“No, it ain’t like that. I’m good with a month in the summer.”
She huffed a soft noise and shook her head. She wished she could reach through the phone and strangle him. A month? He would probably spend five days with his son out of that month. She’d made a huge mistake with her ex, and Ryder was always the one who got hurt by her bad decision. “I just don’t understand why we can’t talk about it now.”
“You got better shit to do than talk about your kid, Beck? You’re the one always actin’ so high and mighty, perfect parent. Are you just having so much fun partying while he’s away, you can’t give up one night to focus on him?”
This time she counted to five so she wouldn’t say a bunch of words to Robbie McFartFace that started with “Fs” and ended with “uck yous.” He’d always been the partier, not her.
“I’m not up here partying. I’m working. You know, for money? That’s the green stuff I need to raise our child, and if you call him ‘your kid’ one more time, I’m going to explode. He’s ours. Ours, ours, ours!” Because her dumb ass hadn’t insisted he wear a condom when he was a whiny twenty-year-old who didn’t like using them. She loved Ryder. Loved him more than air, but damn it all, she wished she’d had him with a man who cared about people other than himself. “I can’t raise him on hopes and dreams, Robbie! And you don’t pay child support. You give me no help, so yeah, when you have him, I have to go lady-balls to the wall working my ass off so we can be okay. So I can afford our apartment, so I can pay our bills, so I can save up for the puppy he’s been begging for the last six months, so I can feed him and take him on vacation someday.” And here came the waterworks because Robbie always did this. He always made her feel completely alone.
“I want to talk about his animal!” Robbie yelled into the phone.
Beck gasped and clamped her hand over her mouth to keep her sobs inside. He’d never wanted to talk about Ryder’s shifter side before. He’d always avoided it like the plague and cut her off anytime she mentioned it.
“You want to know why I’m not with your kid? I left for work because the day I was supposed to take him to a park, he got mad at me and Changed. And what am I supposed to do with him when he’s like that? Huh, Beck? You want me to stick him in a little animal cage and take him around with me? Introduce him to the other little normal kids? Explain to everyone why I’m carrying around a fuckin’ pet to the kiddie park?”
God, she hated how he talked about Ryder’s shifter. “How long was he Changed?”
“All fuckin’ day!”
“Well, did you make him upset?”
Robbie got real quiet, and that was answer enough. He knew better than to lie. He knew she could tell if he did. Poor Ryder. Beck would bet her bones Robbie had been shaming him for the tiny animal in his middle, and Ryder had escaped the rejection the only way he knew how. Twin tears streamed down her face, and for the first time since she’d met Robbie, she admitted to herself that she hated him. But all the hate in the world didn’t change the fact she had to co-parent with this person. No matter her feelings, Ryder needed a relationship with his father.
“Fine. Where do you want to meet?”
Robbie sighed a relieved sound and said, “I don’t know the area. You pick.”
She didn’t really know it either besides what she’d researched. “Okay. There’s a bar the locals like to hang out at. Sammy’s.”
“Boring Beck meeting at a bar?” he asked in a baiting murmur.
“Don’t call me that. I’m not boring. I’m not yours anymore, Robbie. You don’t get to put me down like that.”
“Pissy, pissy. Meet at Sammy’s then. Nine o’clock is good with me. I’ll be staying the night at a bed and breakfast outside of town.”
“I have a big photoshoot scheduled for that day, so keep your cell phone on in case I’m running late.”
“Well, don’t run late!”
Arguing with him was pointless. Everything was on Robbie’s schedule. Her life had orbited around his convenience, and he would never change, so utterly defeated she said, “Okay. I’ll be there.”
