I kept playing with my boy, and in doing so, I was suddenly unconcerned I was standing on I-25 with a biker from a biker gang changing my tire, and that soon I’d be handing my baby off to my ex and Tory, so I wouldn’t have him for a whole week.

Right then, it was just Travis and me.

It had been just him and me for a year and a half, part of that time he was in my belly, the rest he was my entire world.

I’d wanted a family. After Althea died, I’d started wanting that and made it with my dolls, then my Barbies, then in my dreams.

That’s all I wanted. All I’d ever wanted.

A husband. A home. And lots of babies.

I didn’t care what it said about me that I didn’t want a career. That I didn’t dream of cruises or tiaras or being important, carrying a briefcase, getting up and going to a high powered job.

I wanted to do laundry.

I wanted to make cookies.

I wanted to have dinner ready for my husband and children when they got home.

I wanted to be a soccer mom (though, I didn’t want a minivan, I wanted something like Aaron’s Lexus SUV).

That’s all I wanted.

I wanted to be a good wife and a great mother.

And again, I did not care even a little bit what people thought that said about me.

My mom worked. She’d worked even before Althea died. She’d worked after too.

I didn’t mind that then. It made her happy.

But now, I wanted those moments back, the ones when she was at work. Those times she was away when I got home after school.

I wanted them back.

I wanted my dad to have them back.

And that was what I was going to give my husband. I was going to give my children the same.

That’s all I wanted, to give my family that.

All I’d ever dreamed.

That dream had to change. Aaron killed it so I had to revise it.

So now it was just Travis and me, every other week.

That was my new dream and if I tried real hard, I could convince myself I was living it.

Even though I wasn’t.

Not even close.

But I’d make do.

“Done.”

My head jerked up and I saw Joker standing in the turf a few feet away.

“Looked at your tire, hoped it was a nail,” he informed me. “It wasn’t. It blew. Your tread is low on all of them. They all need to be replaced.”

My bubble of joy with me and my baby burst as life pressed into it, the pressure, as always, way too much for that bubble of goodness to bear.

I couldn’t afford four new tires.