Looking down at my baby as she sleeps, I curse myself. What if I hadn’t caught him watching her? Would he have stepped into the room? Would he…? I stop. I run for the bathroom and hurl my guts into the toilet. I did catch him and I’m getting her away from him.
After cleaning myself up, I wake Harper and together, we haul our cases and bags out to my car. I waste no time putting miles between us and the house.
“Where are we going, Mom?”
She doesn’t question why we’re running in the middle of the night. Like me, this isn’t her first rodeo.
“I don’t know, baby.”
“Did he hit you? Is that why we’re leaving?”
“No.”
“That’s why we left Patrick in the middle of the night. He hurt you.”
Thank God she’s in the back seat. She doesn’t see my face twist with guilt. When I gave birth to her, I vowed to give her a life with no monsters, A.K.A, no shitty men.
Nausea hits me again at the thought of what could have happened. I’ve put her in harm’s way just being her mother, but I’ve always been the brunt of assholes bad moods. She’s seen far too much in her seven years, but never physically. This would’ve stolen every ounce of her innocence and nothing I or anyone else could do would bring it back.
I pull the car over before I’m blinded through the tears and let them all out. I sob because I’m scared. I sob because I’m in another shitty situation. But most of all, I sob for the little girl now leaning over the driver’s seat to wrap her arms around me. Trying to soothe me, comfort me.
“It’ll be okay, Mom. We can call Uncle Slade, he’ll help us.”
I smile through the pain of truly realising I’m the worst mother in the world.
My brother is the one man on earth who she never has to worry about hurting her. He’s Superman to her. Whenever we’re in hot shit, she never fails to think of Slade as the solution each and every time.
“Not this time, sweetheart.” I squeeze her hand as she climbs over and makes herself comfortable in the passenger seat.
“But he’ll save us. No one will find us if we’re with him.”
If I show up in the middle of the night seeking refuge, he’s going to demand a reason why. If I tell him the truth, he will kill me. I’ve taken advantage of him too many times to count but this… where Harper was the one at risk, I can’t take the chance he won’t take her and keep her from me.
The one thing I’ve always given my brother is the truth, even when I’ve fucked up.
“I wonder where we’re gonna live this time. Can we get a house with a pool? That’d be so cool.”
The excitement of moving on isn’t the way she should be living. Maybe I should ask Slade to take her. He would without hesitation. She’d have her cousin Zachery, and Kristen, though an ice queen most of the time, is a great mother.
She would be safe with them, be able to go to the same school till graduation.
My silence has her staring at me. “I love you, Momma.”
Her love, deserved or not, has me changing my mind. I will be a better mom. We don’t need a guy to make our lives better.
Scrubbing my face, I banish the tears and start the engine. “How about a little middle of the night ice-cream?”
“Yay!”
I drive for over an hour out of town before we come to a diner. Tucking ourselves into the corner booth, Harper orders the largest Sundae, and I drown myself in coffee until the sun begins to rise.
“What about my daddy? Can we go and live with him this time?”
Cas.
I shut down any thoughts concerning him and shake my head. “No, baby. I’ve told you before, I don’t know who your daddy is or where he is. It’s just me and you.”
“And Randy, or Patrick, or John, or Bill…”
