Page 14 of The Impact (Parachutes #3)

“She says she can’t stay in that house. I’ll keep it so the kids don’t suffer too much change, but…” Vin gulped. “She’s moving out,” he repeated. He had no one else to confide in. Tahli had become his confidante. Even Munch was gone.

“Wow. See, that’s all I meant, though. That girl don’t even wanna keep the damn house you bought her. Tahli is I-N-D-E-P-E-N-D-E-N-T!” Lola sang like the song. “I bet she was the type to fight you on paying all the bills, too.”

“Tahli hasn’t paid a bill since she was 20 years old,” Vin divulged.

“She ain’t never fight me on that shit.” Vin didn’t mind it.

Tahli worked because she enjoyed it. Her money went to leisure activities—spoiling the kids and occasionally him, and shit that Vin didn’t think about, like extra life insurance policies and redecorating their properties.

Not to mention the shit she never wanted him to know the cost of, like her lavish Christmas parties.

“I don’t know what to do. What do I do?” Hands tented under his chin, he looked desolately to Lola. “I don’t have any cards left to play.” He used to put 30K on a Blackjack table and flip it. Always had another card to play. Lola cleared her throat before replying.

“I remember one of the first times I tried to get clean, I went to the rehab, and they asked me what I was doing it for? Dumb ass question. I said I’m doing it to get him back.”

“Who? Milo?” Vin’s brows wrinkled, juggling his own dilemmas while paying her attention.

“ You, fool!” Lola surprised him. “I said I want my boy to forgive me. My son . I want him back. They said to me…well, what if he don’t wanna come back? What if you never get him back? What if you ran out of chances? Then, what? Then who you doing it for?”

Vin processed her words.

“I said then it’s all for nothing,” Lola finished.

“And then what?” Vin had to know.

“Then he gave me $10 and told me find somewhere safe to get high. Said I wasn’t ready.

Point is,” Lola theorized, always smarter than she appeared.

“What if you ran out of chances? You’re divorced, Dalvin.

The big D. I think this is where you and Tahli’s story ends.

Now you gotta move on and live for them babies. ”

He let that soak in. Had he, on another off chance, taken a risk that he couldn’t outwit the circumstances? The first time was that prison sentence—forking up years for just one murder, when there were others.

“How you like your shrimp, kid?” He changed the subject, remembering he now had a little one with him permanently. No woman in his life to take the load off.

“It’s good,” DJ muttered.

“You can eat, boy! You done ate all the shrimps in the ocean,” Lola grinned teeth she wouldn’t sit still long enough to fix at DJ, trying her best grandma impression. And Vin spotted something he hadn’t three months ago, the last time he’d seen her.

“What happened to your tooth?”

“Came out.”

“And you just gonna leave it like that? I’ll make you an appointment at the dentist,” he demanded.

“I don’t need that. I need something else.”

“What?”

“Eighteen thousand dollars.”

Laughter shot through his nose. Much-needed laughter. Vin rumbled with laughter, tempted to pick his phone back up and text Tahli. They would’ve gotten a real good laugh out of that together.

Rubbing his lips, Vin looked at her.

“Okay, Lola. I’ll play. Eighteen thousand dollars for what?”

“See. Not for what you thinking.”

“Then what?”

“Clearstone. It’s a real good place. I’ll do real good there.”

“A rehab?”

“Yeah. But it got like horses and shit.”

“You ride horses?”

“The horses help with the urge, dipshit.”

“So, instead of shooting up, you jump in the saddle?”

“Something like that. It’s six months and they got classes. Good food. They help you get a job.”

“This is all familiar.”

“It’s better than that place. And it’s different this time.”

Vin watched DJ shift in his seat. He’d eaten more than half his plate but hadn’t touched his soda. That expensive-ass therapist had to do something about this.

“Aye, D? You gotta go to the bathroom?” DJ’s delay in response accompanied unsure eyes. “Come on.” Vin motioned with his head. “I gotta go, too,” he lied. Vin wiped his hands with the napkin, although he’d barely eaten, then excused himself and DJ from Lola.

“You like this place?”

“It’s okay,” DJ muttered his signature words. Everything had been okay the past two months DJ had been with Vin—his room, his school, his football team, the new Jordans, the E-dirt bike, and everything else Vin had purchased to try to make up for Sophie’s death...and his own guilt.

For the average niggas he knew, Vin had been a good father to DJ.

Probably had seen the boy more than a man who wasn’t hiding his child from his wife.

But that did nothing for Vin’s pride. Being an average father was never his barometer.

