Page 58 of Renegade

He pressed another quick kiss to my lips and then stood up. “Come over at six. I’ll text you the address.”

I sat up and began smoothing my hair back before moving to stand up. Mike steadied me. “I’d tuck you in, but I want to make sure you lock up after I leave. Okay?”

I nodded sleepily and followed him to the door. “Goodnight. Thanks for coming.”

He bit down on the corner of his mouth as if he wanted to say something. Instead, he pressed a kiss to my forehead. “Bye. I’ll text you later.”

I locked the door behind him and then laughed soundlessly until tears were streaming down my face.

Either he’d been carrying tonight or he was leaving my apartment with quite an impressive erection.

I awoke late that morning to my phone ringing. “Hello?” I grumbled. My dreams had been a disjointed mess of bombs being dropped from airplanes onto marriages that were once good. That was the last time I mixed marital drama with war-time documentaries.

“LoLo, it’s after eleven, why are you still in bed? Are you sick?” Josué’s voice took on a concerned tone.

I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and responded, “No, I just went to bed late. What are you up to?”

“Well, I’m staring at an envelope full of cash and a note from your mother.”

I sat straight up in bed, suddenly wide awake. “What? How did she get your address? Is she there now?”

He sighed, “She’s not here—it came in the mail. LoLo, it’s a lot of money.”

I rubbed my temple with my free hand. “How much money, Josué? And, what does the note say?”

He cleared his throat. “It’s uh—it’s about seven…grand.” I gasped and he continued, “The note just says that it’s payment for what she stole and for taking care of you. She also talks about her rehab and how she’s been sober since March. Oh, and to tell you to stop being stubborn and take the money from her.”

My palms went sweaty. When I saw her at the hospital, she’d been adamant that I take the cash; said it’d help her clear her conscience.

I’d considered her offer the second time around. She’d looked so good—her eyes were clear and someone had obviously spent the money to get her hair highlighted and trimmed. Minus her teeth, there was no evidence of her ever being a drug user.

“Oh.” I didn’t know what else to say.

He cleared his throat again, obviously uncomfortable with the topic. He’d admitted that in the early years, he’d been so afraid that she’d show up and demand to have me back. I knew without a doubt that her showing up now was just dredging up old feelings. “She left a phone number and said I could give it to you.”

I didn’t want it, but wrote it down anyway. Monica had made her bed years ago, long before I arrived. It would only be fitting if she had to spend the rest of her life knowing that her only child wanted nothing to do with her.

Josué didn’t ask how she got the money and I didn’t have the heart to tell him. If he knew that she was in deep with a biker gang, then he and Isaac would be in their car and on their way to me.

I was twenty-seven. I needed to handle Monica like an adult—an adult who’d learned the hard way how life worked with an addict, but an adult nonetheless.

I hung up after promising that if I did decide to hear her out, I’d ensure that my car keys were chained to my body.

It had been hard to connect the beautiful woman who approached me at the hospital with the addict who had made my life hell, but I knew that sooner or later, I was going to have to do just that.

Chapter Ten

Late June 2014

Exclusivity was bullshit.

Two weeks in and I was certain I was getting carpal tunnel in my right wrist. It didn’t seem to matter how much I jacked off, I’d see her face in my head and get hard again almost immediately. My hand hadn’t seen that much action since I was a teenager.

The worst part was that I was two weeks in and we’d yet to go on an actual date. I was still realistically looking at another five weeks of this shit.

I hadn’t meant to offer to cook for her last night. It had just slipped out. She was a five-dater though, so technically, cooking wasn’t an entirely unreasonable date.

Maybe because I’d offered to cook, it would count as two dates?

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