Page 385 of The Tempted

Chapter Nineteen

“I don’t know why you’re insisting on living here,” my mother chastised.

For the millionth time.

After I explained to her that Riggs and I spoke and agreed to work together and co-parent, she started giving me shit. I can’t say I don’t totally agree with some of the things she’s said, like, when she warned me about keeping my guard up. Or when she told me fairytales don’t really exist and Riggs may say one thing now and do another later. I suppose she’s jaded by my father and the way he left us high and dry. I wonder if she wasn’t a woman scorned if she’d feel the same way.

“I don’t trust that scoundrel, why keep an apartment if you’re not going to live in it?” she asked, as she hung some of my clothes up in the closet.

I had Anthony take some of my things from the storage locker out this morning. There wasn’t much, but I had kept my bedroom set, and when Mia and I went our separate ways, I won the sofa in the split. Actually, she told me to take it all because she wasn’t planning on leaving her mom and dad’s house unless she had a ring on finger. Mia didn’t do adult very well. But hey, it works for me because I have a couch.

I plopped down on the couch and unpacked some of my clothes as my mother walked out of the bathroom.

“At least it’s clean,” she said, placing her hands on her hips as she fixed me with a look.

“You don’t think he has a wife or a bunch of kids he’s hiding and that’s why he has this place do you?” she questioned, raising an eyebrow in an attempt to really drive her point home.

I rolled my eyes. My mother really was supportive in a crisis. She could make me feel better with all her reassuring words.

Not.

I heard a commotion from the door and jumped to my feet, peering through the peep hole to see Riggs shouting at someone down the flight of stairs outside our apartment. Our apartment. Fucking weird.

“What’s going on?” My mother asked, nosily.

Shit.

“It’s Riggs,” I turned around and wagged my index finger at her. “Be nice!” I warned.

She scoffed.

Yeah, this was going to be fun.

Before I gave myself, an anxiety attack thinking about the next eighteen years of my mother and Riggs interacting over Pea, I turned around and pulled the door open.

“Go left,” shouted Bones.

“We’re not going to clear the wall,” Riggs ground out.

“Well fuck you, next time pay for the goddamn delivery,” Bones growled.

“Is everything okay?” I asked, stepping into the hallway and closer to the stairwell, noticing the refrigerator they were trying to maneuver up the stairs.

Riggs glanced over his shoulder, turned around slightly and leaned against the fridge.

“Hi, Kitten,” he said with a smile, casually crossing his arms against his chest as he stared at me.

“Are you fucking kidding, man?” Bones called from down the stairs.

“Shit,” he muttered, turning toward the fridge and taking some of the weight of it from Bones. “Sorry,” he called down to Bones.

“Hi Bones,” I said, peaking over Riggs’ shoulder and down the stairs.

He lifted his hand and waved.

“Hiya, Kitten,” he greeted.

“I’ll drop the fucking refrigerator on you if you call her Kitten again,” Riggs hissed as he maneuvered the fridge. “Push,” he ordered, before glancing at me. “Make sure the door is open and step aside, I don’t want you to get hurt.”

---