I dig into the bag, taking out the fries and popping one into my mouth. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. It was just a weird day.” She pours us both a drink and hands me mine before digging into her food.

“Well, you know that I’m here if you ever want to. Which! By the way… I need to tell you something.”

“Mmmhmm…” I smirk up at her, my cheeks burning. “I figured as much.”

“I’m leaving him.” She sucks down her drink before pouring another. Betty goes through this once a month. Her husband is a piece of shit, sure, and I will always be here for her when she does decide to leave him, but from last I checked—and that was when I threatened his balls—he wasn’t going to cheat again. Why anyone would cheat on Betty is beyond me. She is beautiful, charismatic, and has a way of making people feel better than how they were before her.

“Okay. Well, you can take the rooms here.”

She smiles, biting into her burger. “I love you. I don’t want to involve the parents yet.”

“I love you.” I chew on my cheeseburger. “There’s a new bar open in town. Shall we check it out this weekend?”

Betty’s eyes widen, her smile stretching on her face. “Like you have to ask! What’s it called?”

“L’artisaniant.”

We both finish up our burgers and I tidy up the room before slugging my ass upstairs. Cracking open the door to Wolf’s room, I smile when my heart warms in my chest at his little body wrapped in blankets. Closing the door, I quickly head down to my bedroom, scrub through a shower, and toss my clothes into the dirty hamper, before slipping into some PJ’s. Putting my phone on charge, I head back out of my room and back into Wolf’s, turning his projector light down that has dinosaurs and cars patterning the ceiling. Pulling back the covers, I slide in behind him and pull his little body into my chest.

“I love you.”

Chapter Fifteen

There were two kinds of people in the world. I learned this very early on in my life and I think the more that I really thought about it, the more obvious it became. There were people like my papa, and people like Mama. Somehow, I got stuck between two of them.

Mama always wanted to do what was right. Her moral compass never faltered. But Papa? Well, Papa had none. He did what he needed to do at all times, regardless of what that looked like to other people. He did what he needed to protect the family, and not just ours, but our extended and others in different outfits too. I wanted to be just like him. I knew that, he knew that—my mother unfortunately knew that.