Page 10 of Twilight Tides
“Jill … Jill has a new boyfriend. This one is sticking around more than the others. Kelly told me she—and this is a direct quote—‘gets bad vibes’ from him and his friends.”
I tensed. “In what way?”
Mum’s expression hardened. “She says he’s alwaystouchingJill in front of her. That … he and his friends smile at Kelly in a way she doesn’t like. She can’t explain why, but I think you and I both know why. We can’t send her back there, son. We can’t.”
Fuck!
I shifted to the side so I could pull my phone out of my back pocket.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m calling Jill.”
“I don’t think?—”
But I was already up and pacing as the phone rang.
“What is it?” Jill answered impatiently.
I gritted my teeth against snapping back. “Kelly tells me your new boyfriend and his friends are acting inappropriately around her.”
“What? Rubbish. She’sh lying.”
Was she slurring? “Are you drunk?”
“So what if I am? You have the kid. I can do what I want.”
The kid.
“I’m not sending her back, Jill, if creepy blokes are going to be around her. It’s your job to protect her.”
“Dorian ishn’t a creep and he is not going anywhere, so goooo fuck yourshelf. You bring her back or we’ve got problemsh.” She hung up.
Panic tightened my chest as I lowered the phone, my mind reeling, searching for solutions.
For the past year, I’d been scared every time I had to send Kelly back to Jill. I knew she was neglecting my daughter, keeping her for the child support money, but without proof (and there was no way I was asking my fourteen-year-old to testify against her own mother), I didn’t know what else I could do.
“We need to do something, son.” Mum stood, expression pleading.
“I know. I’ll call my solicitor again in the morning. Let me check on Kelly.”
“Pancakes for breakfast?” Kelly slid onto the stool at the island with a sleepy grin the next morning. “Is it my birthday and I just forgot?”
Pancakes were usually for celebratory occasions.
However, yesterday when I’d seen how distraught Kelly was, I was plagued with guilt because she was only fourteen. She might come across older than her years, wiser, but she was still a child. And she’d been dealing with Jill’s neglect for far too long. My teenager should be thinking of school and friends and even boys. I wasn’t ready for her to be thinking about boys, but I’d take it over this shit.
“Just felt like spoiling you.” I nudged the stack toward her along with a bottle of maple syrup. Then I slid onto the stool next to her to eat my own stack.
Kelly gave me a forlorn but grateful smile before she turned to her plate.
She was tall for her age because both Jill and I were tall. She’d inherited Jill’s blond hair and brown eyes. Truthfully, she looked like a mini version of her mother. Thankfully, she reminded me of Mum in nature. She was a bit feistier than Mum, to be fair.
“Dad …” Kelly lowered her fork with a giant piece of pancake on the end. She sighed like she had the weight of the world on her shoulders. “Do I … do I have to go back?”
My father was the first person to break my heart. Then I broke my own heart when I realized what a mistake I’d made marrying Jill. Smaller pieces continued to break every time I had to leave Kelly on the mainland.
This time when it broke it was so painful, I had to rub my chest to ease the ache.
