Promise Me: Some friendships are made to be broken (Beggar's Choice #1)

by Lily Morton

  As if on cue I hear a door open and close down the hall, footsteps pattering down the corridor and then our door opens and I hear a little voice. “Daddy are you there?” Well I say little voice but my firstborn doesn’t really do anything quietly and it’s actually more of a half shout.

  Mabes stirs next to me. “Maizy?” she says groggily, and I remove my arm from around her, caressing her shoulder as I go.

  “Ssh baby, go back to sleep. I’ve got this.”

  “Okay,” she mutters, and she’s out like a light again. This is typical. During her last pregnancy she was very, very horny but it was more of a hit it and quit it sex drive. She gets me off, does the same for herself and then it’s goodnight all, bless her.

  Rolling out of bed I pull on some athletic shorts and go to my baby girl. “What’s up sweetie?” I ask, lifting her up into my arms and smelling the sweet coconut smell of her shampoo. “Why are you awake?”

  “Cora woke me up.”

  “Really?” I say dubiously because Cora, although Maizy’s twin, is as different to her as night from day. Both of my girls are kind and funny as fuck but Cora is a lot quieter than Maizy which isn’t difficult. More to the point she has the ability to go out like a light when she’s put to bed. She’s so much like Mabe as a kid it sometimes makes me catch my breath. “Cora woke you up how exactly?” I ask as she climbs me like a tiny monkey until she’s wrapped around me looking deep into my eyes, something she’s done since she was very little.

  “She’s dreaming about making sandcastles.”

  “Really, and how did that wake you up?”

  “It made me want to make them too. Can we go now daddy please?”

  “Not right this moment baby,” I say wryly. “It’s bedtime. Sandcastle making time is tomorrow.” I’m really only saying this because Mabe will go apeshit if I let Maizy cute her way into doing stuff. She’s very strict about the girls not being spoilt. Me, I’m a pathetic twat that lives to see my three girls happy.

  I make my way into her and Cora’s room. “Tomorrow morning as soon as you’re up you can come and get me and we’ll go and make sandcastles together.”

  “What, before breakfast?” she says in a slightly scandalized tone which is so like her mother.

  “You betcha,” I say, secure in the knowledge that tomorrow I am going to be the king of the cool parents and in shit with my wife who has stressed the importance of starting the day with a good breakfast since she was six.

  “Hooray!” she says quite loudly and then hushes when Cora stirs. I bend down and put her wiry little body back into bed and pull the covers over her.

  “Will you sing to me daddy?” she whispers, cuddling down. “It makes me go to sleep.” I reflect wryly that she and Cora are possibly the only two girls around me that would say that, but I stretch out beside her stroking her hair and hum the first few bars of ‘Don’t Cry’ by Guns N’ Roses. It’s worked on both of them since they were born and although Mabe thinks it’s funny, it works so who fucking cares. Before the end of the song she stirs slightly. “Love you daddy,” she mutters sleepily.

  “Love you back baby girl, always,” I reply, and I continue humming until her breaths deepen and my girl is out again.

  I stay there for a second just looking at my babies in the glow of the night light. They’re totally gorgeous which isn’t surprising if you see Mabe, but we’ve been very insistent that they’re not little princesses. They’re always out in the garden or playing and quite frequently they’re so grubby that Sid says we ought to hire them out to the manufacturers of wash powder just to really test the fuckers. They’ve got my hair colour and eyes but apart from that they’re the spit of Mabe. Sometimes I look at them and I’m jettisoned straight back to the luckiest day of my life when I climbed that fence and found her sitting there with scraped knees and tearstains but still all attitude. I’d known all along she was someone, I just didn’t realize for a while that she was the one.

  We’d waited a couple of years before having them because I wanted to enjoy Mabe before I had to share her so we travelled all over the world together. She’d never really travelled that much and there were so many places she wanted to see that I bought a jeep and we travelled from one to another, staying in nice hotels of course - there’s no fucking way I was ever stopping in a bed and breakfast despite Mabe suggesting it. The rest of the time though we were travelling along like a normal couple and it was an absolutely brilliant time. Our manager nearly had a seizure at the thought of me being out of commission for that length of time, but I told him that Mabe came before anyone else just like Sid does and he’d better get used to it.

  Then she got pregnant and all the old worries surfaced again that I’d be like my old man, that I could hurt the baby or fuck it up badly. Mabe got me through that as she’s done every other problem I’ve ever faced, and she convinced me that my love would stretch and I would love this baby like nothing else. She was right as normal, although the fact that there were two of them came as a bit of a surprise. Apparently, Mabe’s grandmother was a twin which we didn’t know, mainly because her mum had always been too stoned to remember her family tree.

