by Max Henry
I can respect that.
Today, I pick up the second-hand but near-new condition sterilising equipment I’ll need to set up and test before my first at-home session in two days hence why Dad came to help me out. I need the ute to get it all home; the back seat and boot of my Honda not large enough to fit it all in its boxes.
“Got the address details?” Dad asks when I jump into the passenger side.
I lift my phone between us. “All in the email.”
“Good.” He pulls out of our driveway, pausing before entering the road.
I can’t deny the pang of worry that swirls in my chest at leaving Sera with Jodie. I have no concerns that Zeus’s ex-wife will have it under control. It’s just the first time I’ve been away from her for more than the half-hour it takes to do a quick run to the shops.
“Can we do a quick stop off somewhere else on the way?”
Dad glances over. “Sure. Where do you need to go?”
I swallow away my fears and answer. “The daycare on Richardson Road.”
I can tell he watches me in my periphery. “Sera booked in for next week, huh?”
“Mm-hmm.” Why does this feel so hard?
If I counted the times on my hands that I’ve wished for a few hours to myself just to be Belle again, I’d run out of fingers. And yet, here I am, on my way to organise freedom and I want to weep at the thought of relinquishing my child to the trust of strangers.
“I wasn’t able to print off the forms they emailed me, so they said I could just drop in and fill them out. Sign it off.”
“Have you organised the subsidy for it?”
Is my dad seriously asking penny-pincher me if I forgot to apply for free money? “Of course.”
“Good. Good.” He takes the right turn that leads down to where Sera will spend three days a week while I colour people’s skin for income.
Any less and the pay-off wasn’t worth it. As it is, I’ll have to keep full days booked to cover the cost of childcare and come out the other side with a few hundred to shake at the bills.
I can’t see me saving for Zeus’s career shift any time soon. We have to get our head back above water first.
“You want me to come in with you?” Dad asks as he eases into a vacant parking space.
I eye the colourfully painted building and chew the inside of my cheek. “I should be okay.” No need to have any more of an audience than necessary if I crack it.
The sun peeks between the grey clouds overhead as I step out of the ute, casting a golden glow in a strip across the parking lot to the door. It’s ridiculous but comforting at the same time, as though affirmation that I do the right thing. I follow the bright line, relishing the feel of the heat on my skin, warming me to the bone. With so much body fat loss of late, I’ve felt every damn chill and draft right to the core.
I never thought I’d say it, but I can’t wait to put some meat on my curves again to provide a little extra protection against the bite of winter.
I let myself through the safety gate and ring the doorbell beside the locked door. My memories of Kindy when I was little are few and foggy, but what I do recall is that our door never had a key card lock on it. Hell, we didn’t have the safety gates, or the security camera pointed at our face while we waited to go inside, either.
Making the centre look like a prison sure as hell doesn’t make it any easier to think of leaving Sera here for eight hour stretches at a time.
“Hello.” A warm and curious woman with a messy bun piled on her head greets me after the door swings inward.
She doesn’t move to let me inside.
“Are you visiting?”
“Signing on my daughter. I phoned last week.”
“Oh!” Her smile widens, and she steps back. “Belle, right?”
“Yeah.” I’m greeted with the chatter and squeals of happy kids as they play in their classrooms. Do you call them classrooms at this age?
“I’ll grab the forms. Once we have everything signed off, I’ll get you a code and a card so you can let yourself in.”
“Does my partner need his own as well, or can he use mine?” I give an internal tick of approval to the high door handles and lack of anything stored below knee height.
“He’ll need his own.” The smile melts off her face. “We have strict rules around entry due to the familial disputes that some attendees of the centre have.”
Oh Oh. Of course. I nod like a good girl as the reality of how much worse my situation could be is laid out before me. At least Sera has two parents who get along and live together … at this stage.
If Zeus keeps up his jealous silent treatment, I’m not sure how long our unit will stay intact. I know he said he’d get over it and that his feelings aren’t my burden to bear, but damn, I want my man back.
If I wanted to live with a shell of a partner who was there for no more than a bedwarmer at night, I would have stayed with Damien.
I blaze through the forms, amazed at the sheer amount of information required. The pen scratches across the paper as I sign away Sera’s time and become an official working mother. The centre manager hands me a key card and a slip of paper with the door entry code printed in large bold lettering.
I return to Dad’s ute feeling strangely hollow with the foreign plastic in my hand.
“No problems?” I get a lift of his brow as he turns the sportscast on the radio down.
“No.” I bury the reminder in the bottom of my bag to deal with later. “I’ll message the guy and say we’re on the way now.”
The vehicle doesn’t move.
“What?” I frown a little. Why the hell is Dad staring at me like that?
“Talk about it, Belle.”
“Talk about what?” My thumb coasts over the screen of the phone.
“What’s the matter?” He shifts into gear and slowly eases out toward the road. “You’re more in your head than usual.”
“I’m not in my head.”
“Aren’t you?” He pointedly flicks a slip of cardboard balanced on the dash.
I don’t need to read the scripted lettering to know what it is. Oh, my God.
