Sex, Not Love(55)

Once we were inside, I turned to face her before starting the car. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“He’s such a jerk. I was telling him about how my jump shot has improved, and you know what his response was?”

“What?”

“He asked who the man was that was in our apartment.”

Marcus had only been inside our apartment once, and my gut told me this was not about Marcus. “How did he know there was a man in our apartment?”

“Damon told him you were dating a plumber or something.”

Ugh. Damon.

“I’m sorry he tried to get you in the middle of things and it ruined your visit.”

“Dad ruined my visit. He wasn’t even listening about my game. Then he got pissed when I told him it was none of his business who was in our house.”

Oh shit.

“What did he say to that?”

“He said you were his wife, and it was his business. That I was his eyes and ears while he couldn’t be home right now. So I told him you were his ex-wife, and it was his own fault he couldn’t be home right now. That I wasn’t his eyes and ears, I was his daughter.”

God, I was so proud of her. But my heart also broke that Garrett was trying to use her during the one shitty hour he got to see her each month.

“You’re a hundred percent right, Izzy. But that couldn’t have been easy to say.”

“It’s the truth.”

When had she become such a grown up? “Izzy…thank you. Thank you for defending me. But I just want to put it out there—I’ll never be upset if you want to tell your father our business. While I don’t think I’m his business, you are, and I suppose he has every right to know if a man is hanging around while you’re home.”

She again stared out the window, so I started the car to give her some time. We were going to be physically next to each other for the next few hours, yet I thought she might need some privacy to replay things in her head.

But she didn’t put in her earbuds and fall asleep this time. Instead, she looked deep in thought.

After about an hour, I pointed to a bunch of fast food signs on the side of the highway and asked if she wanted to stop and get some lunch. She nodded. Rather than go through the drive-thru as we normally would on the way home, I parked in a spot at Wendy’s. If she was ready to talk some more, it would be easier sitting across from each other.

I grabbed my purse from the back and opened my car door to get out. Izzy’s voice stopped me.

“Nat?”

I turned back to find that Izzy hadn’t made any attempt to get out of the car. She faced forward, but when I looked closely at her, I saw tears welling in her eyes. I pulled my car door shut.

“Talk to me, sweetheart. It’s normal that you’re upset after what happened today.”

A fat tear streaked down her cheek, and her bottom lip quivered. Seeing her pain when she turned to face me choked my throat with my own tears.

“What rights does Dad have?” she croaked with a shaky voice.

At first I didn’t understand the question, but then I remembered the last thing I’d said was that he had every right to know if a man was hanging around her. I thought that’s what she was referring to.

“Well, he’s your father, so I guess I feel like he has a right to know you’re safe and well protected. No matter what happened between me and him, or what he’s done wrong, I would feel wrong letting him worry about your safety.”

She shook her head vigorously. “No. What right does he have to me?”

“You mean legally?”

She nodded.

We’d never discussed the legal aspect of how things were decided by the court. All she knew was she lived with me and visited her grandmother and father. “Well, right now I have full physical custody of you. So no one else has the right to have you live with them. You go to visit your grandmother once a month because that’s what I arranged with her. I think it’s important to keep in touch with her, and she loves you very much. She wanted to have physical custody of you, but she’s seventy-two, and you’d never lived with her before, so the court agreed that you should live with me.”

I waited until she looked up at me and made sure she heard the next part loud and clear. “And I wanted you to live with me because I love you.”

She smiled through her tears and nodded, so I continued.

“But there are two types of rights people have over minors—physical custody and legal custody. Your dad and I share legal custody of you.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that your dad and I both get a say in the important decisions about you—like schooling, medical care, and that type of stuff.”