by C. C. Piper
I hoped that the woman I loved would accept my peace offering.
Besides, if I went one more day without holding Callie, I was pretty certain I’d die.
I felt nervous as I knocked on her door. I’d been working long hours at Liddell Enterprises, but it hadn’t proved to be enough of a distraction. All I could think about was fixing things with the mother of my child. My last attempt at a delightful surprise had been a miscalculation, and I had so much riding on this. Everything, really. I couldn’t afford to screw this up.
“Jax? What are you doing here?” she said, but the person saying it wasn’t Roxy, it was her roommate.
“Hi, Raina. Roxy in there somewhere?”
“No. She’s at work.”
Work? That’s not what her schedule said. “How about Callie?”
“She’s asleep. She’s been fighting a cold for the past few days and is requiring more sleep. I’ve been putting her to bed early.”
She’d been sick? Dammit. “I’m going to see her.”
“But she’s…”
I’d quit listening. I needed to see my daughter before she began to think that I didn’t care about her. I hastened back to Callie’s bedroom and found her just as out as Raina had said she’d be. I thumbed the dark bangs back from her forehead, checking for a temperature. She didn’t appear to have one, But she looked pale. Though I didn’t mean for it to, my touch made her stir. Slowly, she cracked open her eyelids, then she sat up all at once.
“Daddy,” she said, but her voice was a croak.
“There’s my glamour girl.”
I put my arms out and she flew into them, making my eyes sting. Other than having a short fuse, I’d never been the type to be emotional. But for some reason, being around Callie made it a lot tougher for me to hold my shit together sometimes.
It was embarrassing, but at least I wouldn’t be like my own bastard of a father. My daughter would never be left wondering how much she meant to me. She’d know.
I carried Callie around her room, patting her back when she started to cough. This was what I was supposed to be doing. Caring for her. Being there for her. Nothing else mattered as much as she did.
After telling me what she wanted to call her puppy – Cocoa – I read her two bedtime stories. I swore to her that we’d hang out at my place as soon as she felt up to it, and smiling, she nodded off again. For a while, I continued to watch her. Then I refilled her sippy cup with water and let her rest.
When I vacated Callie’s room, I seized one of the pizzas, deciding it should be fine if I extended my olive branch to Roxy while she was at work. “Feel free to have some pizza as long as you save some for Callie,” I told Raina. “I’ll take this one to Roxy at the bar.”
“Roxy’s not at the bar. She’s with a client.”
“A client?” I repeated, feeling stunned.
“Yeah, she’s been taking on a bunch of clients this week. More than ever before.”
A kick in the sternum couldn’t have winded me more than this. Roxy had gone back to working as an escort? Why? Was she trying to punish me or something? Even though I believed her that these dates didn’t involve sex, she knew how I felt about them. She knew how dangerous I considered these clients of hers.
No longer in the mood to make a peacemaking gesture and having lost any vestige of my appetite, I shoved the pizza into the fridge. I’d given Roxy her time and space, and this was how she’d used it? Well, that was over.
I went outside and sat on the stoop outside her door. The December weather was clear and cold, but I didn’t feel it. All I knew was that the things we’d been putting off discussing had to come out as soon as possible. I deserved to be kept in the loop, even if Roxy and I would never be together again.
I couldn’t allow her to avoid me. Not anymore. Instead, I would sit right here for her and wait.
At ten that evening, I spotted a woman dressed in an overcoat clipping up the walkway in some familiar-sounding stiletto heels. Roxy had her phone up to her ear; the lit screen stood out against the darkness of the night. I observed her as she approached, hearing the recognizable cadence of her voice.
“Yes, I asked him to give me some additional time, and I think he will. He’s done it before.” I tuned in to her with my whole body, listening to her with so much absorption that I went totally motionless. “He has plenty of money, more than enough. I’m okay with setting up a semi-permanent arrangement with him for now. Then, when the time comes, I’ll go. It’s crucial that it be nothing but a business deal on my end.”
Give her more time? He has plenty of money? Setting up an arrangement? Nothing but a business deal?
Everything shimmered into crystal clarity, and I understood. For the first time, I understood who and what Roxy was. Or what she’d become. Gone was the sweet teenage girl I’d loved. Somewhere along the way, she’d been replaced by this shrewd woman willing to turn tricks to gain a buck.
Kicking me in the groin wouldn't have hurt as much.
Realizations fell into place in my brain like the cogs of a machine. We didn’t have a real relationship because she didn’t want one. She didn’t want me for myself at all. And she couldn’t deny this because I’d just caught her admitting as much out loud.
I hadn’t wanted to believe that everything between us could ever boil down to dollar signs, but obviously I’d been a fool. She, like many women before her, had known my financial worth and had gone to all this trouble to secure my fortune. And because she was Roxy, she’d won.
I’d give it to her. Or at least, I’d provide as much as needed to support Callie. Though I knew that little girl to be mine, it’d still be wise to contact my lawyer. I’d need a paternity test just so there was no question, so there’d be no chance that Roxy might try to turn the tables and deny me any custody rights later on.
I wouldn’t put anything past Roxanne Miller now.
