"You know?"
I laughed at that.
"Yeah, I know."
"I … "
She stopped and looked at her hands, then rubbed her face with a roughness that surprised me.
She wasn't wearing any makeup.
Holy shit. I didn't think there was ever a time that I hadn't seen her perfectly coifed.
"Just spit it out," I ordered. "I'm going fucking crazy here."
She looked at me then, her spine straightening.
"She's not yours."
The relief in those words as they hit me were nothing less than staggering.
I knew that she wouldn't lie, not about this.
Ariya was a lot of things, but a liar wasn't one of them.
"Then why does everyone think she's mine?"
Ariya bit her lip. "If her father was known, then it wouldn't be good for me or her. It's better that they suspect, but don't get it confirmed."
"In the meantime, though, you're making everyone think that she's mine, and that I'm an asshole for not having anything to do with a dying kid." I paused at Ariya's flinch. "I'm sorry, that was inconsiderate."
Ariya swiped at her eyes, and let out a shaky breath.
"Thing is, it's the truth," she sniffled.
The bar door slammed in front of us, but neither one of us turned to see who it was. We did stop talking, though, waiting for whomever it was to pass.
Only they didn't pass. They got into the car that was at my back.
Hennessy.
My eyes turned to follow the car's path as it backed out, and when it finally got far enough away that I could see in the window, I knew that Hennessy knew something.
Or what she thought was something.
Hennessy didn't peel out. Didn't drive away in anger.
No, she drove away sedately, just like the controlled woman that she was-when she wasn't with me.
"You can't tell anyone," Ariya pleaded, meaning Hennessy. "I know that this situation isn't ideal. I know it. It's asking a lot from you, but that little girl right there is my heart and soul. I don't want to have her last days filled with anger and pain because her little life was turned upside down."
I looked over at the little girl.
God, she looked so much different, even from just a few days ago.
A few days ago, she'd been upright and standing on her own volition. Today she was sitting down in a chair that was set up for her in the corner of the bar, right in front of the window. She had an iPad in her hand, and she was watching it with so little enthusiasm that it almost, if I didn't know about her illness, looked like she was disinterested and mad that she was made to sit still while her mother worked.
Only she wasn't sitting still because she was told to. She was sitting still because she physically couldn't hold herself up.
"I won't tell anyone," I said. "I'll let everyone think that I'm the father since that's what they already think, but she doesn't think that, does she?"
God, I really hoped that she didn't think I was her father.
When I had thought that the little girl was mine, I'd been heartbroken.
My father hadn't been there for me, and I'd made a promise to myself when I was young that I'd never do that to a child of my own. If I had a child, which I was thinking wasn't a good idea at this point, then I'd make sure they knew that they were wanted.
Even the idea that this child thought she wasn't wanted was enough to rip my heart to shreds in my chest.
"No," Ariya said sadly. "She knows who her daddy is."
I looked over at her.
"Who is her daddy?"
Ariya's head dropped until her chin rested on her chest.
"You know who."
The moment that she'd said that the baby wasn't mine, my mind had automatically gone to the one person that the child looked like, and that was the woman that had stolen a little piece of my heart all those years ago when she'd come outside at a church picnic in borrowed clothes. Each time I saw her, she took another piece.
Soon, she'd own every single bit of it.
Even if she hated me because she thought I had a kid when I didn't.
Two hours later, I was standing with my phone to my ear while looking at the front door of the most known ‘gangster wannabe' in the entire town.
He was a prick and a half, and I wanted nothing to do with repossessing the fucker's car.
"You're fucking shitting me, right?" I said to Travis. "This mother fucker is going to shoot me, and since I can't have a fuckin' gun anymore, I literally have nothing to defend myself with."
"He was the one that put up bail, using his stupid fugly car, on his stupid cousin. If he can't see that this is the right thing to do, then I can't help him. Get the car. You can handle yourself without a gun and we know it."
That was true.
I was six foot five, two hundred and fifty pounds, and could literally lift the stupid fucking car up off the ground if I tried hard enough, but I couldn't protect myself from a bullet to the back.
"You know how this guy is," I continued.
I was going to go back to jail today. I could feel it.
"I know that you've repossessed his car twice, and each time before you've gotten out of it fine."
Travis was in a mood today. What had crawled up his ass?
Then, because I really didn't care if I kept my job when he was doing stupid shit like sending me out to a known prick's house that would likely get me in trouble and he knew it, I told him what I thought.
"When I die, you'll have to feel bad about this for the rest of your life," I told him.
Then I hung up because I wasn't getting anywhere by telling him I needed backup-which he said he didn't have. But, the car had to be picked up today since the little prick traded cars like he traded playing cards.
Instead of doing what my gut told me to do-which was leave-I walked into the yard and straight to the car.
The first thing that fucked the rest of the day up was the dog I saw chained to a tree.
It was skin and bones. Skinny enough that I could count every one of his ribs, as well as see the line of the dog's spine.
He was chained to a tree with a chain that had to weigh more than the dog itself. The poor thing couldn't even lift his head.
Though, that might have been due to him being in direct sun with no water nearby.
I gritted my teeth, telling myself that I shouldn't be having the thoughts that I was having.
I really, really shouldn't.
In fact, if I was going to have any thoughts, it should be about putting the dog out of his misery for having to have an owner like The Prick aka Colman Stone.
Turning my head away from the dog once again, I walked to the car and stared at it.
I knew that the kid put stupid homemade car alarms on his shit, and I also knew that he rigged his car up so that it'd not make it much further than the driveway if and when it was ever taken.
This Colman kid had some powerful enemies at his young age, and though he'd never been charged with anything, it was only a matter of time until his stupid finally caught up with him.
Today, hopefully, wouldn't be one of those times. Why, you ask? Because if his stupid finally caught up with him, I had a feeling that that would be at the expense of me being shot because he was trying to stop me from repossessing his car.
I let my eyes roam over the vehicle, easily seeing the wire that was there between the front door and the back door. The two pieces were essentially magnets. Once they were separated, an alarm would sound. Normally these would be found on a door inside the house.
They were applied with a sticky foam substance to the doors of the house, and nine times out of ten, it ruined your paint when you took them off.
Apparently, Colman didn't give a shit about ruining his paint when he decided to take them off.
Hunkering down on my haunches, I reached forward and ripped the two pieces off, being sure to keep them together so that the alarm wouldn't rouse everyone in the neighborhood.
After another inspection of the vehicle and satisfied that I'd gotten all of his homemade booby traps, I jimmied the car open using a metal hook like device.
The lock popped open easily-almost too easily.
Really, it was almost comical how many ‘alarms' he had-fourteen in total.
Too bad I wasn't a dumb kid, because they were all so obvious I was sure even a fucking six-year-old could find them.
Cautiously, I opened the door to the car, breathing a sigh of relief when no alarms of any kind sounded.
Something clinked behind me, and I felt rather than saw something coming up behind me.
Turning on my heels ready to throw a punch, I realized that it wasn't a person, but the dog, that was now standing up staring at me.
I grimaced and reached into the car, easily putting the car into neutral thanks to it being a manual transmission.
If I could manage it, I wanted to push the car off the property. The tow truck was loud as hell, and with this quiet neighborhood, it'd be heard in the house if I wasn't careful.
And I did just that, getting it all the way to the end of the driveway and into the street before anything happened.
It was when I positioned the truck in front of the car, and got the wheels lifted up off the ground when Colman finally caught on that he was having his car repossessed.