Page 112 of Fierce-Michael

Maybe hewasenabling her. There was no reason she couldn’t buy a few things for their kid and that by him doing this now, she would never step up for Ty.

But the other side of it was, he would have to sometimes deal with Ty coming home hungry.

Ty wouldn’t starve or fade away in a few hours at his mother's. There was always bread and peanut butter. Maybe Kelly was right that he was doing way more than he needed to.

Which was why he only got milk, a few more frozen breakfast and dinner things. Nothing for Electra. Nothing over the top. Ty only.

There was no more conversation in the car on the ride there.

He parked and his son got out in the back. Michael grabbed the two bags of groceries and they made their way up the stairs.

“Hi, Tyson,” Electra said when she opened the door. She was smirking at him and that set him off.

He never thought she was a manipulative person before. Maybe he didn’t think she was smart enough to figure it out and that was on him.

The last thing he was going to do was let Electra know she caused a fight with him and Kelly and he hoped Ty didn’t say anything. But he wouldn’t put his son in the middle of it.

“Ty, can you give your mom and me a minute?” he asked.

“I’m going to do some of the activity books you got me,” Ty said and ran to his room and shut the door.

“Here is some food for Ty,” he said. “Do you think you can start figuring out how to get a few things in the future?”

Electra helped him unpack and put a pout on her face. “Don’t you have the money to help me out?”

“It’s not about the money,” he said. “I’d think that you’d want our son to know that you can care for him too. Do you want him to think I’m doing everything in his life? Then it makes you no more than a babysitter rather than a mother. He’s getting to an age where he’s questioning things more. Or maybe you’re okay with him having that opinion.”

“I don’t have the money that you do,” Electra said.

“You don’t,” he said. “But you’re still a parent.” He opened the fridge and saw a case of beer in there. She didn’t drink beer, so his guess was it was for a guy. He wasn’t going to assume she bought it. Maybe a guy brought it over.

He opened the freezer to put the rest of the food in there and saw a bunch of ice cream. Nothing that Ty would like, so she had money for those things. He went without for his kid early on. That was what a parent did.

She needed to start to be a little more responsible.

“You said you’d take care of it all,” Electra said.

“I did because I was mad that you had nothing here for him. I asked you to tell me if you needed things. You haven’t, but I’ve been bringing it. Now I want you to ask.”

She frowned. She didn’t like to ask. In the past, she said when she asked for things from her parents, they’d lecture her with it. They’d try to teach her or get her to see how she could provide for herself.

He didn’t want to be her parent, but he wanted her to at least take one step up on the staircase with Ty.

“You might say no,” Electra said, giggling.

He bit his tongue over the laughter. “I’ll never put Ty in jeopardy and you know that. I’m asking you to grow up some and provide some food for our child.” He crossed his arms. “Do you even want to spend time with him? Answer me that?”

“Sure,” Electra said. “He’s my son.”

“You’re not sounding convincing.”

“I’d think that you wouldn’t want him full time now that you’ve got a girlfriend.”

It was the smile again. “That has nothing to do with this conversation. I’m not sure why you’d bring it up. Kelly has no problem spending time with Ty as I’m sure you saw when she picked him up and how excited he was.”

Maybe he shouldn’t have said that because Electra had tears in her eyes. “He doesn’t get that excited when he sees me. Is she bribing him?”

He rolled his eyes. “No, she’s not bribing him. That isn’t her way. She spends time interacting with him.”

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