AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Maybe.” Tiffany’s speech slurred ever so faintly, and the warning bells in my mind exploded.
“Kane, buddy. Why don’t you go and see if you can find the decoration you made with Summer?”
“Okay!” Kane slid from my lap in an instant and hurried out of the study and into the lounge where the largest tree held their handmade decorations. I grabbed my phone and sent a quick text to Jax asking if he could swing by and take Kane with him to play with the others. He answered immediately and agreed, no questions asked.
None were needed when it came to video calls with Tiffany.
“Tiffany,” I started sternly. “Tiffany, look at me.”
She lazily glanced over at me and sighed. “What is it, Theo.”
“You’re fuckinghigh, aren’t you?”
She rolled her eyes. “No.”
“You think I don’t know the signs by now? What the hell? You knew this call was scheduled, you knew how important it was for Kane, and you couldn’t keep your hands away from a needle for forty minutes?” Anger began to build, stoked by the flames of irritation at Tiffany’s lack of effort and my own weakness for buying into the hope that this time would be different.
“I needed it, okay?” Tiffany blinked slowly. “I was nervous.”
“So take a brisk walk,” I snapped. “Like a normal person.”
“Why? When this works, it’s all I need.”
“Don’t you care atall? About Kane? Do you have any idea how excited he was to talk to you?”
“Of course I care!” Tiffany straightened slightly and her dark eyes, sunken into her pasty skin, flashed. “I love my son.”
“And yet you can’t stay sober for an hour to spend time with him.” My words were sharp, but the frustration was spilling over. “I’m trying to help you here. I have been ever since—you’re just making it impossible.”
“Oh sure, I’m the impossible one. The terrible, unfit mother who cheated. I’m the scumbag, I’m the asshole, a wicked woman.” She droned on with little to no emotion in her voice.
“Stop it,” I snapped, “your pity parties don’t work on me anymore.”
“Whatever. Just—just bring Kane back. I want to see him.”
“No,” I decided. “You had your chance, and I don’t want him seeing you in this state.”
“What the fuck?” Finally, some emotion bled into her voice. “You can’t stop me from seeing him!”
“I haveneverdone that,” I snapped. “If you had stuck with the rehab center I paid for, you would have gotten clean, and you could have been here for Christmas. But you didn’t, did you?”
“I tried,” Tiffany whined. I’d done this dance too many times before, and my sympathy was lacking.
“Did you? Because from where I’m sitting, you left that place within a week. They would have helped you, and you chose drugs over your own son—”
The screen went dark as Tiffany hung up the call. Frustration swelled inside me, sudden and hot, so I slammed my fist down on the desk and sighed raggedly.
Fuck.
I tried. I poured thousands into rehab centers for Tiffany, I paid her rent to keep a roof over her head, I sent care packages; I did everything I could to try and keep her clean and alive so Kane had a mother he could get to know as he grew up. She sabotaged me at every turn.
“I got it!” Kane suddenly came sprinting back into the study, Batman decoration in hand, followed by an alarmed Jax who mouthedsorrywhen our gazes met.
“Kane…”
Kane sprinted up to the desk and stopped when he saw the blank screen. His bright face fell immediately, and my heart crumbled.
“Where did she go?”
