Page 50 of Into the Dark

Smiling, I kiss the top of his head and start toward the door, and when I reach it I put him back down. “Go say bye to Auntie Kelly and fix your buttons.” I turn back toward Vicky and scratch my hand over my head.

“You’re always telling me you can’t look after a toddler full-time. Not with Fred and the club. What’s changed?”

“Maybe I’ve changed.”

She snorts out a laugh.

I clench my teeth together. Arguing with her isn’t going to help. “Look, you’ve got a lot on your plate with this place too, and my hours are more flexible. Plus, I have a manager at the club now, so I don’t have to be there as much.”

She still looks wary. As if there’s some part of this she can’t see. Which, to be fair, there is. “You really want him to come live with you? Full-time?”

I nod. “Yeah. I do. I’d want to do it right, though, sign some papers. Make sure your rights are all written down.” My heart is beating too fast. Could it seriously be as easy as this? She’d just give him to me…

“Written down?”

“In case anything happens to me, I don’t know.”

“We’d need to talk to him about it. See what he wants.”

“Yeah, without a doubt.” I nod again. “He decides. I just want to do my bit.”

She smiles a little. Not sure what kind of smile it is though—she’s hard to read sometimes. “And I’d see him whenever I wanted?”

“Course. You’re his mum.”

She looks at me for a long time, her expression unreadable from a distance. “Okay, let me think about it.”

I give her the most tempered smile I can manage considering I want to grin like the Cheshire fucking cat. I go toward her and settle a hand on her shoulder, then I peck her on the cheek. I can’t remember the last time I kissed her, but I feel her surprise in the way she tenses under my hand.

“Thanks.” I squeeze her lightly. “I really wanna do better by him, Vic.”

She looks up at me, wide eyes brimming with something I don’t want to name. “Yeah. Okay.”

I nod. “I’ll bring him back around dinnertime, yeah?”

“What now, Daddy? Ice cream?” Cale asks me, skipping along beside me as we stride down Wapping High Street away from the florists.

I told him the top-secret mission was very important. Then I bribed him with a promise of ice cream if he behaved in the shop while I spoke to the girl behind the counter. The girl gave me a wide-eyed look when I explained what I wanted. Even wider when I told her how much I was willing to pay to make it happen. It was a bit out of their delivery boundary, she said initially, but it was a slow Tuesday, and after making a call to her delivery driver she agreed.

I look at my watch. They’re delivering the flowers between 4:30 p.m and 5:00 p.m., meaning I have a few hours before I have to drop Cale back with Vicky. Our chat from earlier starts to play over in my head. No doubt when she finds out Alex and I are back together the negotiations will come to a close. Unless I can somehow keep that information from her until after she’s signed over custody. I managed to keep far more than that from Alex, so it shouldn’t be that hard.

“How is your tummy? Still okay? I ask him as we approach a small, open-fronted cafe.

“All better! Now I want ice creammmm!”

“We can have ice cream as long as you eat something first. What about a hamburger?’

He shakes his head grumpily. “No. I don’t like hamburger anymore.”

“Really? Since when?” I frown.

He shrugs. “I just want ice cream.”

Since he was sick last night, I decide to give him a pass.

Just then a tall, attractive woman with long, dark hair walks past us, smiling at me first and then him, tilting her head to do that silent “aww” thing women do when they see him. He beams up at her, and when she walks past he turns and watches her walk away. I’ve noticed him do this more and more. Sometimes he waves. Other times he says “hi.” Slightly worrying maybe, but fun to watch.

The cafe is busy, so to make it easier to move I swing him up into my arms and move toward the counter to investigate the ice cream flavors. He takes his time deciding, asking what every flavor is, before finally deciding on chocolate and banana with chocolate sauce.

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