Page 61 of Menace

Take Lucky for instance.

From the very first moment we met I had been drawn to him. I had played it cool, putting him in the friend zone.

But one starlit night on a beach changed it all.

And now here we were.

Me with his child, and him, out there somewhere, with that evil bitch.

It hurt so freaking bad that he had moved on, and that he’d moved on with someone so horrible. Someone he had allowed to disrespect me at my place of work, in front of our clients and my co-workers. And then, adding insult to injury, he went on to disrespect and insult me as well.

If I saw him again I was going to slap him silly.

All over his pretty face.

His so very pretty face. A face I had been able to see because he’d cleaned up his wild beard and hair.

Did he do it for her?

That burned, burned like acid in my stomach.

Or maybe it was just heartburn.

I’m going to go with heartburn. It was heartburn. Definitely heartburn.

“You okay, Harp?” Bren asked as he lowered his big body on to the couch next to me. I shifted Ry to a more comfortable position in my arms as he glugged down his bottle.

“I am, I’m just so pissed off I can spit snakes.”

I giggled and bumped his shoulder with mine, sliding sideways while keeping my arms around Ry and my feet on the ottoman.

“Imagine I could do that, spit snakes I mean, I would have spat vipers all over her slutty ass. They would have spat poison and bitten her to hell and back. Skank ass bitch.”

Aaand the anger was back.

“Babe, don’t let some slut impact who you know yourself to be. She has slut written all over her, not a bit of class to be seen anywhere. I can guarantee she’s going to get what’s coming to her. Bitches like her don’t last, they’re for fucking; it’s all they’re good for.”

Yikes. It seemed Bren was angry as well.

“I just don’t get it, Bren. I don’t understand why he’s with a woman like that, that’s not the man I met and spent time with in Cape Town. That man would have avoided her like the plague. I don’t like how it’s making me feel, knowing he moved on from me to that…that…thatthing!”

“I don’t know the man so I can’t even guess at the reasons why he’s with her. Why don’t we try to put it behind us and focus on something different? Like Ry’s visit with the paediatrician tomorrow. I’m very curious to find out how much weight our little Sumo wrestler has gained.”

It instantly made me sad. I knew I was being silly, but I would have loved my baby’s daddy to be there, holding my hand, as the doctor checked over our boy.

I wondered if he knew Ry was his if he would even want him.

He had been so adamant about ending what we had.

“I can’t wait to go home to settle down with my boy and stop all this secrecy.”

Bren took my hand in both of his and squeezed. I glanced up at his face and tensed, he was going to tell me something I wasn’t going to like.

I braced for whatever was coming.

“Sweetheart, we have to face facts. Asa is fighting a huge battle back home, he’s winning but its slow going and the threat against you hasn’t been eliminated. Not yet anyway. It means we’re most probably going to be here for a while. And you should maybe think about letting the baby daddy know so he can be a part of Ry’s life, if he wants to be, that is. He’s a fucking asshole as far as I’m concerned and I would prefer not having him near you.”

I sighed and sank into him, all my strength and bravado gone in an instant.

---