Page 49 of A Love So Hard

“No, you don’t get to do that. You don’t get to think you can play the sweet southern gentleman with me again and that all will be forgiven. That is your daughter up there,” she pointed toward the stairs. “When are you going to start acting like it?”

“I know she’s mine. I went and had the damn DNA test to prove it, remember?”

She scoffed at me. “Great, you’re her sperm donor. If this had been Anna would you have automatically jumped to conclusions the way you did?”

A kick to my gut told me she wasn’t wrong. “Anna is different,” I finally commented.

“Why?”

“Because she’s yours,” I roared at her.

“So is Ever,” Lucy stated simply in a quiet voice that was the complete opposite of the bellowing words I’d just launched at her.

“No, she’s not. Ever is not your blood. She spent the first eight years of her life learning God knows what lessons from her lying whore of a mother. We still don’t know how that will affect her.”

Lucy laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Really? You’re going with the evil seed theory? You’re a damn fool, CJ, and you’re going to drive your daughter away the same way my family did to me. Are you ready for that? Are you ready for her to have nothing to do with you ever again? I’m not. I don’t want her to leave here and never speak to me again because you couldn’t bring yourself to be a father to her. I love that girl like she came from me too. Why can’t you? She’s yours after all!”

“What does any of that have to do with her actions?”

“You really think she’s capable of that?”

“Lucy, people are capable of a lot of shitty things. Maybe you forgot that I lost out on the first pregnancy you had along with the first three years of my son’s life because of jealous assholes who played games with our lives. Then because the man you loved, adored, and called daddy lied to you and me both. I bet you didn’t see that coming either, did you?”

Lucy stopped short and really looked at me then. “I see where you would take a hard stand against someone who would do those things,” she agreed. “That someone isn’t your daughter though.”

It was my turn to scoff. “There were witnesses to what she said to the girl.” Lucy didn’t believe it. I could see it in her angry demeanor.

“Your daughter is too smart for there to have been witnesses if she was going to attempt something like that, but my daughter lives too much in her own heart to ever stoop to those levels to begin with.” Lucy turned from me then. “It’s a shame you don’t know your own daughter well enough to have said that from the beginning.” With that she walked away completely disappointed in me for the first time in a whole bunch of years. I swallowed thickly, but I knew I wasn’t wrong. I couldn’t be. Jay swore there were other people who heard this all go down. While I was still going to rip him a new one for how he handled it, I wasn’t about to let Ever’s lies bowl me over the way she managed with Lucy.

I couldn’t stand to be in the house with Lucy mad at me and Ever sulking upstairs in a mess of her own making. I turned and headed back out the door and back to the clubhouse.

I was about three shots of Jim Beam Black Label down and a few beers deep by the time I finally tuned back into the conversation going on around. I was sitting with PeeWee, Crow, Sandman, and Phoenix – a nomad just passing through. We had a mean game of poker going, or at least I pretended we did, as I really didn’t find myself giving many fucks about the hand I held. I tossed down another stack of bills and called PeeWee. Even drunk I knew when he was bluffing. His tubby face turned the slightest shade of pink and I knew he had a shitty hand. I didn’t have much better, but fuck it. I didn’t care about much at the moment.

“Didn’t get a chance to talk about what went down earlier before you took off with Toby,” Crow finally mentioned before he kicked back his beer bottle and took a hard pull from it.

“Fuck!” I grunted the word out and watched as PeeWee threw his shitty hand down, grumbling about me being a cheating bastard. I tipped my chin up at him before scooping my winnings close and throwing my own shitty hand down. It beat his, but only just.

“You need to vent?” Crow asked while he picked once more at the festering wound I’d been trying to drink away.

“Lucy thinks she’s a fuckin’ saint. I know better. I still remember why I lost Luce for so long. Remember why I didn’t have Toby. Remember why Ever was even here to begin with. She shouldn’t be here. Shoulda never fucked her cunt of a mother and definitely shoulda never fucked her raw,” I grunted. Sandman and Phoenix both looked at one another and then stood.

“We’re heading out,” they both said at once. Phoenix turned to leave, but Sandman stood there for a moment and took a good hard look at me like he wanted to say something, but he just shook his head, nabbed what was left of his beer and took off for the other side of the room and the whores that were congregated there.

“Always knew she would turn out just like her mother,” PeeWee announced. Fuckin’ no loyalty having cunts!”

“That’s the damn truth. Hell, I knew it when you first brought the little bitch ‘round. She had that vacant look. Can’t fix that kind of broken in a person. Was only time before she fucked someone over. Just glad Jay’s young enough it won’t really affect him.”

“Could though,” I mumbled. “Lucy went running that first time just because of some lies Stiff told.”

“Just like the lies your daughter fuckin’ told,” Crow agreed nodding his head.

“Or maybe,” a very familiar feminine voice called from just behind me, “just like Jay’s lying, jealous girlfriend told. Never occurred to any of you brainless idiots that maybe she’s the evil twat in this particular story did it?” She glared in my direction and then through looks of complete disgust at my drinking partners. “Are you going to set them straight? Tell them not to speak about your daughter like that? Anything?”

“We all know she’s just waiting for him to notice her in a different way. What makes you so damn sure she got tired of waiting? What makes you so fucking sure that she isn’t acting like her mother or like the whores who you ran you off all those years ago? Obviously, it’s in her blood.”

“You’re in her blood too, and I’ve been her mother just as long as that other woman was. I may not have carried that child in my belly like I did our other two, but she’s just as much mine as they are. I know her. I know our daughter, and there is no way she would ever stoop to something like that. She wants people to love her on their own terms. Why do you think she’s been so patiently waiting on you all these years?”

My head snapped back as if she’d landed a physical blow. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

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