“Mom.” I took a deep breath. “This has to stop. We give you as much in a month as a lot of people make in a year. If you haven’t learned financial responsibility by now, more money isn’t going to help. How many times have we paid off your debts?”
She scoffed. “I don’t keep track of that.”
“Eight. Each of them bordering on seven figures.”
“Well, that’s?—”
“Whatever trouble you’ve gotten into, I’ll take care of it, but this is the last time. I have an omega now, and a baby on the way. They have to come first, and your chaos can’t keep steamrolling our lives.”
My mother squawked. “Logan, be serious. You want your own mother to end up on the streets because you knocked up some two-bit tramp?Shedeserves to be taken care of but notme?”
“Don’t fucking talk about her like that. I don’t want you on the streets.” I gripped the edge of the counter, my knuckles white. “Sure seems like you do, though. You let Rick sell the house we bought you. You gave Dan money for his gambling debt that he racked up again immediately. If you’d leave them, you’d never worry about money for one second of the rest of your life.”
“Those are your fathers!”
“You could live so comfortably if you’d get your shit together, and instead, you all show up with your hands open whenever you get into trouble, expecting me to help you start fresh. I’m done.”
“Logan!”
“I’m sorry. We both know this isn’t how I wanted things to go between us. No matter how much I give you, it’s never going to be enough for you to see me as your son and not a bank account for you to drain. The others have tried for years to make me see that.”
“I knew they were poisoning you against me. Baby, please, I’m your mother.”
Guilt and nausea turned my stomach. Even after all the bullshit she’d put me through, I’d still kept trying. I thought if I could give her financial security, she would stop letting myasshole fathers push her around, but instead, she had dragged them with her. Maybe she needed the chaos to survive, but I sure as fuck didn’t anymore.
Looking back now, it was easy to tell that my willingness to bend to them had been a huge stumbling block in developing my friendship with Parker.
“Logan, you ungrateful cunt.” A different voice this time.
“Can’t even be bothered with a hello, Dan? It’s kind of basic courtesy.”
“You’ll get courtesy when you stop making your mother cry.”
I ground my teeth together. He and Rick had been the worst offenders by far. I hated them. They’d been in and out of my life growing up, sometimes disappearing for years at a time before rolling back into the picture to kick over whatever tenuous sand castle of peace we’d managed to build in their absence.
“I’ll get you out of trouble,” I promised. “But like I told Mom, it’s going to stop. I have a family to think of now, and after I clean up whatever shit you’ve gotten into again, you guys have to be on your own.”
I ended the call, immediately blocking the numbers for my own sanity.
The clearing of a throat had me turning to see Clover’s dad, Pete, hovering in the entrance to the kitchen.
“I didn’t mean to eavesdrop.” He offered a sympathetic smile. “Actually, that’s a lie, at least once I figured out what you were talking about. Do you want to talk about it?”
I shrugged and leaned on the counter, bracing my weight on my forearms.
Pete grabbed us both a glass of water, then pulled out one of the barstools and sat nearby, but not directly in my space. “Parent trouble?”
I let out a bitter laugh. “Always.”
Pete gave me a serious look. “I haven’t spoken to my parents since before Clover was born.”
I stared at him for a long moment. Of all of her fathers, Pete was easily the most amiable, and the last of their clan I would have expected to go no contact.
“Why?” I choked out.
“Sounds like similar reasons to you. I spent my whole childhood helping bail them out of their shit decisions. Before I was old enough for a proper job, I collected cans and bottles, graduated to mowing lawns, shoveling snow on the rare occasions it fell, really any chore I could get my hands on that someone would pay me for. Every dollar I made before I met Mike and John went straight into my parents’ hands. When we decided on kids, it really hit home for me that I’d have someone more important than my parents to take care of.”
I grimaced. “Sounds painfully familiar, though I definitely got some of the money from less-than-legal means.”