He wanted to be the kind of father his kids would be proud of; the kind of man his daughters would want to marry, and his sons would want to become.

As they passed the registers near the kitchen, Vin’s waitress stepped out. Two girls, one white and one also black, suppressed smirks.

“Excuse me?” She asked with the false confidence of a young girl. “Um…I’m sorry about earlier.” Judging by the way the other girls looked at her, Vin would bet they had tested her bravery on approaching him.

“It’s cool.”

“How long has your wife been dead?” Her eyes shot to his wedding ring and Vin’s dropped to DJ, who was watching the exchange. Case in point: young girls didn’t have tact to not approach someone with a child, let alone not to ask such outrageous questions.

“My bad if that’s rude. You cute, though.”

“Period,” the white one added. That was how Dali talked.

Before Vin walked off, he tossed his chin at her.

“How old are you?”

Hopeful chocolate eyes finally met his. “I’ll be 21 in May.

” Young girls always gave the next birthday.

That was it. She was the same age he’d met Tahli at.

Vin, at 24, had been caught off guard by the confidence of 20-year-old Tahli, because it was rare.

But Vin now would eat 20-year-old Tahli alive.

She’d never be able to fuck with him. He’d know exactly what to say and do to mold her into what he wanted, how he wanted. And where was the challenge in that?

Life experiences put them on two different playing fields. Vin couldn’t imagine holding a romantic conversation with someone who spoke and thought like his teenaged daughter.

“I’m 40.”

“That’s okay,” she purred. “You don’t look it.”

“Listen. Any man my age interested in you…run, love. Because he’s lacking,” Vin tapped his temple, watching disappointment pout her lips. “I got daughters,” was his parting words with a hand to DJ’s back, guiding him away.

“Was she trying to date you?”

“Not really,” Vin snickered.

“Oh.” He watched DJ play with his fingers as he held the bathroom door open. “I, uh…I had a girlfriend.”

“Oh yeah? What’s her name?”

“Victoria. She was white.”

Vin snorted.

“It’s only white girls at that school,” DJ said, referring to the private education Vin had funded when DJ lived with Sophie. “A lot of white ones at this one, too.”

“Yeah, but…it’s a little more variety now, right?”

DJ shrugged, heading for a stall.

“Bro. Mad Indians.”

Vin chuckled. When DJ bypassed the urinals, Vin didn’t question it. His son headed for a stall as someone came from the one next to it.

“I think the one he just went in is broken,” an Asian man warned.

“D–”

“No!” The stall door Vin went to open was pushed back against him.

Vin tufted air from his nostrils, rattling with rage.

His son’s trauma responses. DJ was terrified to use public restrooms alone.

Hardly wanted to use them at home. He didn’t want Vin to see him in his underwear or towel out of the shower.

It made Vin feel like the extent of Victor’s torture hadn’t been enough.

If he could murder Victor all over again, Vin would pay top dollar to.

“Okay, um…that stall is broken, baby boy. Try another one,” he went with instead. Adjusting. It would take more adjusting. To all of it.

Vin survived off memories.

Sometimes, he’d drift off on one and by the time he returned, an hour had passed.

Letting time idle like that was counterproductive for a man maintaining success.

Even without a wife, he still had a family that depended on him.

Four children banking on the future he was forming for them. He had to keep moving.

But it was damn near impossible. Harder than anything he’d ever had to accomplish. Tahli Hayes had been his parachute for the past 15 years, and now, the strings were cut. And Vin was plummeting with nothing to grasp onto.

Fresh out of a meeting, he put his Mercedes AMG EQS in motion.

Rolled the windows down halfway and threw on Nas’ latest. Minutes later, he was chewing his thumb skin, scenarios flipping through his mind, ranging from logical to extreme.

More pleading, more stalking, another Dave Hollister moment?

More squatting outside of her job or the Starbucks she would stop in near Terran’s school.

More unannounced pop-ups. More arguments.

More of her slaps, her screams, her tears.

None of it had worked. He had underestimated Tahli’s shit-taking barometer.

Now, he lived in the abyss. The void of her presence…

agonizing. He lost eight pounds in three weeks.

Appetite was nonexistent. His sins haunted his dreams, so sleep came in doses.

Vin missed tucking in his children so much, he cried.

The silence was so deafening, it played tricks on him.

So, what could he do? Kill something. But what?

Not her. He’d die. Himself? Nah. Weak nigga shit. He had kids to survive for.

Swiping a hand over his face, his stomach burned with dread of another grueling night. Then, his phone blared through the car.