One thing I swore was that my children would never have to walk around on eggshells because I had an attitude. They would never live in a hostile environment due to me and their dad arguing. Obviously, children were not stupid, and they could sense a lot, but right now, I was going to smile until my fucking cheeks hurt, and they would never know any different.
As I walked into the room, I saw Shark was lying on the floor, and Axel was running a toy motorbike over his body, laughing hysterically when he got to Shark’s face and “crashed” into his nose. Shark made an exaggerated noise of pain and Axel rammed the motorbike against his nose even harder, causing Shark to flinch for real this time.
“Having fun?” I murmured with a small laugh. Shark was a good man, and I was glad Axel was getting the opportunity to get to know him. It would be lovely to see him and Trex grow up together.
“I can’t wait for this with Trex,” Shark grinned and handed Axel another toy, this time a train.
Bee was sitting on the sofa, watching the scene in front of her. I sat down on the opposite end and got her attention. “Don’t you want to play as well?” I signed and asked, handing her the LCD writing board.
She shook her head and scooted further away from me. I wasn’t going to push her, but I also didn’t want her to think I was abandoning her—again—so I stayed sitting with her and watched her brother playing with careless abandon.
It broke my heart to remember that Bee had once been this way. She seemed so much more grown up now, even though she was only seven. She had always been advanced for her age, but there was a look in her eyes that said she had lived a hundred lives already, and the poor girl was tired.
I left not long before her sixth birthday, and I had been so excited about the plans we had. I could barely think about the fact that she had spent her sixth and seventh birthday in silence.
Although Axel had spent his birthday being kidnapped, so his wasn’t much better.
Fucking hell, we need to do better by these kids!
“Hey, Bee,” Dante called from the doorway as he walked in, having finally shed his leather jacket. He sat down in the chair opposite the boys on the floor, wearing just his white T-shirt. I had to grit my teeth and force my eyes to look anywhere else.
How was it possible that he had become even more muscular in the past eighteen months? He had always been a big man, but now he was fuckingripped.
“Oh, here, I got this for you,” he said, reaching into his back pocket and retrieved my phone. I had forgotten the damned thing existed. Things moved so fast around here that it was easy to let weeks pass without picking it up.
“Where did you get that?” I asked, catching it as he threw it at me.
“Your car.”
“Why were you in my car?” I switched it on, already cringing at the thought of some of the messages that would be on here.
“Sunshine got it. Tools wanted to take a look at the ‘goddamn cage messing up the lot’—his words, not mine,” he grinned at me.
“Why?”
“Is it so hard to believe that someone cares about the safety of your car? Just say thank you for the phone and be quiet.”
“Tell Sunshine I said, ‘thank you’.”
“I wasn’t on about thanking Sunshine.”
“And yet I said what I said,” I murmured back as I scrolled the endless messages that were coming through.
Karen: Rachel, where are you??
Karen: My dad said you ran away!! Are you okay? When are you coming back?
Karen: Rachel I’m really panicking.
Karen: I’m going to ring the police if I don’t hear from you soon.
Karen: Is Axel okay?
Karen: If you can’t talk, ring the other phone. It will never be turned off.
Karen: We’ll always be here when you’re ready. Even if you can’t talk, please just let me know you’re okay. Just one text.
Karen. Please.
