“True,” he breezed, “but how is the two hundred and twelve dollars I’ve got in my bank account going to lift your spirits when the whole world is watching your flat ass bounce on my lap? The future Little Kim is going to have quite a hard time at school when all the bullies are flashing your tits in their face—”
“Stop!”
“Sure, I’ll stop.” I heard the triumph in his voice clear as day. “As long as you stop being a bitter old hag, and move on from the past. I love you, I made a mistake, it’ll never happen again, so let’s move the fuck on. Deal?”
The word was acid on my tongue. “...deal.”
“Awesome. Then, I’ll see you tonight, baby. My place.”
“Fine.”
“You—”
I hung up, not letting him drip another poisonous word in my ear.
Walking up to my car, I dropped my head on the hood—letting the warmth seep into my skull and banish the oncoming headache.
That evil, fucking, miserable bastard was right. Suing him wouldn’t get back what he planned to steal from me—my privacy, my safety, my last chance to ever make it home. If Omma was shamed by a vicious prank I wasn’t a part of, what would be her reaction to a sex tape I was a part of?
That question didn’t need answering. I already knew.
Standing there slumped over my hunk of crap, the words of another miserable bastard roared in my ear.
“You’re a twenty-eight-year-old waitress making fourteen dollars an hour. You live in a terrible neighborhood, that car you pulled up in is older than you, and you think that you can pay medical bills with sob stories.
“So I’m going to do you a favor and give you what you need more desperately than a baby. A wake-up call.”
I cringed then like I did the first time I heard it.
“You’re not ready to be anyone’s mother, Ms. Kim. Come back when you get your life together.”
Tears stung my eyes as my closing throat strangled a sob. The last fertility doctor was a disorganized, inappropriate, irresponsible jerk, but maybe it was possible... that he wasn’t a liar.
“How can I give a child a good life... when I can’t give one to myself?”
The car hood had no answers for me.
Eventually, I slid myself off and got into the car. Checking in for my shift was a no-go after a morning like that, so instead I drove straight home, letting the slow, sleepy town of Willingsworth dance outside my window.
Willingsworth.
I’d never heard of the place before I broke down in it. After Omma threw me out, I bounced around from place to place, taking any job that would hire a kid that was expelled from high school. When I was twenty-four, I left Chicago and found myself driving east toward home—dreaming of making something of myself in the one and only New York City.
My crappy car got as far as Willingsworth, Nowhere, USA.
I broke down in front of the diner where I made a pit stop, and the sweet couple who owned it offered to get it towed to the auto shop, promisingthe tow would be free of charge. The next day, when I went to the shop to pick it up, I discovered the same couple also paid the bill.
It had been so long since anyone, anywhere, had shown me any kindness, that I decided I’d stay in Willingsworth—make a real home here.
That was until I met Daniel Mills.
I should’ve known that no matter where you are, or how far you run, you’re never too far from a gaslighting, self-obsessed narcissist.
I also should’ve known nowhere is paradise.
My hometown of Lantana looked like a nice place to live too. Mansions as far as the eye could see, and so many smiling, well-dressed people walking among them. You’d never know that a street over from where I grew up, Nick Russell found out his neighbor drained his bank account because he was planning to use that money to run away with Russell’s wife.
So Russell crossed the lawn and shot both the neighbor and his cheating wife in the face.