  Suddenly I’m aware of being watched and lifting my head I see the love of my life standing there with a smile on her face. She’s matured in the years we’ve been together but she just keeps getting better and better, a fact I can testify to with the amount of times I have to employ my fuck off persona towards men intent on getting too near her. Bless her she seems to tolerate this, and I’ve seen her raise her fair share of hackles at the groupies that stray too close. Now she stands there with a semi-transparent sarong wrapped loosely round her and over her belly. It’s some sort of silver colour and it emphasizes her tan sleek skin, long fucking legs, and great tits. Her hair is soft and long, drifting down her back and her eyes are full of secrets and for a minute I just look at her as a host of memories flash through my mind. I see her walking down the aisle on Sid’s arm, grinning huge in a swirl of cream lace. I see her in my arms on the dance floor at our wedding, swaying and smiling at the song that I picked for her - ‘In My Life’ by The Beatles. I see her naked and face down on our bed muttering that I’ve killed her on our honeymoon. I see her tired and happy, with hair wet from sweat when she gave me our babies. But most of all I see my best friend. A girl who never gave up on me, whose hold on me increases with every big and small thing that we face together. I see my wife and my partner.

  Rising off the bed I go to her like I always will, and when I reach her I wrap my arms around her feeling her warmth pressing against me and working its way through to the cold spots inside me like always. She reaches up and rubs my hair which is much shorter than it was, and then tugs on my scruffy beard and I kiss her shoulder inhaling the scent of her that has always smelt of home to me. “What’s your song?” I whisper, and my breath on her shoulder makes her shiver and giggle. Then she sobers and looks at our girls and then back at me.

  “’Ain’t Nobody’ by Chaka Khan,” she says softly, and I swallow hard thinking of the lyrics and thanking god like I do every day, that I wised up and made this girl mine. “What’s yours?” she whispers.

  “’Lucky Man’ by the Verve,” I say and then smile at her as her eyes glaze over with a sheen of tears.

  “What are you smiling at?” she asks, smiling that gorgeous, wide, gap toothed smile I’ve seen nearly every day of my life.

  “I’m smiling because I am the luckiest man in the whole fucking world,” I say.

  “That you are Charlie Hudson,” she says. “That you are.”

  Split Second Song Playlist

  ‘In Between Days’ - The Cure

  ‘Umbrella’ - Rihanna

  ‘Another Way to Die’ - Alicia Keys and Jack White

  ‘Doctor! Doctor!’ - Thompson Twins

  ‘I Wanna Be Adored’ - The Stone Roses

  ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ - Oasis

  ‘Fuck You’ - Lily Allen

  ‘Breathe’
- IYES

  ‘Heavy In Your Arms’ - Florence + The Machine

  ‘The Fall’ - Rhye

  ‘Secret Garden’ - Bruce Springsteen

  ‘Ashes and Wine’ – A Fine Frenzy

  ‘Wishing (If I Had a Photograph of You)’ - A Flock of Seagulls

  ‘Things Ain’t Like They Used to Be’ – The Black Keys

  ‘Out To Get You’ – James

  ‘Without You’ – Lana Del Rey

  ‘Can’t Stand Losing You’ - The Police

  ‘Take Me to Church’ – Hozier

  ‘Don’t Speak’ - No Doubt

  ‘Different’ – Robbie Williams

  ‘Just Be Good to Me’ - S.O.S. Band

  ‘Lovesong’ – The Cure

  ‘Baby I’m a Want You’ – Bread

  ‘Don’t Cry’ – Guns N’ Roses

  ‘In My Life’ - The Beatles

  ‘Ain’t Nobody’ - Chaka Khan

  ‘Lucky Man’ - The Verve

  About the Author

  Lily is a first time author. She lives in sunny England and is a mum to two lively teenagers and wife to an even livelier husband, all of whom claim that they haven’t spoken to her properly since she got her Kindle. She has spent a lifetime with her head full of daydreams and decided one day to sit down and just start writing. This is the result and she hopes you really like it.

  To the Readers

  Thank you so much for reading the book. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

  If you have time please consider posting a review and spreading the word on Amazon, GoodReads, Barnes & Noble or any other review site.

  I’d love to hear from you so if you want to say hello you can contact me on lilymorton1@outlook.com and I’ll do my best to get back to you. I’m also on Facebook at facebook.com/lilymorton