Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Only then did Angelica look to Riggs. “This the bitch you put on Ledger’s pick-up list?”
At that, it was Riggs who stiffened.
“Mom!” Ledger yelled.
“Maybe you should go inside,” Angelica ordered her son through a suggestion.
“No!” Ledger shouted, and Riggs’s eyes sliced to him. “Not if you’re gonna—”
“Son, what did your mother say?” he asked quietly.
Ledger looked up to him. “But…Dad!”
“We have a deal, right? You mind your mom and me. Yeah? Even if you don’t agree, later, we’ll talk it out. But when it happens, what happens?”
“I mind,” he said to his sneakers.
“Please, kid. Go inside. We’ll talk later,” Riggs finished it.
Pink hit Ledger’s cheeks, he glanced at Nadia, glowered at his mom, and after kicking the dirt, he bolted toward the house.
“I see how it is. Like father like son, both hankering after the hot neighbor,” Angelica sneered.
“Gross!” Lucille snapped. “He’s just a boy.”
“A growing boy,” Angelica shot back. “They learn what girls are, you know. Seein’ as you’re fuckin’ the biggest boy in all of MP, you should know.”
Lucille reared back.
“Angelica,” Riggs growled.
“I think I’m going to go in the house too,” Nadia said softly.
Angelica’s eyes cut to her, but Lucille had spoken over her, saying, “You know what’s good for you, you watch your mouth, Angelica.”
“Please,” Angelica drawled to Lucille. Then she aimed her next at Riggs. “You think to give me a heads-up you add someone to my son’s pick-up list?”
“No, since he’s my son too, and Ledger knows her, Mom knows her, she’s a teacher for fuck’s sake, and I trust her, so that should be good enough for you,” Riggs replied.
“Newsflash”—Angelica threw her arms out—“it isn’t. You can’t put all your fuck buddies on our son’s pick-up list, Doc. They don’t have enough paper in that whole school to keep that shit on file.”
Lucille gasped.
Nadia took another step away from him.
And he felt that.
Deeply.
And what he felt was not all about the fact that he’d never, not once, put anyone on Ledger’s list except his mother and sister.
That was only part of it.
The rest was about Nadia moving away from him.
So that did it.
He didn’t need to give any headspace to his situation with Nadia.
He knew.
But as for the matter at hand…
“I think Lucille is right and you need to watch your mouth, Angelica,” he gritted. “You also need to calm down. We can discuss this when you’re in a different mood.”
“You got it good, Doc,” Angelica shot back. “I don’t complain because I gotta take care of our kid most of the time because you’re not around. Or keep him when you throw one of your rowdy parties. And I give him back to you whenever you’re ready to remember you’re a dad.”
Riggs held completely still.
But she wasn’t done.
“I could take this to a judge, and he can give him to me full and you can have your coupla hours every Sunday and no say in who’s on the pick-up list, you push me,” she threatened.
Riggs felt the buzzing in his head again.
But what would come next wouldn’t make his head explode.
It would rock his world.
Because Lucille was done too. “Yeah, then I can get sworn in and tell the judge how you fixed it with Bubbles to get hold of Doc’s wallet so he could punch holes in Doc’s rubbers the night you conned him in your bed. See how a judge feels about that, hunh?” Lucille sniped. “Same with Stormy. Bet Stormy would love to know all about that. He was all the way down for you to have his kid and take his money. Or wait, no. Seems my memory is faulty.”
Riggs didn’t have it in him to search for Angelica’s tell.
Though, he already knew it.
But seeing as the color drained from her face, he didn’t need to search for dick.
Angelica tried for the save.
“That’s a flat-out lie,” she said to Lucille, but her voice was trembling.
And there was one of her tells.
Lucille opened her mouth, but suddenly, Nadia was standing between him and them.
“Both of you need to go,” she demanded. “Now.”
Lucille seemed to cotton on to what she said in the heat of the moment, and her gaze swung to Riggs. “He was in a bind. She paid him.”
“Shut up, you dumb bitch!” Angelica shouted.
“You shut up, you greedy cunt!” Lucille shouted back.
“Both of you, be quiet,” Nadia said, not in a schoolteacher voice, in a voice he didn’t know she had in her.
A voice that made both the women turn and stare at her.
And if he had his shit together, he’d see they were scared shitless of her.
“There’s a child in the house, and it’s like you don’t know he’s a person with feelings, but Riggs is standing right here. You’ve done your damage. Go…now.”
Lucille started to leave with a haggard, apologetic look aimed at Riggs.
But Angelica stood her ground and turned her attention right to him. “We need to talk.”