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She was sitting in the seafood restaurant staring at her phone, her long blond hair tossed back over her shoulder. Ali was a beautiful girl. Similar coloring to Bella, though her face was a little rounder, her tits a little bigger. She didn’t move with the confidence of a rich girl either. That reserved expectation that people will wait on you. Ali was a hustler, always had been. Hell, she’d hustled me big-time.
We’d grown up together, her, me and Cain. Ali’s father was a maintenance man at the five-star hotel in town and her mother had been a teacher until she died of breast cancer when we were in grade school. Ali was on her own too much after that, and learned how to manipulate first her father, then other men to get what she wanted.
Including me.
I still to this day had no idea why she had lied to me and said she and Cain were broken up when they weren’t. Or why she thought it made sense to hook up with me, unless she had just been out to hurt him. That was all I could figure, because I wasn’t in her head. I had to admit, if you wanted to fuck with someone’s head, fuck his identical twin. Props to her for going through life not giving a fuck about anyone but herself.
“Hey,” I said, sliding into the chair across her.
This wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have. Truthfully, I never wanted to see her ever again. I had never thought of Ali as a sweet or selfless person, but I had never thought she was capable of abandoning her son either. When I thought of Camp and his innocence, his arms held out to me for a hug, I hated her for being such a cruel bitch. My son was everything to me. He was the only reason I wanted to be a better man. His smile, his solemn but sweet personality, gave me a joy like I had never known in my entire life.
And Ali had chosen to walk away from him. It was very hard not to rage at her. But I had to stay calm, for Camp’s sake.
It did my son no good for me to piss off Ali. Knowing her, she’d decide to go for joint custody just out of spite.
“Hi.” She gave me a smile. “You don’t look too banged up.” Her fingers drifted over mine, caressing my bruised knuckles. “Who won the fight, you or Cain?”
I jerked my hand away from her touch, disgusted. She looked smug that we had been fighting. My resolve to be cool wavered. “Nobody won, don’t you get that? Especially Camp. He’s the biggest loser in this whole fucking mess.”
“Why? He got good genes. We made a supercute kid, Christian.” She honestly looked bewildered.
I wasn’t sure if she was way stupider than I had ever known, or truly that narcissistic. I suspected it was a little of the first, a lot of the second. I wanted to swear at her, explain that she needed to be serious about all of this, but I reined in my emotion. “My mother is going to sue you for child support, on my recommendation. And if you want to see Camp, it will have to be at court-appointed times. I don’t know if you’re staying in town for a while or not, but no dropping over at my mom’s unannounced.”
Her jaw dropped. “I’m not paying child support! I’m his mother. Only fathers pay child support.”
She was not that dumb. She was just way too used to playing dumb to get what she wanted. “That shit isn’t going to work with me. My mother is his guardian. We share custody and I pay support to her. Now you are going to pay too.”
“Why doesn’t he live with you?”
The waiter came over and I ordered a Jack Daniel’s. I’m not one to day drink, but fuck me. I was going to kill her if I didn’t get a grip. “Because I’m a bartender. I work nights. I can’t afford a babysitter. It makes more sense for him to live with my mom, in a stable environment.”
“But your sister lives there too and she’s a stripper.” She said it disdainfully.
That was ironic.
And at least my sister was stable. She stuck around, paid her bills, helped me out with Camp. It was just a job, and it ticked me off that Ali would slam her for being a dancer when Ali was a liar and a cheat.
“And you’re a model citizen?” I asked, fighting the urge to say something stronger. “Miss Morality Maine?” I also wanted to ask why Camp didn’t live with her, but the truth was I didn’t want her to get some bug up her ass that it might be a good idea and go for custody, because it was actually a shit idea. I would fight her to the death for custody if it came to that. “You didn’t worry about right versus wrong when you lied to me and told me you and Cain were broken up.”
I had no excuse for having sex with her, other than a lifelong crush on her, but full disclosure, I had thought my brother was done with her at the time.
“We were broken up. He just didn’t know it yet.” She shot me a grin, like this was all hilarious. Her and me sharing an inside joke.
The waiter brought my drink. “Thanks, man.” I took a sip, trying to regain my composure so I didn’t say something I would regret.
“So is Cain really dating that brunette? She’s so plain.”
Sophie was a cute girl. And she appeared to have sparked something in my brother. An interest in something other than booze. She seemed smart as hell and not into playing games. I didn’t know what their actual relationship was, but I didn’t like the curiosity Ali was displaying in it. “They’ve been spending a lot of time together. She goes to Harvard, you know, and is supersmart. But why would you care?”
Ali lifted one bare shoulder. Her top exposed twin ribbons of flesh on either shoulder. Once I had thought she was beautiful. I had envied Cain for scoring the girl of my teen fantasies. I had even thought briefly that I was in love with her. Now all I saw was a selfish brat.
“I don’t care,” she protested. “I mean, it’s whatever. But she’s just…I mean, ick. And her sister is a hot mess. She puked in the bathroom last night.”
There are a lot of things that annoy me. I have just as many anger issues as Cain, I just don’t let them explode after a full night of drinking or walk about pissed off all day. I hide them under a smile and snark. So maybe Ali had no idea that I was raging inside. That I felt the anger coursing through my entire body and I had to keep my fists clenched under the table so I didn’t say or do anything that would jeopardize my parental rights to Camp.
But I was fucking livid.
I could not believe that she had not even asked to see her son. She had given plenty of thought to the appearance of Sophie and Bella and who Cain was dating, but she had not asked one question about the baby she had abandoned.
