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“Let me know if anything changes. Well.” Max yanked out his AirPods, stuffing his phone into his back pocket. “I’m heading out. Tucker will be here any minute to take over, so don’t worry. You good?”
No. I was the opposite of good. I didn’t want to see Tucker. I especially didn’t want to spend one-on-one time with him. But it wasn’t like I had a choice.
I gave Max a thumbs-up. “Sure.”
“You can go when he arrives. Place is empty anyway.”
“Roger that. Enjoy the rest of your day.”
“You too.”
After Max left, I decided to keep busy and clean some sticky tables and the underside of the bar to pass the time. I switched from Instagram reels to Grey’s Anatomy for background noise. A part of me wanted to google premed programs in New York, but I stopped myself in time. I’d be better off sticking to this job for afew more weeks—months, if needed—before finding something suitable.
Finally, Tucker breezed into the empty bar. He wore a pair of jeans and a button-down black shirt. He was holding a donut box in his hand, a welcoming smile curving his mouth.
I slid an uncertain glance at him. “Um, hi.”
“Hey there, Dyl! What’s up?” He slid the donut box between us on the bar and flipped it open, gesturing toward a row of orange-glazed donuts.
I mentally checked the calendar. Nope. Fall was nowhere near us. The smell was overwhelming. Like I got lost in a pre-Thanksgiving Bed Bath & Beyond.
“What’s this?” I peered into the box.
“Pumpkin spice donuts. I remember they’re your favorite.” He waggled his brows.
“You’re remembering incorrectly.” I folded my arms over my chest. Why was he being so nauseatingly nice?
His beam collapsed. “But when you were pregnant, you said—”
“When I was pregnant, I used to dip pickles in peanut butter. Pregnancy cravings have nothing to do with normal taste.”
His shoulders slumped, his entire posture collapsing into a hunch. His face looked better, almost healed. Then his disappointment quickly morphed into fury, as it did when we were together. “What’s your problem?” He puffed out his chest, rounding the bar predatorily, and I nearly cowered back from the force of his sudden anger.
Tucker used to either agree to do what I wanted to make me shut up or lose it completely, slamming doors and yelling. In my warped universe, door slamming and shouting weren’t that big of a deal back then. I came from a household where my father would literally hit my brother and my mother for not answering his calls fast enough. But looking back, I couldn’t imaginetolerating that sort of treatment with Gravity in the house. She didn’t deserve to grow up thinking this was the standard. Didn’t deserve an oopsie blue bracelet of pain around her wrist.
I grabbed a bottle opener from the counter and aimed it his way. “Take a step back before I disembowel you without anesthesia,” I instructed with fake calm.
Tucker stopped a few feet from me, parking one hand on his waist and using the other to massage his temples. “Shit. You’re right. I’m just…take the donuts, okay? I had to go all the way across town to get them. They don’t make this flavor at Krispy Kreme.”
“I don’t care.” I angled the bottle opener toward his face, ready to put a hole in it. “I don’t want your donuts.”
“I’m trying to make an effort here,” he said through gritted teeth, his flat mouth barely moving.
“Mission failed,” I announced.
“See, this is why I left you. You always have an annoying comeback that spoils the mood.”
Ignoring the way his words sliced through the muscle tissue of my heart, I retrieved a washcloth from the fridge handle, making a show of wiping the bottle opener clean. “I’m not here to become your friend. I’m here to earn money so I can provide for our daughter.”
“Yeah. Okay. Let’s talk about her.” He pasted on an easy smile, and I got whiplash from the drastic change in his behavior every ticking minute. I used to tell myself Tucker being good in bed was proof he wasn’t completely selfish. I now knew I was wrong. Bringing me to orgasm over and over was a way to stroke his own ego, to prove to himself that he could. My body was his toy. A means to an end. It was never about me.
“Yes?” I put the bottle opener down and immediately grabbed the paring knife, wiping it methodically.
“Am I going to have to get lawyers involved, or are you going to do the right thing here and let me see her?”
I examined the knife I was holding, reluctantly putting it back on the cutting board. “We’ll need to make it gradual,” I heard myself say. “I don’t want to spring you on her out of nowhere. First, we’ll do short visits. We’ll introduce you as a friend of the family. Then, if everything goes well, we can tell her.”
“Who’s ‘we’? You and that asshole?”