpers as she took whatever I gave.
Then I came in that filthy lace with a grunt and a curse, like every bit the filthy man she knew so well.
Unfortunately for Maya, that man was nothing like the version of me she’d come to know so well. Not in the wake of the pathetic little shell of the man she’d worked so hard to pound into nothing.
And that man wasn’t ever coming back.
Chapter Thirteen
Anna
So much for my intention to avoid drama.
I’d been such a moron for letting my phone run out of battery and scare Vicky shitless.
She’d messaged my parents and Nicola and told them exactly what I’d been doing, and now three of my most solid supporters were armed with the most solid lashings in my direction.
I felt like a criminal ploughing through my week and trying to