Page 9 of Ugly Duckling (Content Advisory #6)

“Not really,” I admitted. “We were both hella busy in high school. Her with all her sports and practices, then eventually Olympic training. And me with all of mine. Then Jett.”

Finding out that you were a father in high school was not for the weak, that was for sure.

Especially as a kid that was as busy as I was.

Fuck, it was hard.

Thank God for my Uncle Parker.

Without him, I would’ve never made it.

“Olympics?” he asked in surprise.

“Yeah, she was good. If there was ever a woman who could go, it was her,” I said.

“She was fantastic. She used to smoke everyone. Went to state all four years of high school for the mile and the mile and a half. All with mediocre coaching. It was only when she got to college and acquired a really good coach, though, that she truly shone. I watched her win sixth in that 1500-meter run while we were fresh off a win at a bar in Seattle. It was the most goddamn exciting thing I’ve ever witnessed. ”

“Is she going to go to the next one?” he asked.

“She says this is her last time, maybe.” He laughed. “Not like we’re getting any younger, though.”

“Ain’t that the truth.” He chuckled. “Milena was talking about how y’all qualified for Boston. Is that something that y’all are going to run?”

I thought about that for a long moment then said, “I might.”

“You should.” His eyes gleamed. “We’ll watch Lottie when you go.”

I chuckled. “That’s over seven months from now. Who knows what kind of shit we’ll have to deal with in that long of a time.”

“Enough time to meet the woman you want to spend the rest of your life with and knock her up.”

I grinned. “Just because you did that with your current wife, doesn’t mean that everyone does.”

“Every last damn member of this club has,” he disagreed. “You’re nothing special.”

“No, but I learned the hard way how to use a condom.” I sighed. “Though, if I had learned before that, I wouldn’t have had one of the best things to ever happen to me. However, now I know better.”

Webber snorted. “You’re no fun.”

“Lottie is already keeping me on my toes,” I pointed out.

“You a handful, Lottie?” he teased, acting like he was about to drop her.

She laughed like a banshee and slapped her sticky fingers onto his throat, holding on for dear life, as if Webber would actually drop her.

“Go take your shower, man. I’ll stay until you’re done,” he offered.

I took him up on his offer.

I’d forgotten how fucking hard it was to shower with a toddler running around.

Lottie was even worse than Jett had been, in and out of damn near everything.

Though, I had found her off switch.

She was in love with The Lorax, and would sit still for a solid one hour and twenty-six minutes if I put it on for her.

That was usually what I did.

I’d put The Lorax on at night right before bed, giving me enough time to shower, feed her, shower her, do some laundry and anything else I needed to get done around the house without a tornado of terror running around behind me undoing it all.

I didn’t rush through my shower.

I basked in the warmth, letting the heat of the water soothe my aching muscles.

I wouldn’t say that run was hard, per se, but it wasn’t easy, either.

In fact, now that I wasn’t running, and the adrenaline was winding down, I was getting more tired by the second.

Though, it would also help to be able to eat.

I’d shared three-quarters of my waffle and half the spaghetti with my bottomless pit of a kid.

I’d never seen a kid eat as much as her.

Jett had been a boy, and twice as big as her, but Lottie could out-eat him twofold.

By the time I got out, I could hear conversation downstairs, letting me know that Sutton was done with her shower.

I got dressed in loose sweats and a t-shirt, stuffed my feet into socks, and headed downstairs.

When I got there it was to see Webber at my kitchen island, cooking.

I groaned. “I sure hope that you’re making enough for me, too.”

“It is your house. It only seems right,” Webber offered. “Did you know that Sutton here is moving to Dallas?”

My brows rose. “You are?”

She flushed. “I’m getting away from the ex. He can have that town. I’m spending the weekend searching for apartments.”

“I told her she should stay here.” Webber raised his brows at me.

This interfering big bastard.

“Oh, no.” Sutton shook her head while blurting, “I’ll find one here.”

“I told her that she would find a shit apartment here if she was looking for something in her price range.”

“What’s your price range?” I asked as I walked up to the counter and snatched a piece of bacon off the plate.

“Fifteen hundred is max. I’d like to keep it around twelve.” She sighed. “I have a job, and I can work as much as I want to, but usually my training schedule doesn’t really allot me the time that I would need to really hold down a nine-to-five.”

“Ask her what she does,” Webber suggested.

“The last time that I checked, you were in college and working at a nail salon.” I offered up what I knew.

“I’m still doing that. Though, it’s a little bit different now,” she admitted.

“Different how?” I wondered.

“Now, I own a mobile nail salon. I work on mostly dead customers.”

I blinked. “What?”

“I know, I know. It’s odd,” she agreed when she saw the look on my face.

“But it’s a good business. I charge like two hundred and fifty dollars a client.

The family usually calls me when they are in need of a service.

I go into the funeral home, or wherever the dead client is, and I get it done.

It happened by accident, really. Then I started poking around on social media, and it went viral.

I have requests coming in from all over the country now. ”

“Wow.” I chewed on the bacon. “So you’re going to move here and have no trouble finding clients?”

“I’ll go visit some of the funeral homes around here and give out my card. Then I’ll just let social media know I’m here, and hopefully that’s all I need to do.”

“You could technically pick up more clients if you need to,” I guessed.

“Since you can make your own hours. But Webber’s right.

You’re not going to find anything more than shit apartments here for that price.

Unfortunately.” I looked over to Webber.

“I have tons of extra rooms, and this seems to be the overflow house when people need places to stay. Have a buddy and his wife, Audric and Creole, who stay here on and off so they can spend time with Lottie. Lottie’s mom, Laney, died in a car accident.

They were her best friends, and Audric raised her for the first two years of her life. ”

I could tell by the look on her face that she wanted more, but that was something I tried not to talk about.

Mostly because it hurt my heart that I’d missed all of those firsts.

It also pissed me way the fuck off that her mother had done that to me.

I sure did know how to pick my baby mamas.

“Long story short,” Webber said, reading the confusion on her face.

“Laney didn’t tell Gunner he was the father.

Gunner didn’t know that he’d even slept with Laney, who was married to Audric at the time.

She and Audric had a sort of open marriage.

They were just best friends who got married for the benefits of Laney’s inheritance.

Laney and Audric shared no love between them.

So Gunner wasn’t committing some unknowing faux pas because he slept with her. ”

“I know the kind of character Gunner has,” Sutton said quietly.

“I learned that in high school when he took responsibility for a child that their own mother wanted nothing to do with. Thank you for the explanation, but I think you misread the question on my face. I was more curious about how this arrangement would work, me staying with him.” She turned in my direction. “Would you even let me pay?”

Her confidence in me was surprisingly freeing.

I liked that she didn’t question my character after having learned all of that.

“Let’s talk logistics.”