I stared at a patch of night sky and knew I should have been having a stronger reaction than I was. I should have been ranting and railing, or maybe even vomiting over in the nearby gutter, but I wasn’t. Instead, I felt numb. The numbness paralyzed me enough that emotionally, I felt nothing at all.
“Jax?” she said my name as if it startled her to see me. I bet it did. “What are you doing here?”
“I came here to see our daughter. And to see you.”
“Callie’s been sick.”
“Raina told me. I stayed up with her for a while.” I could detect the glacial nature of my voice, and knew it might sound rude, but it was all I had. The numbness didn’t allow for anything else.
“That was nice.” Roxy must’ve noticed the tone, too, but she didn’t comment on it. Instead, she remained cautious, as if I was a bomb about to explode. Which might ultimately not be far from the truth.
“I came to speak with you, to make some headway on our previous discussion. To figure out how I could meet you halfway for our daughter’s sake, to compromise so we could all be happy.” I paused then. “I’m aware now that that won’t work.”
“Why not?”
“Because of how our interactions have been going.” I chuckled mirthlessly, my words polite while the coldness of my tone grew even colder. “I got to say, you had me. But then it’s hard to be honest about something you don’t want to see.”
She took another step closer, close enough that I could smell her perfume floating on the frigid air. The shift in her position meant the porch light illuminated more of her, allowing me to make out her face. She’d always had the most gorgeous face. Too bad her outside didn’t match her insides. “What are you talking about, Jax?”
“I’m talking about your business deal. The one you just negotiated.” The one concerning me.
Her shoulders slumped, confirming my suspicions further. “I didn’t want to do things this way, but I had no choice.”
“That’s where you’re mistaken. There’s always a choice. And you made the wrong one.” I knew even in the beginning involving that Wish Make
r woman couldn’t be a good idea, but I’d done it anyway. She must’ve comprehended that if she ever got her hooks in me, she could pad out her coffers nicely. Turned out, she was right. And using my old flame to get the job done had been the perfect ploy.
“The worst part is I still love you, Roxy. Even now. I would’ve given you anything you asked me for, but you didn’t ask. You decided to scheme against me instead, and I’ve had too many schemers in my life.” My father. My mother. Julianna.
How many times did I have to get the wool pulled over my eyes before I learned my goddamn lesson?
Roxy shook her head, her fists clenching at her sides. “I know you don’t like the fact that I’ve had to do escort jobs but doing that doesn’t make me a schemer. Our relationship felt too tenuous for me to go to you with this. All these things happened at once, and I had to have the money now. I accidentally overdrew my account so the payments for Callie’s daycare and my nursing classes fell through, then my mom-”
“Enough.” I shut her down, unwilling to hear any more. It didn’t matter what she had to say or what she wanted to blame this on. I pushed myself to my feet. “Callie will have everything she needs, I guarantee that. But as far as anything between you and I go, that’s over.”
I strode past her, having to get away. The numbness had begun to subside, and I couldn’t be around Roxy or Callie once it vanished altogether.
“Jax? Jax!”
I ignored her voice as I slid into the backseat of my car, ordering my driver to take me home. On the way, I contacted my lawyer. It was after hours which meant he’d charge me through the nose, but I didn’t care. I had to protect my interests as well as my daughter’s. I needed the necessary legal processes in place immediately, even if doing so meant putting an end to the one relationship I’d tried so hard to rekindle.
Even if it meant acknowledging the fact that much of what came out of Roxy’s mouth were lies.
19
Roxanne
If Callie hadn’t been inside, I might’ve chased after Jax, but I decided against it. He’d thrown all this nonsense at me at the worst possible time, and I simply couldn’t focus on it. I had too much else to deal with.
Right after discovering that Callie had nearly been dropped from daycare and that my plans for the next semester of nursing school couldn’t happen at all, my mother had contacted me in a panic.
“They’re taking the house.”
“What?”
“They’re taking my house. They’re going to leave me destitute and homeless, and they don’t even care.”
“Mom, slow down. Who’s taking the house?”
“The bank,” she shrieked at me, as if I was a dunce. “They’re foreclosing.”
“Foreclosure only happens when you haven’t made several payments in a row.”
She lowered her voice. “So I got a little behind.” Shit. I felt a spasm of pain punch me right between the eyes. Like mother, like daughter. Even though she was the last woman I’d ever want to emulate. “I can’t lose this house. Calliope was born here.”
I had to stifle my scoff. The house she currently resided in had been my aunt Beverly’s in Baton Rouge, the same one I’d stayed in while pregnant with Callie. While I had gone into labor while there, and the labor had progressed so fast it’d frightened me, my daughter had not been born in that house.
Beverly had left to go traveling with her new beau – story of my life – and my mother had moved in, promising to take over the mortgage. Unable to tolerate living with my mother, I’d hightailed it back here to New Orleans as soon as I could. Beverly was my mother’s older sister, and while not as unreliable, she had a wicked temper.
“Beverly will kill me if I lose this house. It’s the only piece of property our family owns,” my mother continued.
