Page 39 of Tripped By Love

He pointed to the sky, and I smiled, pumping my legs to take us a little higher but not trusting our awkward pose on the single swing to take him as high as I used to go as a kid. Swinging didn’t require much balance. If you held onto the chains and swung your feet, you could float gracefully into the air without worrying about tripping or falling.

As it neared dinnertime, I rounded us up and headed back to the house.

I didn’t see him until it was too late. Until I’d already parked the stroller at the base of the steps and taken Chevelle out. I had him on my hip, and as I neared the door, Clayton rose from the Adirondack chair tucked off to the side.

“Cassidy,” he greeted, and his eyes took in every single part of Chevelle, as if weighing and judging him to see where he was falling short, all at the age of two. I reflexively turned so that it moved Chevelle farther away from him.

My heart banged inside my chest with fear and fury both driving me. I’d always heard the term “mama bear” when it came to mothers who tried to keep their kids safe, and I’d never really understood it until this moment. I hadn’t had to. There’d never been anyone in our lives whom I’d had to shield Chevelle from.

“You’re not welcome here, Clayton.”

“He’s got my coloring,” he said.

He did. The dark brown of Chevelle’s hair and the warmer skin tone was more Hardy than O’Neil, but that was the only thing I saw of his father in him. His eyes were mine. The wide, square jaw was my dad’s Basque heritage. The almost dimple in his cheek when he smiled was all Brady.

I didn’t respond. I was afraid I’d either cry or scream if I did.

“Can I hold him?” he asked.

“No.”

“He’s my son!” His tone grew fiercer.

I didn’t want to have this conversation in front of Chevelle. True, he wouldn’t have understood the majority of it, but I didn’t want him to sense the emotions that raged through me. I brushed past Clayton, and my foot hit the edge of the welcome mat wrong, tipping me and Chevelle both sideways. I would have caught myself on the side of the house, but Clayton’s hands steadied me.

“Jesus,” he said. “You could have injured yourself and him.”

My stomach twisted. It was the last thing I needed: him seeing my weakness. I brushed at his hands. “Get your hands off of me.”

He withdrew them but not as fast as I’d have liked. I unlocked the door and set Chevelle down. “Go take your shoes off, Snickerdoodle. Mama will be right there.”

I shut the screen but left the door open so I’d hear him and then turned back to Clayton. “I don’t want to see you on my property again.”

“You’re not going to even let me try to make this up to you? To my boy? What’s his name?”

“Do you remember the check you gave me?”

He blanched, and I could see he remembered it as clearly as I did.

“If I’d used that check you’d made out to Planned Parenthood, would you be here right now? Would you be trying to ‘make it up to me’?” I used every ounce of sarcasm as I could on the words.

“But you didn’t use it.”

“Pretend I did. Pretend I did exactly what you wanted me to do. You gave me that check and made it out to them because you wanted to make sure it was clear to me?and the world?that you weren’t paying to support a baby. Isn’t that what you said? You didn’t want me to come back at you for more of your hard-earned dollars if I wasstupidenough to keep the child.”

He had the grace to grimace as I threw his words back at him. Harsh, cold, and calculating.

“We all make mistakes, Cassidy. I can do better. For you both.”

“Except, I don’t need you, Clayton. I can support Chevelle all on my own.”

“Scraping by? I heard about the restaurant. The food industry is a drain on mom-and-pop places like that. You can’t possibly be making money.”

I laughed, thinking about the check I’d just deposited, but I didn’t go there with him. It wasn’t his business.

“Get off my property, and never come back.”

“I don’t want to have to go to court just to see my son, but I will if I have to,” he said, eyes flashing because I continued to defy him. My heart sagged with a grief I couldn’t explain at the thought of him getting some sort of custody over Chevelle. I thought I had a strong case. I’d kept the check he’d made out to Planned Parenthood. I’d kept the text he’d sent, asking me not to contact him again. But I also knew the courts were trying to show they could be as favorable to fathers as mothers these days.