The Slow Burn (Moonlight and Motor Oil #2)(121)

Deanna didn’t have a problem with it.



Toby

“Fuck,” he said when he caught sight of Toby.

Toby did not stop moving toward him.

“Listen, asshole, I know who you are. You were there that day. I’m at work. I don’t need this shit,” Perry said.

Toby pulled the envelope out of his back pocket and replied, “All you gotta do is sign.”

“I’m not gonna sign shit.”

“Allowing me to adopt him, meaning relinquishing all parental rights,” Toby finished.

The guy shot straight.

Toby slid the documents out of the envelope.

“Addie and I got married last month. I’m adopting Brooklyn. Means for you, no support. No visitation. No responsibilities.”

“Addie want this?” Perry asked.

“We both do.”

The dick smiled. “How bad you want it?”

“I’m his dad no matter how much you feel like playin’ with us, so my question is, how bad do you like to get paid? ’Cause you don’t sign, we go for child support, they garnish sixty percent of your wages.” Tobe looked side to side. “You make good bank as a bouncer for a second-rate titty bar?”

His face twisted. “Fuck you.”

“You owe over ten K. And hear this, Perry, I got cake, Addie’s inherited huge, we’ll find you anywhere you try to hide.”

“You got so much cabbage, why you need mine?” he sneered.

“We don’t, and you’ll never hear from us again,” he lifted the papers, “you sign. You don’t, you won’t be able to escape us.”

“Courts’d take into account you two are loaded and you’re goin’ after me,” Perry retorted.

“As you haven’t been keepin’ in touch, you don’t know, Adeline’s the secretary to a lawyer now and takin’ classes to be a paralegal. She’s got access to good advice. And we’ve been assured that the courts don’t really give a shit about the financial situation of a mother and a stepfather. They don’t like deadbeat dads. You don’t believe me, wanna pay attorney’s fees and roll that dice?” Toby shrugged. “Up to you. You wanna quit with the hassle, for you, not me, or Addie, all you gotta do is sign your name.”

He didn’t even take a second to think about it.

“Give me that shit,” he muttered.

Toby didn’t give it to him.

He held it up to the brick wall by his side.

Though he did hand him a pen.

Perry signed.

Toby put the pen in his back pocket and folded the document to slide it back in the envelope, muttering, “Obliged.”

He then started to walk away.

“She . . . hasn’t sent pictures,” Perry called.

Toby stopped walking, didn’t turn back, but he looked back.

“Not in a while,” Perry went on.

“And?”

“He, uh . . . look like me at all?”

Toby turned then.

“He’s blond-haired and blue-eyed and beautiful. So . . .” Toby smiled, “no.”

With that, he walked away.

And within a month, Brooklyn’s last name was Gamble.

Because when the Gamble Men decided to stake claim to someone they loved . . .

They didn’t fuck around.



Addie was pounding chicken breasts between two sheets of plastic wrap.

She was doing this snapping, “You’re not sleeping on the pullout.”

To this, Dave returned soothingly, “Adeline, child, I’m not lettin’ an eight-month pregnant woman sleep on a pullout. So I’m sleepin’ on the pullout.”

Toby wasn’t gonna let that shit happen either.

They were in a bed or he was driving his woman home.

Dave wasn’t young, but he wasn’t slowing down much either.

And they had a foam thing for the top of the pullout mattress. It was the shit.

His pregnant wife still wasn’t sleeping on it.

“You’re not sleepin’ on the pullout, Dave,” Johnny put in. “Iz and I’ll sleep on the pullout.”

“So you want me to sleep in the bed of a woman who gave birth two months ago?” Dave asked, tipping his head to Izzy, who was bouncing a blanket-wrapped bundle in her arms. “That’s not gonna happen.”

“We can set the bassinette up down here,” Johnny returned. “Less disruption for everyone upstairs sleepin’ when we gotta get up to feed Quinn.”

“You can sleep in the bunks with me, Paw,” Brooks offered. “I get the top, you can sleep on the bottom an’ tell me stories. Or you can sleep on the top a’ the other set a’ bunks.” He paused before he concluded, “An’ tell me stories. You don’t gotta worry ’bout fallin’ out. Daddy made sure the top bunks ’av railin’s.”

Dave ruffled Brooks’s sun-streaked blond hair. “Now, that sounds like a plan, son.”

“You’re not sleeping in a bunkbed, Dave,” Addie declared.

“Why not?” Dave asked her. “We’ll make it into a fort, tell ghost stories, stay up all night, raid the kitchen.”

“That sounds great!” Brooks shouted.