“I put that there while I waited for you at your house.” He lifts it, eyes on the road, and drops it in my lap. “And you haven’t said a thing. I don’t think you even noticed it.”
He’s right—I hadn’t. Pinching the glossy card between my fingers, I stare at the gorgeous contrast of the rose-gold foil against the black background. “Yeah, okay. I’ve been distracted.” My thumb skims the date. “I’m sorry.”
“Do you approve?” His hands squeeze the steering wheel.
I stare at him, wide-eyed. “What does it matter what I think? Are you happy?”
He nods to the invite. “I said I’d marry her, didn’t I?” He grins. “I think that makes me happy.”
Back up. “You said you’d marry her,” I clarify. “Dad! Were you not the one to ask?”
“Sharon asked me. Leap year, Belle. Different rules.”
Wait a minute. “We’re midway through July,” I point out. “Have you been engaged since February? Why didn’t you tell me?”
He shrugs. “We hadn’t found the right opportunity, and then after time dragged on, Sharon and I figured we’d skip the whole engagement gig and just invite everyone to the wedding.” His face falls. “Not that there are many people to ask.”
“You don’t need a huge guest list to validate it, Dad.”
He nods, relaxing in his seat while we wait at a red light. “You’re right. All that matters are that those we love attend.”
He’s holding back. I can tell because he won’t look at me. His eyes narrow while he studies the cars lined up across the intersection from us.
“Now you’re the one who’s in his head,” I tease.
He snaps his gaze to me, and a slow smile spreads as the light turns green. “No fooling you, is there?”
“After so many years of it just being us, I think we have a pretty good gauge on one
another, don’t you think?”
His eyes crinkle at the corners, focus back to ferrying us to where my new not-so-new equipment awaits. “I was worried for a while that you might not want to join us,” he states. “You and Zeus have been distant, and until the other day, I had no idea why.”
“He’s finding it hard,” I admit before I have time to censor my traitorous mouth.
Zeus’s grief with Dad is his to share; I shouldn’t have said anything.
“I know.”
My shoulders relax, the buzz of betrayal dying off in my limbs. “Really? What did he say?”
“That he can’t stand the idea of me helping him like I’m trying to be his father.”
So much for not saying a lot when they were outside. “What else?”
“Nothing.” Dad hesitates to focus on merging into another lane. “I understand where he’s coming from, but t’s hard to step back and let him do it all himself.” Dad frowns. “Yes, he’s my age, and so he judges his success, or lack of, on what he sees me doing. But Zeus has to remember that he may as well write off the ten or so years he spent fucking around with the wrong crowd. He might be in his late thirties, but life experience-wise, he’s in his mid-twenties at best. He has a few years of progress to catch up on.”
I didn’t think of it that way. I know Zeus struggles with his need to more-or-less start anew when he divorced Jodie, but Dad has a solid point. While he began a family and settled into his career, Zeus drifted in and out of trouble with the law, struggling to hold down a job.
He might be reformed now, but you can’t escape your past by wishing it away.
“This is why you didn’t want us together, isn’t it?” I stare out the side window, not particularly interested in the answer.
“He tries hard,” Dad says gently. “But he’s still got a lot to learn.”
“You talk about him as though he’s a child,” I snap.
“Are his actions lately anything else?”
“Yes.” They’re the desperate attempts of a man who is tired of people treating him just like Dad is now. “His pride might be what makes him stubborn,” I explain. “But his insecurity is what means he won’t ask you for help.”
Dad glances my way with a confused frown.
My heart aches as I lay it out for him. “Zeus wants nothing more than to prove to you he can do what you said he couldn’t: take care of me. He wants to make you proud, Dad. He wants his friend to care about him and admire him.”
“I do care about him.”
“Bullshit.” I glare at the side of my father’s face. “You care about me. If he were doing this with anyone else, you would have abandoned him long ago.”
“If he was doing this with anyone else,” Dad grumbles, “then we never would have fallen out, to begin with.”
“And whose fault was that?” I signal I’ve said my part by folding my arms across my chest.
He grips the steering wheel tighter.
The awkward silence extends until Dad relents and admits he doesn’t know where he needs to go. “What’s the address again?”
I punch the screen of my phone and then reach across to snap it in his handsfree clip. The robotic woman on my map app directs him on where to go.
I’m ridiculously proud of the fact I didn’t have to cede on my silent treatment and speak as well. Who’s the child now?
I can’t believe that two guys who grew up with each other, who’ve known each other since they were in primary school, could fall apart this easily. And over what? Me. No. Not me. Over the fact that my father clearly thought Zeus was fun to have as a friend, but not actually worth enough to be of value when it came to what Dad loves the most—his only child.
“You’re a hypocrite,” I grumble. “You know that?”
“Pardon?” He jerks his head back into the seat. “Would you rather my hypocritical arse dropped you on the side of the road here?”
“You were always the one Zeus could depend on,” I explain, ignoring his crack and forging ahead. “Didn’t matter what anyone thought of him or his criminal past, he knew he could find refuge with you.”
Dad remains quiet, hearing me out. Yet his expression remains hard—sceptical.
“I remember thinking how great it was when I was small, that you had such a good friend. You told me to treat him like an Uncle; you thought that much of him.”
