Page 55 of Bad & Bossy

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I loved everything we’d bought except for the price tag. Although I told myself I’d pay Lottie back for everything she’d purchased for me and Drew, I knew there wasn’t a chance in hell I’d be in a position where I could feasibly do that.

The bags lined the booth next to me. Lottie babbled on over dinner about Brody’s new advancements, how he was finally putting the right-sized blocks into the right-sized holes and picking up on the sign language she was teaching him. But I found it difficult to focus on anything besides the price tags and the vacation.

“I’m worried Cole’s going to find out,” I blurted, cutting her off entirely.

She blinked at me, her hands halfway through ripping off a chunk of bread. “Then tell him.”

“You say that like it’s easy,” I sighed. “What am I supposed to tell him, oh, by the way, Drew’s your son? I’ve dug myself a fucking hole, here, Lottie. Either he’s going to find out on his own or I’m going to tell him, and neither will end well. And even if it does, even if Cole is perfectly fine with me keeping his son from him until now, there’s still the issue of him being a barely recovered alcoholic.”

I let out a breath and sucked up the remaining half of my sex-on-the-beach through a straw.

“And yes, I know now. Thanks for keeping that from me,” I added with a snooty tone.

She took a deep breath in through her nose and slowly released it out through her mouth, sinking into her side of the booth. “It wasn’t my information to share.”

“He’s the father of my kid. I had a right to know.”

Her lips pursed into a thin line. “He’s doing exceptionally well for being eight months sober, Dana.”

“He came this close to relapsing the other day,” I shot back, holding up my thumb and forefinger just an inch apart. “If there’s even a chance?—”

“Stop,” Lottie insisted, cutting me off. “It’s perfectly normal to almost relapse and even to actually go through a relapse. That doesn’t mean there’s not a desire there to recover. He decided to get sober on his own, Dana. No one forced him into that. This isn’t the same situation as your mom.”

I blinked at her, the blow hitting harder than I would have thought.

“You can’t expect him to be perfect. You can’t expect him to get better overnight, or to not be able to deal with issues like this. I know you have your trauma around alcoholics, but it’s not fair to put those expectations of failure on him when he genuinely wants to be better. If anything, knowing he has a fucking son would only make him want sobriety even more.”

I couldn’t remember the last time Lottie had spoken to me like that, nor could I shake the sinking feeling that she was right. Every time the feeling of wanting to run as far away as I could from him flared, I knew it was coming from that deep-seated place in my childhood. I knew that.

“So what am I supposed to do?”

“Do you want a relationship with him?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want a father for your son?”

“Obviously.”

“Then trust him,” she sighed. “Give him a chance. He’s a good guy. Genuinely. He may be an obnoxious man-child occasionally, but he’s doing so much better than he was. You didn’t see him after what happened between you two. You didn’t see how bad it got, how low he got, or how much he was drinking. He’s come such a long way, and I fucking love you, Dana, but I’m not going to let you insinuate that he’s worse than he is.”

“Would you have gotten with Hunter if he was like this at the beginning?” I asked. They’d been through hell and back, from a fake relationship to a fake wedding, all in order to please her father before he passed. It had taken them forever to actually succumb to their feelings, and deep down, if Hunter was like Cole, I didn’t think she would have ended up with him.

“Yes,” she huffed. “Of fucking course I would have.”

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“Are you expecting me to watch Drew for two weeks?” Vee hissed, her irritation clear the moment Drew and I stepped through the front door.

“What? No.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were fucking off to Costa Rica?”

I sighed and set my bags down before gently placing Drew in his little swing. “Because I’m taking him with me and I didn’t want you to freak out. But apparently, that was going to happen anyway.”

“You're taking Drew to South America?”

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