“I think I’m the authority on what I know,” he tells me with a dead serious tone. “I want you to stay. Lennon wants you to stay. My whole family wants you to stay. I never wanted you to go in the first place. I’m not asking you to marry me right now; I’m asking you to say you’ll stay.”
I study his face to make sure he’s being genuine. When I take longer than he anticipated, his hand goes to his chest, and his look turns to fear. He’s scared I’m going to reject him this time.
I take his hand before his anxiety gets him. “I’ll stay.”
He grabs my cheeks with both hands and kisses me.
“You’re moving into my room tonight,” he decides.
I need both of us to hold onto this happiness because when he gets back in the car with Lennon after her visit, I can tell shit’s about to get rough. She’s quiet on the ride home, and when we offer to stop at Two Scoops, she says she just wants to go home, hang out with her cat, and de-possess. Neither of us corrects her.
At bedtime, when we ask her what her best part of the day was, she tells us it was knowing she doesn’t have to go live with the girl with too many shiny things on her jacket.
BECKETT
Iwake up nervous as fuck. It’s our first real court date, and we are going to go over the basics and see if there’s any way we can agree on things and settle. I doubt I’ll be open to giving Hannah everything she wants. It’s been six weeks since our first supervised custody visit, and we’ve been having them once a week. Of the six visits we’ve scheduled, Hannah has cancelled twice. Lennon grumbles every time we have to go and pleads for us to stay home. In her words, she would rather scoop out the horse turds than see Hannah. She refuses to call her ‘Mom’, which is her call. I’m not going to force it, even though Hannah thinks I should “out of respect”. She can kiss my entire ass.
Clover stretches her arm out behind her, patting around for me. “Hey, Lucky girl,” I say lowly, rolling over to hold her against me. She sighs contentedly.
“Good morning, Bucket,” she says back groggily. “What time is it?”
“Almost six,” I tell her, and she grumbles loudly. “I know, I know. We both got shit to do today, though, so up and at 'em.”
She wiggles her butt against me as a defense mechanism and I swat it. “Nope, not today, darlin’,” I laugh. “You ain’t luring me in with your wicked wiles.”
She giggles and makes her way out of the bed and heads to the bathroom, shutting the door behind her and turning on the shower. I always shower first. What a little shit.
My phone lights up with a text from my mom.
Good luck today, sweetheart.
Thanks. Hopefully it’s quick & easy, but we know she can be.
How’s my beetle?
She’s good. Still sleeping. Her and her Papa stayed up late watching cowboy movies. Heads up, she wants to own a cowboy hat store when she grows up.
What?!
She said she wants to say ‘howdy’ to everyone when they come in. She’s already started.
I chuckle out loud.
Well, when she wakes up, tell her howdy and we love her.
Will do. She told me her and her momma picked out some balloons for her birthday.
??? She hasn’t gone anywhere with Hannah. Clover is the one who took her to the party store in Cliffstone.
Yep.
Oh. I see what you’re saying.
Y’all be careful. We will talk when you get here after court. Love you, Beck.
Love you too, Mom.
Mom is typing . . .
