Rock Chick Reborn (Rock Chick #9)(43)

“Yeah,” I whispered.

“You talk me up?” he teased.

“I talked me down.”

After I said that, I could actually feel his pissed-off vibe coming at me over the phone.

“Don’t worry, honey,” I assured. “They don’t like it any more than you do and didn’t mind sharing that.”

“I hope so,” he stated shortly.

I changed the subject. “Had the talk with the boys about school.”

“How’d that go?”

“Told ’em to think on it. I’ll give them time to do that and we’ll have another chat.”

“You get a sense of where they’re leaning?”

“Didn’t get that shot seeing as the Rock Chicks broke into my house before we could formally end discussions.”

I heard him chuckle.

“But that’s probably good. They tend to do better when I give them space to sort stuff out on their own,” I told him.

“Yeah,” he said.

“You have a good night with your girls?” I asked.

“We always do. They’re good girls. For them, they’re just home. For me, it’s like a reunion every time they come home. My daughters, their ages, biweekly reunions instead of them just bein’ with me every night.”

His tone was again different. And not a good different.

“Darlin’,” I whispered.

“It is what it is. But what that is doesn’t get better no matter how much time goes by.”

“Wish it was different.”

There was a silence he didn’t fill before he cleared his throat. “Haven’t shared that with anyone. Not a friend. Not even my momma.”

“Glad you felt safe sharin’ it with me.”

“Feels good to have you to share it with.”

It sure did.

Just like it felt good to have him to text when I was worried about what would happen about Roam at school, then when I was thrilled with what happened about Roam.

I’d never had anything like that with Leon. I’d learned early never to share a fear or a sorrow, and there weren’t any triumphs worth sharing. He catalogued any weakness and had a specific skill where he’d time it just right to use them against you when he could make the most damage.

“What’re you thinkin’?” Moses asked.

“I was thinkin’ that Leon used vulnerabilities against you, so I learned not to share them.”

He said nothing to that.

So I spoke.

“I’m sorry, Moses. I get use to this, there’ll come a time when I don’t compare him to you.”

“I wasn’t quiet because of that, baby. I was quiet because I was trying to get a rein on bein’ pissed he was such a humongous jackass and you had to live for years with that.”

That didn’t make it any better.

“Maybe we should be a Leon Free Zone,” I suggested.

“Why?”

“It messes with me and pisses you off.”

“How you gonna work through what he did to you if you don’t get it out?”

Good question.

“Might be time to make somethin’ else clear about the us I want us to build, Shirleen,” he declared. “And that’s the fact we gotta be real. We gotta talk. We gotta share. We gotta be there to help the other work shit out and we gotta be open to talk so we can get on working our own shit out.”

And here we were.

Again.

“This is where it gets scary because I got more shit to work out than you do,” I pointed out.

“If you think I got the job I got lookin’ after the kids I see every day and I don’t take that home with me and need somewhere to unload it, you’re wrong. I been doing that job a long time, and most of the time I can handle it. Sometimes, some kids, it gets under your skin and I need to work it out.”

“Who do you work it out with now?” I asked curiously.

“Who do you work Leon out with now?” he returned.

“Mm,” I hummed.

“Yeah,” he agreed.

And there it was.

Alone was alone in the way we’d both been alone, even having people in our lives.

And it could suck for anyone.

“Never had this,” I said softly. “Even with all my girls, who would listen, I didn’t wanna bog them down with it. So I never had this.”

“Me either,” he replied. “Even when I had my wife, I didn’t give this to her because she wasn’t real interested, and then we had our babies and I didn’t bring it home. But it didn’t matter. I’d learned by then she wasn’t real interested.”

One could say I would not have been a big fan of the woman who cheated on Moses Richardson and broke his heart.

But seriously.

She was sounding like a real asshole.

“Got no reply to that?” Moses asked.

“I’m pleading the fifth before I say anything super ugly about the mother of your children.”

“You know, you aren’t the only one comparing, Shirleen.”

Oh boy.

“I don’t want to make the same mistakes either,” he shared.

I hadn’t thought about that.

But it sure made sense.