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Mia was now in desperation mode.
“But, Mom, it’s summer and I don’t have school and he didn’t say no.” She turned and looked at Lucas as if he were her last hope.
Oh, shit. This was not good. Lucas looked at Birdie, who gave him a set of wide, threatening eyes. “I don’t want to disrespect…”
Before he could finish, as if sensing he was falling short, Mia turned back to Birdie, this time taking a different approach as her dark brown eyes grew stormy.
“He didn’t even know about me. Why didn’t he know about me, Mom? You always told me he didn’t want us. But he didn’t even know I existed. Since you spent my whole life lying to me, the least you could do is give us some time to get to know one another.”
Lucas thought the kid had a point, but then again, he didn’t want or need the complication, the messiness. Although, maybe, getting to know this kid who looked so much like him wouldn’t have been such a bad thing.
Mia turned her attention back to him with the same level of tenacity as Wayward’s city prosecutor.
“Tell her, Dad. Tell her how you didn’t even know about me.”
Lucas felt his chest tighten with the verbal vise Mia attached to his sternum. She referred to him as Dad, as opposed to bio-dad. Sure, it could have been a ploy to get him to cave. But shit. That single word was hard to walk away from. To ignore.
Lucas’s eyes found Birdie, and he almost felt sorry for her as her shoulders sagged and she pursed her lips at the weight of Mia’s mournful pleas.
The kid was good.
“Maybe you should say something,” Birdie said, her eyes battling his as she tilted her head with blatant discontent at his lack of participation. Lucas stared back at her, shoved his hands in his pockets, and teetered back on his heels.
“Well, Mia,” he said, pulling a hand from his pocket to rub the back of his neck. “I’m sure you have commitments back home…”
“We don’t, do we, Mom?” she said, as if finding a lifeline. “We just got kicked out of our house and have nowhere to go. So we could stay a while. You know, just long enough for us to get to know one another.”
Birdie’s face bloomed a pinkish shade.
“We didn’t exactly get kicked out,” she said defensively.
Then Mia executed a Hail Mary, her eyes pooling, followed by the perfectly timed batting of her lashes, as if fighting ever so valiantly to stem the flow.
Lucas watched Birdie’s eyebrows come together as she bit her bottom lip.
“Please?” Annnd there went the lip tremble, and then the coup de grâce, where she clenched the sleeves of her sweatshirt in her palms and reached up to wipe away a tear.
How many times did he watch Birdie do that very thing when no one was looking? A gesture few people ever saw from the perpetually angry girl, except of course, in front of him. It had seemed his fate in life was to be the sole person to ever catch her at her most vulnerable.
His defenses always faltered when confronted with an exposed Birdie and history was repeating itself with Mia. Who could defend themselves against her wet cheeks and imploring eyes that reminded him so much of his?
“I guess it wouldn’t be a problem for a little while…”
Birdie face-planted into her hands.
“Yes!” Mia threw her fist in the air, as if she’d just won the shot put in the Olympics. “Mom, it’s okay with Dad. Please say we can stay, just for a little while.”
Birdie looked up; her face fatigued with pure defeat.
“Maybe just a few days…”
“Thank you, Mom!” she yelled, hugging her mom and then plowing into Lucas.
What the hell just happened?
“I’m going to wash up for dinner and be back down. Lorraine taught me how to make cauliflower mash. It’s vegan and delicious, you’ll see,” she said, skipping up the stairs, taking two at a time.
“What the hell was that?” Birdie accused, shaking her head back and forth. “Way to cave, Santos.”
