Page 47 of Moore to Love

24

ELLIE

Ignoring the fact that John was here in his official capacity as a police officer, I turned to Finn and growled, “Please, punch him again. Maybe it’ll knock some sense loose in his brain.”

“See,” Thad yelled, pointing at me with the hand that wasn’t holding his nose. “She just admitted to it.”

Finn shrugged. “I wasn’t going to deny it. Like Ellie said, I was simply defending my girlfriend from a trespasser.”

“Trespasser?” Thad squawked. “It’s my money that paid for this house!”

“Not this again,” I groaned, scrubbing my palms down my face.

“Again?” Finn muttered.

“He tried using the same argument on me when he showed up on my doorstep after he found out that you gave me a job and helped drop the kids off at school when I had the flat tire.”

Thad threw his hands up in the air. “Because that’s when everything started to go wrong!”

Feeling as though I was talking to our son instead of a grown-ass man, I asked, “What do you mean?”

“Penny got pissed that I was upset about you getting a job. She didn’t understand why I cared who you were working for or if your new boss gave Benjamin and Madison a ride to school.” Thad rolled his eyes as if it was ridiculous for a woman to expect her boyfriend to be over his ex-wife…even if she’d stolen him from her in the first place. “Then she complained about me having them for my weekends. And started talking about how we should have our own baby.”

None of what I knew about Penny was good, but this was much, much worse. “You let our children be around a woman who thought they were a nuisance? Have you lost your damn mind even more than you already had?”

“No.” He shook his head, his eyes full of sorrow. “Her acting like that finally woke me up to all of the mistakes I’ve made. So I sent her away for a spa weekend when I had them.”

“At least you did one thing right,” I muttered.

“But then Benjamin wanted to know where she was.” He heaved a deep sigh. “And I told him that he didn’t have to worry about Penny being around anymore. And that I was going to talk to you about it soon.”

I crossed my arms over my chest and tapped my foot against the floor of the porch. “Is that when you told them you wanted to work on our marriage? Because that’s fucked up, Thad. You can’t drag our children into a mess like that when I’ve finally gotten them to a good place after the last stunt you pulled destroyed their family.”

“I…uh…might’ve exaggerated a bit in the hope that you’d really listen to me.”

I narrowed my eyes. “With me? Or with them?”

“With you.” His gaze darted toward Finn, and he sighed again. “Benjamin thought that I already knew about you and Finn dating. So when I told him we would talk soon, he asked if Finn would be there too. I had kind of assumed that he would hope it meant we were getting back together, so his response threw me off.”

My son had not hidden how much he liked Finn, and I knew he was still upset with his father for missing so many weekends with him and Madison. But I never expected he would metaphorically twist the knife in his dad’s chest, intentionally or not. I was going to need to keep a close eye on him in the coming months to make sure he wasn’t putting on a brave face to protect me while he was struggling inside.

“Is that why you didn’t come over to talk to me until today?” I asked since it had been a week and a half since he’d dropped them off after his last visitation.

He raked his fingers through his hair. “Yeah, I heard about what happened at Sip & Swirl last night and lost my cool.”

“Okay, things seemed to have de-escalated.” John surveyed the three of us. “I’m assuming nobody wants to press charges for trespassing or assault?”

“Nah.” Thad squeezed the bridge of his nose. “I probably earned that punch since I was being an ass.”

“Damn straight,” Finn grumbled.

My ex shot him a baleful look. “But it’s the only free shot you’ll ever get.”

“That’s enough.” Things were never going to be great between us again. There was too much water under that bridge. But we couldn’t keep going the way that we had been lately. It wasn’t good for any of us. “We all need to learn how to be on the same page, for Benjamin and Madison’s sake.”

“I’ll try, but it’s gonna take a while before I can be around you two,” Thad griped before stomping over to his car and peeling down the street.

I shook my head with a heartfelt sigh, not sure if I should laugh or cry after all of that. “I can’t believe he had the nerve to act like he’s the one whose feelings were hurt.”

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