Ellen started giggling. “He wouldn’t dare.”
My phone buzzed, and I pulled it out of my pocket.
Jessie (1344 hours): Don’t you fucking dare.
I showed it to Ellen, and she had the nerve to bat her eyelashes at me.
I sighed and typed back a quick message, then shoved it back into my pocket.
“You knew that he would do that,” I pointed out. “He told us he’d be watching it.”
“Which, by the way, he was really jealous about,” she said. “They’re playing his favorite team today.”
I didn’t much care for baseball, and I never had. My game was hockey because of the physicality of the sport. Sometimes I could watch football, but only if it was college ball.
It was embarrassing to watch a bunch of millionaires run around the field and cry when they got roughed up too bad. It was an embarrassment to all the men who came before them that we now had so many rules that’d been put in place that took away from the spirit of the game. They couldn’t do this, and they couldn’t do that. Blah, blah, blah.
My thoughts were abruptly cut off when Mina stood.
“I have to use the restroom,” she whispered to Josh, who, I might add, was still on his phone.
Dumb mother fucker.
I didn’t want him talking to her, not at all, but it was still rude as hell to bring someone on a date, or whatever it was, and stay on your phone for the majority of the time.
“Let me tell you something, mother fucker,” I growled, leaning forward. “You may have forced me into doing this, allowing you to have her, but that doesn’t mean that once I figure out how to get her out of this, I won’t beat your ass for every single time you’ve hurt or embarrassed her. Watch it.”
Josh didn’t so much as stop his conversation, but I could tell he’d heard me by the stiffening of his spine.
“Let’s go get something to eat, Elle.” I offered Ellen my arm.
She took it, and I led her out to the aisle where we went to find something to eat, only to come to a halt when I spied Mina in the line for the bathroom, her head down and tears running down her cheeks.
“Will you go talk to her?” I begged.
Ellen didn’t even hesitate. Instead, she walked straight to my woman and struck up a conversation.
By the time they made it into the bathroom, Mina was laughing.
I spotted something on the ground where the two women had been talking, and walked over to it, stooping down to pick it up.
At first, I thought it was a wallet, and then realized quickly that it was a phone wrapped in a leather case.
I flipped it open and pressed the home button on the screen, and nearly had a heart attack when I saw my daughter’s smiling face staring back at me.
A huge kick to the gut ensued, and I swiped the phone open, staring blankly when I saw the passcode.
It was six digits long.
I pursed my lips, and then I typed in Mina’s birthday, followed next by Sienna’s when that didn’t work.
Then I smiled and typed in my birthday, and the phone slid open with a click.
My heart stopped when I saw the lock screen. This time it wasn’t my daughter staring back at me, but me.
Or the old me, anyway.
“Damn,” I muttered.
Then, like any curious man would, I went through her phone for the fifteen minutes it took for the ladies to get out of the bathroom.
And not once did I stop reading the messages that Josh had been sending my woman, and my woman’s clear and unhidden animosity toward the man.
I felt like shit, then.
It was very apparent that Mina wanted nothing to do with the man. The only reason she was even giving him the time of day was due to the fact that he’d blackmailed her into it. She’d tried, multiple times, to get out of it, and he hadn’t taken no for an answer.
The motherfucker would die. A slow, agonizing death. Soon.
Chapter 10
I would marry the fuck out of you.
-Coffee Cup
Mina
By the time I arrived home that night, I was exhausted.
Josh had forced me to go to this game after getting off of work that night, and I knew I’d be tired as hell tomorrow.
Seeing as it was ten to eleven now, I went straight to bed, only stopping briefly to check on Sienna, who was sleeping peacefully in her bed.
Which was a drastic change from how she’d been acting when I’d left.
She had most assuredly not been happy to find out that I was going out on a date. She’d said some mean things to me, and I’d gathered her into a long hug before I’d left her with Baylee and Sebastian for the evening.
I’d arrived home to the two of them talking quietly on the front porch, but I was thankful that they didn’t linger too long, wanting to talk.
They could plainly see that I was exhausted.
I was also not up for any questions.
Thankfully, they’d given me that reprieve. Although I knew that they’d be asking about my date sooner or later.
As I laid down in my bed—mine and my husband’s—and stared blankly at the ceiling, I couldn’t help but compare this date with those I’d had with Tunnel.
Tunnel had always tried to make our dates fun, and we never ever went to places that the other didn’t like. That meant that we never ate sushi, because he hated raw fish. I hate spaghetti, so we never went out to eat Italian.
And, to this day, I’d yet to ever go out to an Italian or a sushi restaurant since Tunnel had passed.
I rolled over onto my side and stared at the empty pillow on Tunnel’s side of the bed, and carefully reached my hand over to rub along the empty spot.
It was often that I went to bed like this alone, and if I concentrated hard enough, I could still pretend that he was still coming home, that he wasn’t off of his shift yet.
***
I closed my eyes and let my mind slip into a sort of dream state. One that was meant to be interrupted.
I wouldn’t go to sleep for real until Tunnel arrived home. When he did, I’d hear the alarm disable, then I’d hear him come in, lock the door, then rearm the security console.
Shortly after that, I’d listen to him as he walked quietly—which was never all that quiet since he was a big guy and his footsteps were heavy—to the cat food bowl which he’d then fill to the brim because our cat hated eating out of a bowl that wasn’t filled to maximum capacity.
That way, Taco, as Tunnel liked to call her, wouldn’t bother us until the morning.
Then I heard him stop in the kitchen, and watched as the light flicked on and then off, seven times.
I smiled.
A lot of people didn’t even realize that Tunnel had this problem.
And honestly, it wasn’t so much a problem any more as much as it was just one of his quirks.
Tunnel told me many times that he had OCD. Yet, if I hadn’t known or wasn’t told by Tunnel himself, I wouldn’t have even realized that he did the odd things that he did.
When he kissed me seven times, I didn’t care. Not like he thought I cared.