“Here.” Mitch held up a magazine with a picture of Scarlett in it. “I was just telling Penny that a woman like this is no friend to hard-working men like us. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Mitch had been consumed ever since Mick and Violet got back from Paris. After they had announced that she was pregnant again, there was no cure for him. There was no possible way this kid could be his. Possessed with jealousy put it lightly.
After I told him that I was marrying Scarlett, the brunt of his “resistance” shifted toward me. The friend turned traitor. I was no longer like him, stewing in the misery of love.
Violet walked in then with Peter, who was chattering on about how he was going to catch the biggest fish, and Paul on her left hip, finger up his nose. Her belly protruded as far as the kid on her hip. She stopped in her tracks when she saw Penny and Jane.
“Oh,” she said, pulling Peter closer. “I thought you said you were taking Peter fishing.”
“I am.” He went to grab for Paul, but she took a step back, dragging Peter with her.
Peter struggled to release himself from her hold, but her grip was firm and when she told him to knock it off, he huffed out an angry breath and stuck out his bottom lip.
“I want Unc Mitch! We goin’ fishing today!”
“Unc Mitch,” Paul sang over and over in a nasally voice, his finger so far up his nose that it stretched the skin.
“Yeah.” Mitch got in her face. “His wants hisuncle.”
“Don’t be an asshole,” she seethed; her eyes glanced from his to Penny’s.
“Me? Nah,Sis. You got the wrong guy. I’m the good uncle. The one who takes his nephews fishing every once in a while.”
She mouthedyou fucked up. Then she went to leave, but Peter pulled, Paul sung at the top of his lungs, and Mitch was close on her heels. He took a hold of her shoulder and she had no way to keep going. Too many obstacles were sending her in the opposite direction.
“We’re going fishing.” Mitch went to take Peter’s hand.
She yanked Peter back, almost toppling him over. The boy stared, wild-eyed and fearful.
“No!” she said, enough venom in her voice to take on a lion. “Youweregoing fishing. You’re not taking my son out with—” She nodded toward Penny and Jane.
“Why not?” Mitch demanded.
“I don’t want him to get comfortable with trash.”
“You should know.”
Violet’s hand clutched Paul’s shirt, knuckles turning red with the restraint not to lash out. He deserved the hit that she couldn’t deliver.
“Don’t worry about it, baby,” Penny said, coming to stand next to Mitch. “We can take my nephew fishing. We don’t needtheirkid.”
Mitch’s jaw flexed with anger when Penny saidtheirkid.
Violet went to leave again, but Mitch yanked her back so hard that Paul’s finger went too far up his nose and he gasped, before he let out a cry that could’ve chiseled glass. He pulled out a finger covered in blood.
Maggie Beautiful whirled in, joining the chaos, her cheeks as hot as lit coals, a letter clutched in her grasp.
What a fucking day this was turning out to be.
I yanked Mitch back with just as much force as he had used on Violet. He turned on me, shrugging out of my grasp. He was loaded on anger, his eyes rimmed red, and his body vibrating with a frustration he couldn’t expel.
Violet took Maggie Beautiful’s entrance as a means to escape. I went after her, stopping her before she got to her car.
“He okay?”
She shrugged, rocking Paul some, kissing his head, shushing him. She seemed to be in shock, from anger or fear, I wasn’t sure.
“BRANDPOW can give you a sucka, Paulie. You wan’ one?” Peter looked up at his little brother, trying to make him stop crying.
