“What about child support?” Jack asks, and I raise a brow. “You’ve never thought about it?”
“Honestly, no,” I answer, the idea never crossing my mind. When I didn’t put Trevor on Evee’s birth certificate, it was my way of making sure he never had any ties to her. I knew thatleaving him meant starting over and raising my daughter on my own.
I’m lucky with my situation that I can support Evee in all ways, especially financially, and have Ava to help me, so I never thought of child support as something I needed to do.
“When my dad left and didn’t want to be part of our lives after my mom’s cancer diagnosis, my mom decided to file for child support, not because she couldn’t do it all on her own—raise Emerson and me, work, her cancer treatments—but because she knew it would help us,” Jack explains. “She was already holding everything together, but that support meant the three of us didn’t have to worry.”
I absorb Jack’s words, admiring how much he loves and values his mom and the obstacles she overcame as a single mother of two. The sentiment makes sense, and there’s part of me that agrees that, while I have been raising Evee all on my own and doing a damn good job of it, there would be a sense of comfort from having financial help.
The other part of me is scared.
“It’ll piss him off, that’s for sure,” I tell Jack, thinking about how the smallest things set Trevor off, remembering how hot and cold he would be when it came to my pregnancy—sometimes, he was the doting, loving partner who was so excited for our baby to be born. Other times, he would question if the baby was even his, even though he was the only person I ever had sex with.
And throughout my entire pregnancy, his physical abuse never stopped.
“Fuck him.” The simplicity of his response makes me laugh. “He doesn’t deserve either of you, and I’d prefer if you continue having nothing to do with him, but we have to think about what’s best for Evee.”
We.
He saidwehave to think about what’s best for Evee.
Like we’re in this together.
He kisses the top of my head, and I lift my head to meet his eyes.
“You’re right,” I say with a sigh. “Even if he’s not around, he still should have some sort of responsibility in providing for Evee. I just don’t want anything he can hold over my head.”
“I promise you this, Rumi,” his eyes bore into me, his lips just an inch or two from mine, “I will do everything in my power to make sure he never hurts you—or Evee—ever again.”
His promise wraps around me, healing pieces of me I thought were forever broken as he leans down, closing the distance between us. His lips meet mine, and the world stops. His kiss is gentle, tentative, so unlike what I would picture from someone like Jack—but it’s perfect.
His lips softly move against mine, as if he doesn’t want to move too fast and scare this moment away. There’s a gentle urgency, like we’re on borrowed time—and a little squeal coming from just beyond my lap reminds me that we are.
Jack pulls away but only enough to press his forehead to mine for a moment, before we both turn our heads, finding Evee clapping her hands with her mostly-toothless grin.
“And one for you, Evee girl,” Jack beams, reaching for Evee and pulling her into his arms. He settles her between us, and we both lean in pressing a kiss to each of her cheeks, her giggles warming my heart and soul, just like the man who has completely set my heart ablaze.
CHAPTER 29
JACK
“What movie are we seeing?”Anderson asks as we head up the driveway to Rumi and Ava’s door.
When I told him about the double date Ava suggested during one of our shifts this week, he eagerly accepted, not asking any details aside from what time.
“The firstTwilightmovie,” I answer, knocking on Rumi and Ava’s door, not able to help myself from eyeing it up and down, making sure it still looks secure and stable like how I left it a month ago when I replaced the one I kicked in.
“I remember dropping my younger brothers off at the theaters when those movies came out. They always took their dates to see them,” he explains, going into more detail about how he’s never seen them but has heard all about them, but I tune him out as I wait for one of the girls to answer the door.
I’ve been counting down the minutes until I get to see Rumi again—even if I did just see her on FaceTime last night and talked to her on the phone this morning. While I’m still not the biggest texter, I got into the habit of checking in with her after our picnic date last Saturday, and the few texts quickly turned to phone calls by Sunday afternoon and FaceTimes by Monday night.
Ever since she opened up to me about her ex, the temptation to be near her is a million times worse than it was, so I’ve started taking any chance I have to see her this week, whether it’s stopping by Hey Honey’s during her shifts to give her a quick kiss over the counter, or bring her lunch during her break; I make the time whether I’m on a shift or not.
I wasn’t kidding when I told her that I think there isn’t anything she can’t handle, but I also made a promise to myself that I would never let anything happen to her or Evee.
Since our picnic date, Rumi has kept me updated on her journey with obtaining child support from that piece of shit she and Ava call Evee’s “sperm donor”—a term I prefermuchmore than Evee’s father, a man like that not deserving of the title—and I’m proud of her for taking the step.
With the help of the local child support enforcement agency, a court-ordered paternity test was sent to the address of the home Rumi shared with Trevor, so now we just wait. Once the court establishes Trevor as Evee’s biological father, the process of filing for child support can start.
