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“You look worn out, darling,” Davida drawled.
“That’s because I am.” I sipped my iced coffee, and my eyes nearly rolled back in my head. I had no business splurging on designer coffee, but sometimes being irresponsible was the necessary decision. “Thank you for saying so.”
“I’ve told you a hundred times I’ll come stay at yours to help you at night.” Davida rolled her eyes. “Don’t bother saying no. I’m tired of hearing it.”
“You know I appreciate it.”
“But you’re pathologically incapable of accepting help,” she supplied.
That wasn’t it. The thought of having someone to tag team with at night sounded euphoric. But that meant allowing her to come into the wreckage I lived in. If she saw how dismal the condition of my house was, she’d want to help with that too, and I just couldn’t let her step in that way.
Maybe she was right. Maybe Iwaspathologically incapable of accepting help, but in my experience, help always came with strings. Not that I didn’t trust Davida. I truly did, especially after she’d been by my side for every second of Joey’s birth, but I couldn’t let go of my wariness and the little pride I had left.
I might get there, but I wasn’t to that point yet.
She patted my hand. “Have you heard from Liam yet?”
I scoffed. “No, and I don’t expect to. He only goes where the fun is. Once the excitement wore off, being a dad wasn’t exciting to him.”
“That twat. I hope he contracts syphilis and his dick falls off.”
“There’s modern medicine to prevent that kind of thing now.”
She shrugged. “This is my dream, and we don’t have any medicine that will work on twats.”
“Fair enough.” I drank my coffee around my grin. “He’s probably using his dick enough that syphilis isn’t outside the realm of possibilities.”
She arched a brow, eyeing me carefully. “Does that bother you? Knowing what he’s doing on the other side of the world?”
I put my coffee down and swiped my index finger through the condensation, considering her question. “It does and doesn’t. I never thought of him as a potential boyfriend or husband. I’ve known him too long to think he’d be good at either. But that man was my friend, you know? He knew my history, my trauma, everything. And he just left me.”
My eyes started to sting, and I dug my teeth into my bottom lip. Hormones were a bitch. I didn’t want to cry. I wasn’t sad over Liam. Not anymore. If I ever saw him in person again, I’d have to hold myself back from punching him in the face, though. Everything we’d experienced together had now been tainted by the fact that he was a little shit weasel.
“I could give a damn who he hooks up with, but yeah, it bothers me that he’s living this carefree life after abandoning me and Joey.”
And stealing from me. Leaving me financially screwed. Ruining my credit.
I didn’t mention that. Davida didn’t need to know how deep the pit truly was.
She shook her head. “I feel sorry for him. He’s missing out on knowing his beautiful daughter, but he’s too stupid to realize all he’s lost.”
“He doesn’t care.” I lifted a shoulder. “I can’t think about him. If I do, I’ll be miserable, and I really don’t want to feel like that.”
Davida flicked her fingers. “Then let’s not waste time talking about someone so trivial, I barely remember his name. What was it again?”
That made me laugh, and dear god, was it a relief to push some of my gloom away. “Yes. Let’s talk about something slightly less painful: work. How’s Daniel fairing these days?”
Raymond walked by with Joey as I asked my question. “Terrible. He’s got this…hollow look in his eyes he didn’t have when he first started. The poor man hasseen thingsin his short time at Levy Development.”
Davida nodded. “A week or two ago, Daniel told me Elliot had ripped him a new one over the paper he writes his daily schedule on. Apparently, it isn’t the same size you used. Daniel showed him the notebook, but Elliot would not believe it wasn’t Daniel’s fault.”
Oh shit.That wasn’t good. How had I never considered my meticulous, detail-focused boss wouldn’t notice an inch missing from the bottom of the schedule paper?
My only choice was to deny, deny, deny. Though, I was surprised Elliot hadn’t mentioned anything to me in his endless emails.
“Strange,” I murmured. “Poor Daniel. Sounds like Elliot’s in his finest form.”
Raymond swooped by again. “Daniel hasn’t cried yet, at least not publicly, so it could be much worse.”
