Page 93 of Sven

She nodded, and Sven guided her into the kitchen.

“Can I get you anything?”

She just shook her head and followed.

“Are you okay?”

“Why are you being so nice to me? Did you call the police?”

“No. I thought about it, but I just want to take care of the most important thing. Winnie.”

She nodded. “I have some questions I want to ask you, and I want custody of her. Do you mind if I call my lawyer?”

She shook her head.

“Here, have a donut,” he said, opening the box to her before calling his lawyer.

“DiMaggio.”

“Hey, it’s Sven. Stacie’s at my house. Can you come over?”

“Yep, give me twenty minutes.”

He hung up the phone and went to sit at the breakfast bar next to her.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked again, noticing her hands were shaking.

She clenched her fists. “I’m not feeling very well.”

“Withdrawal?”

By the looks of her and the way she’d been acting here, it was all adding up.

She nodded as she wiped away another tear.

“Can I see her?”

Sven’s first reaction was to keep Winnie and Natalie safely locked away in the pool house, but this was Winnie’s mother. His heart broke for her.

“Can you tell me what happened first? Why did you leave?”

She dropped her head and wiped away another tear. Sven handed her a box of tissue and waited for her to explain.

“You don’t know what it was like,” she said, dabbing away her tears. “When we hooked up, I was living a completely different life. I was dancing and modeling. It might not have been a life most people approve of, but I was happy. But when I got pregnant, I lost everything. No one wants to hire a pregnant woman to dance or anything... and I was a party girl.”

She turned to Sven with wide eyes. “But I swear to you, I was clean for my pregnancy. I may not have been ready to be amother, but I was trying to treat it as a new start. But the world isn’t always kind to strippers who find themselves pregnant.”

Sven nodded and tried to push down the big ball of guilt in his stomach.

“That’s why I tried to find you.”

“I would have helped.”

She nodded. “Yeah, I know that now... but after she was born, I didn’t know how to take care of her. I tried to dance again, but the place I worked before wouldn’t hire me back. I had to work at some really sketchy places and started using again.”

Sven should’ve been mad at her, but all he saw before him was Winnie’s mother, who was utterly broken.

He went and sat next to her and put a comforting hand on her back.

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