Honey scuffed. “Me keeping your child away from you? You couldn’t even keep Kai for a full weekend because you were too busy clubbing. Don’t pretend to care about your son now.”
Whispers shot across like lightning throughout the cookout, and sheepishly, Andre tried to wave it off as if it weren’t true before he tugged her further away under the shade of an elm tree where no one else was.
“I just wanted to spend time with my son,” Andre argued.
“Quit your bullshit. Andre, you only want to show off to your family and pretend like you’re a good father, but you don’t careabout Kai at all. What is it? Do you have a girlfriend over there? Are you trying to lie to impress her?”
Andre rolled his eyes. “I don’t have a woman over there.”
“Then, what is it? Why would you even do something like this? Did you even think? How did you think I would react to something like this? My heart nearly dropped when I got the call.”
“But, if you would just let me see my son, I wouldn’t have to do something like this.”
“Andre, Kai is not a toy to pick up whenever you want to pick him up, and that’s exactly how you treat him. You come when you want to come, and you go when you want to go. You don’t care about his feelings at all.”
“That’s not true,” Andre said, shaking his head. “That’s not true at all.”
“When Kai asked you to go on the school field trip with him, and you told me that you were going, he waited out there for you, and you never came. Or the last time when you said you were going to pick him up from school and take him to the barbershop. My son was out there for hours without me even knowing because you never came to pick him up.”
Andre’s face soured, and he couldn’t even look her in the eye.
Honey sighed, exasperated, feeling like she was living in a loop that she couldn’t get out of. It was always like this with Andre. He treated Kai like he was some toy that he wanted to show off, rather than Kai being a human being with feelings. She had had this conversation with him countless times before, but they were still having it again. And she was tired of it.
“This is going to be my last warning,” Honey said as she glared at Andre. “If you do something like this again, I will not hesitate to call the police on you.”
She tried to turn and leave, but Andre grabbed her arm. She looked at him in disbelief, grimacing because his grip was tight on her arm.
“Get off of me,” she gritted out between clenched teeth.
“The only reason that you have full custody is because the government doesn’t know what your job is, but if I were to take you to court and they found out you are a stripper, I’m pretty sure that I’ll be able to get custody of Kai.”
Honey’s heart dropped as she stared at Andre in disbelief. She shook her head, not believing her own ears. Before she could say anything, a shadow was cast over her, and she glanced over her shoulder to see that Nikos was there.
“Go ahead to the car, Honey,” Nikos told her as he grabbed Andre’s arm.
“Get the hell off of me,” Andre barked, but Nikos only gripped Andre’s arm tighter, and pain shot across Andre’s face as he released her arm.
“Nikos, I can—”
“Just go to the car,” Nikos told her as he gave her a look, and usually, Honey didn’t care for people entering her business and intruding on her private matters. But after Andre’s last comment, she had been rattled to her core, and she no longer wanted to be in his presence.
She turned and left as Nikos had instructed and went back to Nikos’s car and got in.
“Where’s Nikos?” Kai asked.
“He’ll be back soon, honey,” Honey told her son as she tried to peer out the tinted windows.
From where the car was parked, she could see the silhouettes of their bodies, but they were still too far away for her to makeout what they were doing. But she didn’t have to try to guess what was happening for long because Nikos came back to the car less than five minutes later.
“What happened?” Honey asked as Nikos got into the car. Nikos closed the door behind himself but didn’t respond to her question, which made her even more suspicious because this was the most serious she had ever seen Nikos.
“Mom?”
“Yes, Kai,” Honey said, settling in her seat when she realized she wouldn’t get a response from Nikos.
“I want to go back.”
Honey sighed. “Kai—”
