Page 18 of Scoring Eden

Respect. The word makes me scoff, though I have the wherewithal to disguise it with a cough. Sebastian sees straight through me, though. After all, he didn’t get where he is in his career without impeccable attention to detail.

“Did you seriously deem it necessary to come to my place of work just to tell me that you’re getting remarried?”

“No.”

“Oh?”

He widens his stance, his chest broadening, the picture of perfect confidence. “Eliana and I have been talking.” He pauses, scrutinizing my face to make sure I’m listening. “About Macon and what we think is best for him.”

When has he ever cared about what’s best for our son? When he chose drinking over his newborn son? When Macon was three and he left for work then didn’t return for four days? Or when he missed Macon’s kindergarten graduation because “it’s all needless nonsense anyway”?

My pulse begins to quicken. I don’t like the sound of where this is going, don’t like how it ignites a sense of anxiety so severe my stomach churns in a bid to expel it.

I’ve suddenly lost the humor in this conversation.

“Seb—”

He holds up a hand to silence me. “Let me finish. I’m getting married. We live in a nice four-bedroom house in the suburbs with a big yard that he can use to play ball games. He will have his own room, his own bathroom. And I have the means to buy him anything he wants.”

“Macon hates ball games,” I whisper.

Sebastian continues like he didn’t hear me. “I’m asking you not to be selfish here.”

I look down at my hands, twisting them on my lap. “You haven’t asked me anything yet.”

“Eliana and I think it’s best if Macon comes to live with us.” His eyes bore into me like the sharpest of blades as he tacks on, “Full time.”

Goosebumps ignite on my skin, spreading down my arms like wildfire, the chill of his words skidding down my back like ice.

He’s going to try to take Macon away from me.

He can’t do—there’s no way he—oh, God.

“He’s happy with me.” I look him right in the eye as I say it. I will not allow him to take my son from me, not when I’ve given up my entire life to raise him, to be there for him, to love him. I may not have the same resources, and I may not be able to give him the material things my ex-husband can, but I can give him something Sebastian will never be capable of… love without conditions. The freedom to be whomever he is without fear of judgment, admonishment, or consequence. Love. “He won’t agree to it.”

He hates his weekends with you. I’m desperate to say it, to spit it at him with all the vitriol that has brewed within me over the years, and watch his face collapse as he learns that his son can’t stand to be around him.

I want to hurt him.

Want to tear his decrepit, rotting heart right out of his chest the way he’s doing to me.

But I won’t. It wouldn’t be worth breaking Macon’s trust just for a miniscule taste of triumph.

“It isn’t his choice,” Sebastian states.

But I feel no satisfaction. The triumph dissolves into the smog of Sebastian’s threats, lost to the torturous imaginings of a life without seeing my son’s face every morning. Without hearing him singing through the thin wall dividing his room from the living area. Without tucking him into bed with Mr. Snuggles and a kiss to his little head.

“You’ll have to go through the courts,” I sputter. “And I won’t make it easy for you. Believe me, I will fight you at every turn. I will stop at nothing to keep my son where—”

“Our son,” he growls. “That’s exactly the problem with you, Eden. You can’t see further than your own nose, so how could I possibly trust that you have Macon’s best interest at heart?”

How can he say that after everything I’ve done?

After everything I’ve given up so he could pursue his white-collar dreams and green-paper bills. After the things I’ve sacrificed so that Macon never has to go without. The meals I haven’t eaten so Macon can go to sleep with his stomach full. My ambitions. My bed. My youth.

God, it feels like my ribs are splintering.

“It would be much easier if you just sign the petition, Eden. Save yourself the humiliation and the money you don’t have. They’ll side with me, and you know it. You live in a one-bedroom apartment above a craft store. You don’t even sleep in a bed, and you’re all alone. Don’t stop Eliana and me from giving Macon what he needs…a real family.”