Page 15 of Cold Foot Croc

After a few seconds, he chuckled. “That’s my new favorite picture.”

“Liar. I’m a mess. I’m newly out of prison, pregnant as hell, don’t even really know the father, don’t know how to be normal anymore because I’ve spent the last two years in Cold Foot Prison, and a year before that in another jail waiting for my trial. I’m not even supposed to be in Darby. I was an accidental rescue. I don’t deserve this enormous house, or to be a part of a Crew. I’m at my low—” She swallowed the sob that threatened to crawl up the back of her throat. Softer, she admitted, “I’m at my lowest.”

“Keep going,” he murmured.

“I am going to be a terrible mom. Fuck.” She set the phone down and buried her head against her forearms on the table. “Can I call you back?” she asked, gutted.

“Put me on speaker.”

She shook her head against her forearms, tears staining the table. “I need to go.”

“Don’t hang up,” he told her. “Please don’t hang up.”

Raynah rested her cheek against the cool wood of the fancy table, wrapped her arms around her belly, and stared at the fireplace. It was one of those nice ones with a flip-switch and fake flames that put out heat. The glass still had the sticker on it. She’d never used it.

A couple of minutes drifted by as she really absorbed what she’d just admitted out loud for the first time. She would be a terrible mother. She’d heard the truth in her own voice as she’d said that out loud. She believed it.

Garret was silent on the other end. Perhaps he’d hung up. She understood if he had. She was a lot. She was too much. Raynah hit speaker phone, and told him, “I’m sorry Farrah used you.”

“Nice subject change.”

She huffed a thick laugh and pushed off the table, sat back in the chair. “My point in telling you a fraction of the shitstorm that is my life—what you see is what you get with me. I do understand you being wary. You should be, in my opinion. Not everyone has good intentions. I’m fine with waiting on conversations until you are okay with them. There’s no rush on my end. I’m just kind of relieved to be talking to someone outside of my Crew.”

“You don’t like your Crew?”

“It’s not that. They’re not bad. I just have this feeling that I don’t belong lately. I wasn’t supposed to get out of Cold Foot Prison. That part replays in my head a lot. I don’t feel the same way about this place that they do.”

“You feel alone?”

Clever man. “Yeah. The last few weeks especially, I feel really alone.”

He didn’t say anything for a few moments, but then he told her, “I get that. Look, I’m sorry you gotta pay for Farrah’s bullshit. Horse crap. Gah, I like to cuss, I’m sorry. You’re a lady and I shouldn’t talk to you like that.”

“Fuck, fuck, dick shit burpy-farts coochie cock-splash ballsack.”

His chuckle was deep, and dragged a smile from her lips.

“Genitalia.”

“Okay, I got it,” he said around a laugh.

“I’m not a lady. I’m a menace.”

“You can be both.” He huffed a sigh. “I would probably feel better faster if we talked sometimes in person.”

“The phone-relationship traumatized you?”

“A little.”

“Just so you know, if Farrah was still alive, I would eat her for you.”

He snorted. “The truth in your voice is terrifying. You are a menace.”

“A lady-menace,” she corrected him primly. “A lenace.”

Her phone vibrated, and he told her, “Go look at the picture.”

“If it’s an unsolicited dick pic—”

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