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Chapter Twenty-Seven
Hadley
Elijah: I forgot your painting last night. I’ll give it to you when I’m back.
Hadley: Okay : )
Two days later…
Hadley: Are you busy? Lucy wants to call…
My phone rang two minutes later. I handed it to Lucy as she bounced up and down. “Elijah?” her blue eyes widened as she answered Elijah’s call. “Guess what I got! Mommy got me a shirt with a unicorn on it. When are you coming home? I want to show you.” She kept talking so fast that I wondered if she gave Elijah time to respond. “I’m going to school, Mommy said.” She giggled, clutching the phone as she walked around. “Yeah, I’m excited. No, I will have boy and girl friends. Nooo, boyfriends. I’m too young, Mommy said.” More giggling.
Her words made me think back to when Lucy was two. Olivia had her going on a boyfriend tirade for months when she brought her boyfriend home. It convinced Lucy that she needed one as well. Every guy she saw was her boyfriend. It was cute until it became embarrassing. Lucy turned every man she saw—young or old—into potential boyfriends for herself. Thankfully, it stopped. I would kill Elijah for bringing that word up.
“Okay. I miss you. I’m going to call Daddy now and tell him.” She hung up the phone.
“You didn’t say bye,” I told her.
I wondered how Elijah took her words. After getting my tattoo, I was curious how we fit into his life. I liked Elijah. Okay, I really, really liked him. Of course, I wondered if he felt the same about me—about all of us.
“Oops. I forgot. Will he be upset?” Lucy frowned. “Can you call him again? I don’t want him to be mad at me.”
I dropped to my knees. “Elijah won’t be mad. When he comes home, he wants to watch a movie with us.”
She walked up and hugged me. “Can Elijah give me a tattoo?”
“You already know the answer to that, and don’t think a hug will change anything. Tattoos hurt.” I tickled her sides, and she laughed. “Do you want to call Daddy now and tell him about your new clothes?”
She nodded. I dialed his number and handed the phone over to her. Things weren’t good between Scott and me, but Lucy seemed to have forgotten that outburst the last time he was over. I was glad but worried all the same. Scott still mentioned Elijah through text messages that I mostly ignored unless it was about Lucy and Eli. I hoped Scott didn’t start on Lucy again. Now that I was more aware of what I was feeling toward Elijah, I didn’t want my ex ruining the relationship between Lucy and Elijah—even if we were only friends.
“Daddy! Guess what! I got new clothes for school. Yeah, Mommy took me.” She looked up at me hesitantly. “Just me, Bubby, and Mom.” Crestfallen, Lucy handed the phone to me. “Here. Daddy wants to talk to you.”
Keeping my emotions in check, I grabbed the phone. “Yeah?”
“How about I come over tonight?” That was the first thing he said to me.
“Why?”
Long sigh. “I miss you. I miss us. This is ridiculous. You don’t really want to raise them this way, do you?”
“What way?”
“Apart. I fucked up, Hadley, but we can put it behind us.”
Stepping away from Lucy, I ventured into the bathroom and shut the door slightly. “Just stop. It’s been a year, and you still think what you did is something I’m going to forgive. We’re never getting back together. Please, I want to get along for Lucy and Eli’s sake.”
“Let’s get back together then. What are you going to do? Raise my kids with someone else? That neighbor is bad news.” The way he said neighbor implied he thought Elijah was more than that. He was, but that wasn’t Scott’s business. “I know what this is, though. You’ll get it out of your system and afterward, you won’t get to say shit to me for what I did.”
“Out of my system?” I whisper shouted. “First off, we’re not together. Second, you don’t know Elijah. He’s never once tried anything with me.”
He snorted. “Okay.”
“Listen to you.” Scott’s words angered me. Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath and told myself he wasn’t worth this aggravation. The only thing I ever had to speak to him about was our kids. He had no right to anything else. “Lucy called to talk to you. If you won’t talk to her, I have no reason to stay on the phone.”
“You’re being ridiculous,” he spat out.
“Will you please talk to Lucy? She’s excited about starting preschool and wanted to tell you about her clothes.”
