Yeah, because you’re just that lucky.
* * *
Delilah stamped her foot,her sweet little face twisted in a mutinous scowl. “I want to go and see Jude.”
I sighed, regretting for the thousandth time telling her that I’d been on the phone to Jude that morning. “I already said no, baby girl.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t say why,” Tam chimed in.
I shot him a murderous glance, as murderous as I could be towards an eight-year old. “Do I need a reason besides the fact that I don’t want to drive thirty miles out of the city?”
“You do it every day.”
“Exactly. Why would I want to do it on my day off?”
“It’s not your day off. You keep checking your emails.”
My son was laughing at me, which was better than him being resentful of the fact that I had checked my emails five times since he’d come downstairs, but still. Little git. He was more like me than Mina, but I blamed her all the same. “We’re not going to the pet shop.”
“What are we doing then?”
“I’ll let you know when I decide.”
Tam wandered off. He was eight years old and I’d bought him a PlayStation. If I made chips for lunch he’d leave me alone for most of the day.Is that what you want?I pictured Jude’s face when I’d told him my kids always came first. He’d believed me without question, and here I was, less than twenty-four hours later, plotting ways to keep my son from speaking to me.
You’re such a cunt.
The devil on my shoulder was notoriously harsh, but this time, it had a point.
Delilah was still hovering at my feet. I braved a quick peek at her, and immediately regretted that too. She’d never been shy about speaking her mind, but her silence was deadly.
I nudged her. “Stop glaring at me.”
Her eyes widened and her lower lip trembled.
“Stop,” I pleaded. “It’s Saturday so Jude will probably be busy anyway.”
“But he’s poorly,” Delilah said. “Don’t you want to look after him?”
“Why would I want to look after him? I hardly know him and I’m not his mother…” I trailed off as the emptiness of my words hit me. On paper, it was all true, but whether I wanted to or not, Ididcare about Jude. And the temptation to see with my own eyes that he really was okay was getting harder to ignore.
“Daddy—”
“All right. Go and get dressed.”
There was a reason I let my kids stay in their pyjamas if we had no imminent plans to leave the house. As a rule, Delilah took no less than an hour to choose what she wanted to wear, despite my ham-fisted parenting leaving her limited options at my house. Somehow, though, the prospect of seeing Jude made her a different child.
Ten minutes later we were in the car, and it was me who wasn’t ready. The drive to Thorston should’ve taken an hour, but it seemed as if no time had passed at all when we pulled up outside Madfall Exotics. Even the sought-after parking space was free. I killed the engine as an odd trepidation bubbled in my chest. Jude and I had parted on bland terms, but our train wreck phone call still echoed in my head. Why would he want to see me when I couldn’t seem to stop acting like a total fucking weirdo?
Tam kicked the back of my seat. “Dad, come on.”
“Did you just kick my seat?”
“It was an accident.”
I couldn’t think of a sensible reply. I’d spent years bullshitting my way through high-powered meetings with millions of pounds at stake, but I was no match for my kids ninety per cent of the time. Little buggers had me licked. “All right. Out you get. D, climb over Tam’s side, okay? Don’t open your door into the road.”
We made it out of the car in one piece. The kids hurtled towards the door to Jude’s shop. I took a breath to holler at them, but they skidded to a stop just in time. “No running,” I growled with my hand on the door. “Remember Jude’s rules.”
