Page 183 of Broken Daddy
Sorry.
Urgh. Yep, he was definitely losing his mind.
“What sort of products do you like? And be specific. I know there are certain brands that May hated.”
“I . . . what?” she asked.
He crouched in front of her, cupping her good cheek.
“Oh God. What are you doing?” she wailed. “I’m sitting on the toilet with my panties down at my knees and I . . . I have my period!”
It was said quickly. And she bit her lip, waiting, as though she thought that was some huge revelation and she wasn’t certain of his reaction.
He found himself having to hide a smile.
Poor baby girl thought this was a big deal. But it wasn’t even close to anything he would consider an issue.
“I know, baby,” he said in a matter-of-fact voice. “That’s why I asked you what you needed. You don’t have anything and we both know that toilet paper isn’t going to cut it.”
“It was just to get me by while I went out and bought some stuff.”
“And you don’t need to do that because I can go get the stuff for you. Tell me what you need.”
A small sob escaped her. A tendril of panic unfurled. He was supposed to be making things better, not worse.
“Or you can walk out there with paper-filled panties and pick what you want,” he told her.
“You . . . you have no idea how n-nice you are, do you?”
Nice? Him?
“Baby, the last word anyone would ever use to describe me is nice,” he told her.
“But you are.” She sniffled. “I don’t know anyone else who would . . . who would do this for me.”
He frowned. “What? Your brother wouldn’t go get you stuff for your period?”
“I don’t know. Maybe now. I never asked him to.”
“Was your mom alive when you got your first period?”
She bit her lip, then shook her head. “No, it came a couple of months after. But she’d prepared me for it.”
Fuck.
“Who helped you?” he asked.
“Rohan did. I didn’t have anyone else. He, uh, stole me a book from the library. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that we’d learned about stuff in school and that mom had gone through it. He was trying to be helpful. He stole some money off Derick and took me to buy what I needed. After that, I managed it myself. There were free products at school if you asked the nurse. And Rohan gave me money whenever he could.”
“Well, the good thing is that now you also have me.”
“You don’t need to pay for my stuff; I have some money.”
“Wasn’t talking about paying for them. I’m going to go buy them for you while you sit here. Just tell me what you want.”
Her face grew red. “You can’t do that!”
“Of course I can. What would you like? Tell me.”
