Page 40 of Hey, Daddy

She had the phone pressed to her ear, and she was watching the door warily.

“I need you to come home,” she begged. “I’m at your neighbor’s apartment.”

She started to cry then, and I fought the urge to go to her.

If that guy decided to kick the door in, I’d be ready.

I couldn’t even get close enough to check the peephole because if I got too close and he kicked it in, he’d take me out along with the door.

So I stayed in place, revolver in hand, and kept it aimed at the door, ready and waiting.

I stayed like that for a long time, long enough that my arms were shaking and I was shifting from foot to foot.

“Yeah, yeah,” I heard her say long moments later.

She moved toward the door, and I dropped my gun.

“What are you…”

“He’s here,” she said. “He says there’s no one out on the landing.”

That’s when she opened the door, and a very angry looking Detective Haze Hopkins was allowed entry into my apartment.

Hewas the father?

How on earth did that make him hotter?

Have kids they said. It’ll be fun they said.

Well, they forgot to tell you about the hell years where you would constantly question your life choices from the ages of thirteen to nineteen.

—Haze’s secret thoughts

HAZE

Angry didn’t begin to explain how I felt in the moments after my daughter explained the situation.

“One more time,” I said. “Start from the beginning.”

“So Mom was out of town…”

“Why was she out of town?” I paused, trying to compose myself.

My ex-wife, Julia, was a part-time mom.

Well, according to the courts, she was a full-time mom. She got the twenty-five hundred dollars a month for child support to prove it.

However, she only wanted full custody to give a big fuck you to me.

Twenty-five years ago, when Julia and I had met in high school, we’d been great.

At eighteen, after dating for three years, we’d decided to party a little too hard and thought…let’s get married. The next morning after graduation, with a hangover from hell, I’d realized that maybe marrying Julia wasn’t the best idea in the world.

We were both off to college in three months, her at Texas A&M and me at Notre Dame.

I had a football scholarship that was paying my way, and she had a full ride through her FFA—Future Farmers of America—earnings in high school as well as an agricultural scholarship that paid for what wasn’t covered by her proceeds. Our parents had always been good friends, and so we’d always had a great relationship and were close.

However, after I’d asked her to marry me, I’d felt kind of trapped.

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