Hold On (The 'Burg #6)(13)

But it’d all come up.

Again.

The stripping.

Lowe.

All of it shoved down Ethan’s throat.

It didn’t matter his name was Ethan Rivers, his mom’s Cher Rivers—that was on our rental agreement; that was on my driver’s license. It wasn’t like your old identity was washed away when you changed your name. That shit was public record. Which meant, however infrequently these days, f*ckwads and freaks still found me for whatever reason they needed to do that to be close to Denny.

If Trent and Peg took me to court, it’d all come out. It might even hit the news. And it would definitely make Ethan vulnerable.

Fuck.

Fuck, f*ck, f*ck, f*ck…f*ck.

I lifted my head and turned it, looking at the wall of open shelves over base cabinets, which was stuffed full of retro glasses, multi-patterned, mismatched bowls, wonky-shaped pitchers, old-fashioned canisters.

I studied my things—the bowls Ethan poured his cereal into, the pitchers I grabbed to make him Kool-Aid—and I felt that thorn dig deeper.

Because if I was a different woman, the kind of woman who could attract a man like Garrett Merrick, get him close, and make him want to stay that way, people would not f*ck with me because he wouldn’t let them.

Not Trent.

Not Peg.

Not my neighbors who threw wild parties.

Not the occasional person at the bar who looked at me with fanatical eyes, asking me if I was Cheryl Sheckle, the Cheryl Sheckle, sidepiece to Denny Lowe.

Not the *s who phoned me thinking about a movie, a book, a TV show, and wanting me to help them “get in the mind of Dennis Lowe.”

I didn’t mind asking my cop buddies to shut down parties.

It would suck, but I’d do anything for Ethan, so I would buck up and ask for all the help I could get to keep my son.

And at the bar, Darryl and Morrie dealt with the lunatics who sniffed out the Denny Lowe trail because they were f*cked in the head, not only to protect me from that shit, but also to protect Feb and Colt. But that message had been sent frequently, and after all these years, those nutjobs were few and far between.

Like Trent being back in Ethan’s life, no one knew about the phone calls. They didn’t need to worry about Trent being a part of our lives. And they definitely didn’t need the Denny Lowe shit dredged up. And last, I didn’t need yet another way for people to feel they needed to take care of me.

I could take care of myself. I’d done it since I was eighteen, and I knew it was my lot in life to do it until I died. I might have forgotten this that morning for one crazy, stupid, hopeful moment, but then I’d been reminded.

That didn’t mean I wouldn’t appreciate a man like Merry in my life.

I would.

And I would more than any normal woman because I knew how precious having someone to look after you, someone to share the load, someone who gave even a single solitary shit actually was.

Which was ironic, since I was one of those girls.

One of those girls who would appreciate it.

One of those girls who would take care of it.

One of those girls who would beg, borrow, and steal in order to keep hold of it.

And one of those girls who would never have it.

* * * * *

“Would it kill them to stock diet grape soda?” I bitched, staring at the soda shelves at Walmart.

Ethan busted out laughing.

I looked down at my kid.

I’d rearranged my activities that day. Instead of hitting the store, I did some laundry, paid my bills, and cleaned the house before he got home.

This was because he liked going to the grocery store and he wasn’t a big fan of cleaning.

I didn’t let him totally get away with that. He had chores. He took out the trash, helped me do the dishes when I was home at night, and he had to keep his room picked up.

He got an allowance because I thought it was best he learned that you had to earn what you got. I didn’t want to shelter him, then send him out in the world so he could get blindsided about how hard you had to work just to afford decent. I wanted him to know even as I was careful not to bog him down in that crap.

So he got extra if he vacuumed or dusted. More if he took on the bathroom or mopped the kitchen floor. And he needed cabbage for whatever kids needed cabbage for, so he did both, often.

But I didn’t want our time together that day, a Saturday that was a full day off for me, to be about laundry and cleaning. I wanted it to be about hanging and doing shit we liked.

I wasn’t a big fan of grocery shopping, but Ethan was, so I got the crap stuff out of the way so that when he got home we could focus on the good stuff.

“Somethin’ funny?” I asked, feeling my lips quirk, even after the day I’d had and the lingering hangover that I’d had to manage without an Egg McMuffin but with pills and a fried egg on toast.

“Mom,” Ethan said through his laughter, sweeping his hand to our cart. “We got diet orange, Diet 7UP, Diet Cherry 7UP, Diet Coke, Diet Dr. Pepper, and two different kinds of Fresca. How much diet crap do you need?”

“I have to look after my girlish figure,” I retorted.

“Yeah, right,” he muttered, putting his hands to the cart and starting to push. “You do that real good with your candy stash.”

I didn’t look in the cart because I didn’t have to. We’d hit the candy aisle already and we were loaded up. My kid liked sweets, but I was a candy junkie. I had some every day, sometimes more than “some.”