“A relative doesn’t do what he has with you.”
“Good thing there isn’t a blood connection, then, huh.” I glower his way. “You still can’t accept we’re together, can you?”
Dad sighs, rolling his flattened lips against each other. “I don’t expect you to understand, Belle.”
“We’re adults. Able to choose for ourselves, and never once have Zeus and I argued that it isn’t awkward—for any of us. But we can’t deny who we want to be with.”
“You have Sera now,” he tests. “If she were to grow up and start a relationship with, say, Damien,” he says, grasping for the name of a guy my age. “Are you telling me you’d be okay with that?”
“It wouldn’t happen.”
“Hypothetically,” he snaps.
I stare out the windscreen and mull it over. If she truly loved him and he loved her back, then why not? Except I can’t ignore the unease that remains when I envision a future with my baby girl and a guy I knew intimately together. Yeah. Different situation.
So, I flip the story. What if Sera were a boy and he grew up to become involved with my friend, Kate?
Shit. “That is strange, isn’t it?”
“He crossed a line, honey.” Dad grimaces. “I know you both love each other and you’re adults and all that, but he completely changed the dynamics of what your relationship should have been.”
“You won’t turn me against him,” I argue.
“I’m not trying to. I just want you to see why I can’t treat Zeus the same as I used to. The day you two announced you had a … a thing going on”—He looks as though he’s about to puke at the idea—“then he forever changed the dynamic of our relationship too.”
“He didn’t betray you, though.” I push the same point across I’ve voiced so many times before. “I was the one who initiated things. He did his best to deny me.”
“No, he didn’t.” The ute stops behind the queued traffic quicker than necessary. “If he had, then he wouldn’t be anywhere near you. He’d be living at the opposite end of the fucking country.”
“As long as you hold it against him,” I mutter, “then you hold it against me. And I don’t want that to be the reason why we drift apart.”
His sigh echoes around the cab. “Neither.”
“I’ve done my part, Dad.” I lean down and retrieve the details of the equipment I bought to be sure the guy gives us everything. “The rest is up to you.”
“All it will take is time.”
I snort. “That’s all I seem to be giving anyone, of late.”
SIXTEEN
Zeus
“Honey. I’m home!” I sarcastically call as I step inside from the garage.
Jodie stares at me from where she sits with the kids in the middle of the living room floor. “Totally the wrong person to say that to.”
What the fuck? “Why the hell are you here?”
“Cool your jets, tough guy.” She lifts a dismissive hand. “Belle’s fine.” Her gaze narrows on me, her focus sharp enough to ignore what must be a painful tug of her hair from Bradley. “Did you not know she was heading out today?”
I choose to ignore the question and do an about-face to ditch my work clothes in the laundry. I emerge a few minutes later in no more than my boxers to find her waiting for me in the hallway, hands on hips.
“Zeus?”
“Jesus, Jodie. Let me get some clothes on.”
Her limp wrist flicks my way. “I’ve seen all this before.” Sera crawls up the hall behind her. “You didn’t answer me.”
I lunge into my bedroom and retrieve sweatpants from the wardrobe,
tugging the comfy fabric over my legs. Sera babbles to herself, following me in.
Thankfully, Jodie doesn’t.
With my daughter in my arms, I re-emerge, at least half-dressed, and ask the question I know I can’t avoid any longer. “I’m guessing she’s with John?”
“Correct.” Jodie wiggles an eyebrow as I pass by. “They’re picking up gear for her studio. How did you not know about this?”
“I asked her not to tell me anything.”
Comically, Bradley looks relieved to find his mother without a strange child in her arms. He rushes across to her, seemingly pleased to have Jodie to himself again.
“Why the hell would you do that?” She sweeps him off the floor and trails me to the kitchen.
I set Sera on the counter, pinning her in place with my hip, and pull down a shaker cup. “Easier to ignore how I feel about it if the subject isn’t rubbed in my face.”
“You bought this damn house because it had the studio for her,” she exclaims. “Why be so dark about it now?”
“Because she’s getting everything she wants, and I get nothing,” I snap.
She remains silent while I spoon protein powder into the cup. Just another thing I’d been whacking on the credit card without telling Belle. Such a great guy, Zeus.
“Reserve your judgement, Jodie.” I place a kiss to Sera’s head and then set her on the floor before filling the shaker with water. “Maybe I’m petty, but I’m a shade more than twenty years from thinking of retirement, and I haven’t done a damn thing for myself yet.”
“You can’t blame her for your lack of motivation until now.”
I glare at my ex, silently reminding her who’s partially at fault for that. “Tell me, honestly. Do you see a fifty-year-old me getting a bank loan for machinery?”
She twitches one shoulder. “Depends what down payment you have.”
“Fucking nothing.” I double-check the lid is on tight before I shake the ever-loving fuck out of my drink.
“What are you going to do about it?” She lifts one eyebrow. It’s all she has to do.
I stare at her over the plastic cup while I chug half the contents.
“You’re doing what you always do, Zeus, and throwing yourself a pity party.” Only she would get away with saying that to me. “But what are you doing to change the circumstance?”