Robbie ended the call, and she set her cell phone down gingerly. And then she allowed herself to do something she had desperately been trying to avoid. She cried. And not the soft kind either, but the curled on the bed, arms wrapped around her stomach kind. She missed Ryder, and she worried about the way Robbie was treating him. She was here in a strange place with a shifter culture she didn’t know. How did she feel this lonely around people of her own kind? She’d thought it would be different if she was around other shifters. But now all she felt was this immense pressure to help them, which put a barrier between them. She was the publicist, the employee, other, and they were a close-knit crew whose friend-cards were all filled up.
And Mason…
Her animal was pining for him, which made everything harder.
A light hand touched her back, and she jerked and gasped. And then as if her thoughts had conjured him, Mason was there, right beside her on the bed, his eyes dark and sad. “Are you okay?” he asked.
Are you okay? How long had it been since anyone asked her that? “How long have you been here?”
Mason looked uncomfortable and wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I heard your phone conversation, both sides. I didn’t mean to. I knocked, but you didn’t answer, so I came in and waited for you to hang up.”
“I didn’t hear you knock, and is that how a trailer park works? People just barge in whether you want them to or not?”
“Pretty much.” Mason relaxed against the headboard and clasped his hands over his stomach, crossed his ankles. His boots were hanging off the bed, he was that tall. “What are you doing in ten-ten? I thought you didn’t want any of the magic on you.” Was that a spark of humor in his eyes?
“Yeah, well, have you seen the empty trailer? Clinton has been using it as a workout room slash woodshop slash karate studio. The place has been destroyed by Kung Fu Clinton. There was zero room for me to work there, much less live.”
Mason’s voice softened. “Why didn’t you move into my trailer?”
Beck rolled over on her side to face him and curled her knees up to her chest. She wiped her damp cheeks on the sleeve of her pale pink hoodie and sniffed. “It just didn’t feel right. That’s your place. I went inside, but it still looks like you never left.”
With a slight frown, Mason asked, “What do you mean?”
“I mean, there are even rinsed dishes still left in the sink, the bed is still unmade, and someone’s been feeding your mouse. It even smells like you. And Bash looked gutted when I was considering it. I don’t think they’ve given up on you coming back. Ten-ten is fine if…”
“If what?”
“If there is a chance that you’ll move back here someday.”
Mason inhaled deeply and stared at the window unit AC on the opposite wall. “Your ex sounds like a dick.”
Beck snorted, and the stretch of her smile felt good. “I like dicks. In my head I call Robbie ‘McFartFace.’”
Mason chuckled a deep, resonating, sexy sound, and she watched his smile spread up to reach his eyes. God, she bet he was beautiful under that thick beard.
“Can I tell you something?” she asked softly.
With a single nod of his chin, he tightened his arms over his chest and murmured, “Sure.”
“I was kind of scared I would never see you again. And I know that sounds stupid because we barely know each other, but you were the first one here to talk to me, and I feel weird around the others, butting in and ordering them about. Plus, eating lunch with you by the river the other day was kind of amazing. It was nice to just talk easy with someone. Talking with you was…comfortable.”
Mason was quiet for a long time before he said, “I like that you say what you mean. No lies or half-truths. You just lay it out there.”
“Most people don’t like that about me.”
“I think it’s brave. I couldn’t do that.”
She laughed and shook her head. “You have me pegged wrong. I’m the biggest coward in the world.” She hadn’t even told Robbie she was a shifter until Ryder Changed for the first time, and now she was hiding from Mason, too. Typical Beck. So scared of what people thought about her that she couldn’t own what, and who, she was. No, the shifters of Damon’s mountains were brave. Mason was brave. She would spend her whole life hiding from the world.
“Your car will be ready in a week, and they knocked down the price by half.”
Confused by the turn in conversation, she propped up on her elbow and asked, “What do you mean?”
“I mean, they really should be called Rip-Off’s Auto Repair because they were squeezing you big-time. That asshole mechanic would’ve dragged it on for another month, too.”
She sat up, stunned that someone had done something nice for her. Something that actually helped her. “You took care of it?”
“Yeah, I tracked down the shop yesterday. I didn’t know you lived in Douglas.”