Ride Steady (Chaos, #3)(12)

He was succeeding.

I knew what he wanted. He wanted me to step aside, give him my son so he and Tory could raise Travis, and Aaron could forget he broke my heart, shattered my soul, destroyed my dream, and ruined my life.

Aaron didn’t like reminders of his failures. Due to his father being driven, and driving Aaron, my ex-husband did his best not to fail. But should that rare happenstance occur, he obliterated any memory of it so he didn’t have any indication in his life that he was any less than perfect.

I was a flaw. I was a fail. I needed to go away.

I wasn’t going to go away.

I just didn’t know how I would do it. After I got my divorce, I received a settlement (that I now knew was so small it was a joke) and child support (since Aaron’s income was far more than mine) and nearly full custody of Travis (since he was only two months old at the time).

This was good.

It was good until Aaron took me back to court and made it bad. Since Aaron had been born into the good ole boys network of the legal world of Denver (his father being a judge), he’d managed to win (or connive) partial custody and a lowering of child support.

Then he took me back again and won half custody with no child support.

We’d been officially divorced for six months, the decree coming through two months after I pushed out our son (alone, since Dad was driving from Nebraska, and Travis came out quickly). In that time, I’d been to court twice and I knew Aaron was looking for any little thing that he could use to prove I wasn’t fit to look after Travis or that I’d broken our arrangement so he could get me into (more) trouble.

I had long since run out of money for a lawyer. Dad sent a bunch but I stopped asking after the second trip to court. He worried about me. He was all I had left (except Travis), but all I could think about was that Travis and I were all he had left too and he’d been through enough. I couldn’t drag him through this with me.

I could, however, get a new attorney.

The one I’d had was expensive and we’d gone over things before I had to let him go. It was clear he was concerned about his ability to defend me considering the firepower at Aaron’s back.

But when I begged (and okay, cried), my attorney had told me I could pay installments.

However, they just racked up (I was still paying them off). I couldn’t afford more. I needed a new car. Eventually, I’d need more than a one-bedroom apartment and preferably one that was in a much better neighborhood. I needed to find time and money to go to beauty school so I could learn how to do hair. I was good at hair. I had a natural talent. I’d spent a lot of time trying to figure out what I was good at, what I could do, and that was the only thing.

And stylists at nice salons made huge tips.

I needed huge tips.

I pretty much needed everything.

So I’d tried to find a less expensive attorney.

Not many were willing to take me on (this, I feared, was Aaron and his father’s doing too), but I’d found one. And he’d be really less expensive, if, in his words with that oily smile on his face, I got down on my knees (repeatedly) while he battled Aaron for me.

I didn’t need him to explain what getting down on my knees meant. I also didn’t need to explain verbally why I got up from my chair in his office and walked out.

So I could get a new attorney, I just didn’t like the way he wanted me to pay fees.

But right then, what I needed most was to change my tire, get back on the road, get my son to his father before it was too late and Aaron logged that on the list of things to use to make his ex-wife lose custody of her son and hopefully go away for good. After that, I needed to figure out how to get my tire fixed, or how to pay for a new one, and finally, get to my evening shift at the store.

I was just going to have to put my baby in the car and hope to God no one hit me or my vehicle.

I didn’t have good thoughts about this. I hadn’t had a lot of luck in my life.

Some of my bad luck was out of my control.

Aaron wasn’t.

That was on me.

That was my fail.

And it was a biggie.

I looked into Travis’s little baby face with his big pudgy cheeks and his dancing eyes that had turned brown, like mine, like his granddad’s, and he gurgled up at me, his little red lips wet and curved up, his little fist banging my shoulder.

Okay, so Aaron wasn’t a total fail. He gave me Travis.

“We’ll be fine,” I told my boy on a squeeze.

“Goo,” he replied.

I smiled. “Mommy can do this.”

“Goo, goo, gah.” Fist bump and twist on my necklace, pulling it hard against my neck.

I smiled bigger even though I still wanted to cry and started toward the car.

Then I heard a loud noise getting louder because it was getting closer.

I stopped and turned my head to the side.

That was when I froze.

I froze because I saw one of those bikers on his big, loud motorcycle riding down the shoulder my way.

And he wasn’t one of those recreational bikers. I knew this at a glance. His black hair was very long, too long, and wild. He had a full black beard on his face. It was trimmed but not trimmed enough (as in, the beard being nonexistent). He had black wraparound sunglasses covering his eyes, glasses that made him look sinister (as bikers, in my mind, were wont to be). He was also wearing a black leather jacket that looked both beat up and kind of new, faded jeans, and those clunky black motorcycle boots.