AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I was having a pretty good night. Mostly because Dougie got his comeuppance tonight. A fucking animal? Who the hell did he think he was? I might be a twisted fuck, but damn, there had to be some hard limits.
Harpy was more than happy to come to my room with me. Only, when I got there, I also got a phone call I did not want her to have access to. “Step outside.”
“Can I go to the bathroom instead? I need to pee.” She pointed, and I nodded.
I took a seat on the edge of my bed and accepted the face-to-face connection. I smiled and said, “Hey, buddy! How are you?”
“Dad! I got this!” He held up the football.
“We’ll play next time I see you.” I loved my kid.
My mom was on next, and she said, “Come home after the game next weekend. We miss you.”
She was hugging him, and he gave me those excited eyes, and I had to agree, “Okay. I’ll…” She wanted to manipulate me with my son. “I’ll have a guest with me.” I had the perfect guest to make her rethink that strategy. He was my son, and when I graduated from this college with my stupid law degree, he would be moving out of their house and into mine. Rip would not become a lawyer unless he wanted to. I would make sure my son had choices. Choices I never had. Still, once he got here, I didn’t regret fucking his mother or having him. I never understood what happened back then. She just abandoned him and told me she never loved me.
My mother gave me a stern look, but he was thrilled, so I said, “See you after the game on Friday, okay?”
“Can I come to the game?” he asked.
I smiled at him. Well, my mom actually, since she was trying to use this to get me home. “That’s up to Gran.” She puffed out a breath. I was pushing it, but I added, “You know I live in the Sophomore House now. Not the dorm, not the animal house Greta talked about. He could come stay with me this weekend. Give you some time to…do whatever you do.”
She seemed a bit smug as she asked, “You want your son for the weekend?” I nodded. She said, “No Greta.”
I snorted a laugh, and Rip did that too. I really smiled then, laughed. Admitted, “I don’t need Greta to look after my own child.”
“We’ll see. He’s a fireball.” She looked down at him, and he looked up at her and smiled. “Okay. Time for bed. You want to spend the weekend with your dad? You need to get to bed on time.”
“Night, Dad!” he shouted into the phone like I couldn’t hear him. She jerked back a bit. I laughed.
“Night, Rip. I love you.” I waved.
“I love you, too!” he said as he ran off.
She looked at me and said, “Well. I guess you won’t be coming home this weekend after all.”
“Nope.” I smiled. “But I’ll see you when you get here, right? Gives you a chance to visit your older, more responsible children, too. So…”
She grumbled and said, “I guess.”
“Night, Mom.” I smiled at her.
“Goodnight, my most difficult of children.” She smiled at me. “Behave.”
She disconnected that call, and I turned to see Harpy standing in the doorway to the bathroom, looking at me like she wasn’t sure what to do. I motioned for her to come into the room and said, “This weekend, I need you to stay here with me. My son’s coming to visit and…I don’t really know how to make that breakfast, and you do.”
She nodded. “Okay.” She cleared her throat and asked, “How, um. How old?”
“Four last summer.” I rolled a shoulder.
“The skirt or—”
“Does it matter?” I asked. She shook her head no, and I decided to tell her because she didn’t press. “No. It was a girl I met at a football camp that just happened to also have a cheerleading camp going on. I was going into my junior year, she was going into her senior year, and…when we weren’t practicing our skillsets, we were…practicing another set of skills.”
“I get that.” She nodded and looked at my door. Yeah, I bet she did understand on some level. Then she asked, “Again, I know it’s not my business, but I don’t want to say the wrong thing around him either, so…where is she?”
I rolled a shoulder. “Gone. She had him, and…she didn’t want to keep him. Like I would let someone else take my son for adoption. She gave him up to me and…my mom, and of course, Greta has…helped by being the primary ones raising him the past two years because I’m here.” And because I needed her to know, “When I was at home, in high school, I took care of my son.”
She nodded, but I could tell she didn’t believe me. She would have if she had known me back then. Greta helped a lot, taught me so much about babies, but he was mine, and I…took care of what was mine. She looked around and then asked, “Does he know his mom or—”