Owned was a relative term. It implied that the house had been paid off, which it most certainly hadn’t. I considered telling her no. I knew I shouldn’t feel obligated to help a woman who’d left me high and dry more times than I could count, but she was my mother. I had to do something, but I wasn’t telling her what. Instead, I made up a story for her benefit. If she ever thought I had access to a lot of funds, she’d never stop having these crises.
“I’ll see what I can do, Mom. Maybe I can ask my boss at the bar for an advance.”
Since I didn’t feel comfortable going to Jax when things felt so up in the air between us, that left me with the Wish Maker. I’d agreed to go on ten consecutive dates, even though it meant calling in sick to my bartending job twice. I hated conducting myself like that, especially since again, it made me seem as unreliable as my mother, but I couldn’t let her get kicked out of her home, especially since it meant she’d wind up living with me.
Now, that would be a catastrophe.
So far, I’d completed five of the ten dates. After two more, I should have had enough to make her back payments. I’d already contacted her bank to beg for more time, but they’d only extended the deadline by two weeks. I had to hustle, and I had to do it now.
This week also concluded the fall semester, which meant I had an extremely important final. So between taking care of Callie, bartending, working as a hostess and going on extra dates with old men, I also needed to study. The only way I’d had enough time to do all this was to skip bedtime. I slept at night only when my eyes refused to stay open anymore, so by the end of those two weeks I felt worn out to the Nth degree.
I received zero sleep the night before my final. I’d studied straight through then dropped off Callie at daycare. I’d taken the exam, worked a full shift at the bar and had come home to change for my second to last date. I didn’t want to go. Not only because I was weary to the point of napping accidentally any time I stood still, but because this client was unknown to me. It made me apprehensive. I didn’t need some guy getting handsy with me on top of everything else.
I’d just gotten my formal attire on when someone pounded on my door. I knew Raina should be home within the next few minutes, but she hadn’t arrived yet. Flustered, I yanked open the door, the words, “I don’t want any,” already on my lips.
A woman stood on the other side, smiling innocuously in a nice-looking business suit. “Roxanne Miller?”
“Yes. Look, I’m on my way out and I really don’t have time…”
“Oh, no worries. This won’t take any time at all.” She handed over a large manila envelope which I hastily took. Then, she smiled. “You’ve been served.”
“Served?” I asked incredulously, but the woman had already crossed the grass of the yard on her way to the parking area.
Inside the envelope was a sheath of papers, the top one of which read: DECLARATION REGARDING CUSTODY AND VISITATION. My eyes sped down the document, taking in phrases like “formal request for shared physical and legal custody” and “mandated confirmation of paternity”. Even though I had on a form-fitting evening gown, I slid right down to the floor. I didn’t have a choice since my legs would no longer support me.
I scanned the document and read through the jumble of legalese, then identified the petitioner’s name. Jax. He was suing me for joint custody of Callie.
“M-mommy? W-wake up, Mommy!” I heard as if from the opposite end of a long, dark tunnel. I opened my eyes, not having been aware of closing them.
I must’ve passed out.
My daughter sat beside me, her little hands shoving my arm as loud hiccupping sobs shook her torso. I gathered her against me, bringing her to my chest to calm her down. “Baby, you okay?” Callie struggled to speak through her weeping, and I knew I had to repair the damage before it got worse. “Sorry if I scared you, sweetie. Mommy was just playing a new game.”
“G-game?”
“Uh huh,” I told her, doing my best to stave off my nervous breakdown. Normally, I didn’t lie to my daughter, but desperate times called for desperate measures. “The name of the game is playing possum. You lay down and stay very still. It’s like pretending to sleep. Animals like possums
do this so other animals will leave them alone in the wild.”
Since we lived in Louisiana, Callie saw possums all the time. I’d always told her the ones on the side of the road were sleeping, not wanting to upset her. Okay, maybe I lied to her more than I thought. It was for her own protection, though.
“Can I play?”
“Yes, but do it on the carpet instead of the tile like Mommy did. That way it’ll be softer.” With a tentative grin, she slid out of my lap and plopped down on the living room carpet. Forcing a cheerful expression, I clapped for her. “Good job. Now, go try it in your room.”
As she ambled off, I braced myself on my hands to attempt to stand. I felt woozy halfway up, though, and as Raina came over the threshold from outside, she reached out to steady me.
“Did you fall?”
“Technically, no.”
Still, she scrambled to help me into one of our nearby dining room chairs. “You stay right there. I’m going to get you some water.”
I sat at our tiny round kitchen table with my head in my hands, the petition for custody a rectangular splotch of white against the scarred, pale wood. After rehydrating, I made myself look over it more closely. I couldn’t wrap my mind around what Jax thought he was doing.
I’d avoided thinking about him for the past week and a half because I’d had too much else to handle. We kept arguing, and I knew he was upset at me going back to escort work again, but I hadn’t believed him when he’d said things were over between us. I knew he was annoyed at my decision and well, hurt because I hadn’t declared my love for him, but I’d planned to contact him once finals and this situation with my mom’s mortgage was settled.
It had only been a few days. Did he think these minor delays were cause for legal action against me? I called him, but the call went directly to voicemail. I texted him next, only to receive this: