UNEXPECTED compile by Jeana Read Free Book Online

me?”
    “Fuck,” Caleb repeated, eyes trained on Randy’s mouth in fascination.
    “No, buddy. That’s a grownup word. Daddy shouldn’t have said that.” Caleb frowned while Randy put his hands over the little boy’s ears and leaned across the table, the words hissing out of him with a fury he didn’t know he was capable of. “So when you came by Felony a few weeks ago and seduced me? That was what? Some kind of going-away fuck?” In his arrogance, he’d taken the incident as a sign of hope when it had been nothing but a farewell.
    The set of Pilar’s jaw tightened. “Sure. I guess so. We never had problems there.”
    “So where is the problem? Make me understand.”
    The legs of her chair scraped across the cement as she pushed the chair from the table and stood. Lips pressed tight with rage, she yanked their son from his arms. Caleb’s lower lip trembled, and his eyes filled with tears.
    “Three years and a child together, and not once,” she whispered. “Not once in all that time did you ever say you loved me. Not one time, Randy. Ever.”
    Pilar vanished into the sidewalk crowd with Caleb wailing in her arms. He sat at the bistro table for a long time after, Caleb’s cries echoing in his ears. The lunch crowd came and went while he stared, unbelieving, into the distance. He wasn’t really surprised about the cheating. He’d suspected for months before their breakup but couldn’t bring himself to face the truth.
    Four strong bourbons did nothing to fill the hollowness in his gut. After a while, he walked in the direction of Felony because he had nowhere else to go, and he needed time to think. She’d left him over three little words. Hadn’t he shown her how he felt a million times in a million different ways? He kept walking with his hands shoved into his pockets until the sidewalks narrowed and the crowds thinned.
    A park bench opposite the post office offered a shady resting place where he sat with his head in his hands, trying to make sense of his jumbled thoughts. Two kids clattered past on skateboards. Locust whirred from the trees behind him, the insistent buzz a parody of his confusion. Why couldn’t he say those words to her if it meant the difference between having his son or not? He sat up, scrubbed his hands over his face, and blew out a long sigh. Deep down, he knew the answer. He didn’t love her. Never had.
     
     
     

 
     
    CHAPTER 6
     

     
    The ache in Karly’s feet was nothing compared to the pain in her heart when she returned Emma to her parents. It took two busses and a ten-block walk to reach the house. No one answered the doorbell, so she let herself in, Emma dragging behind reluctantly. Mom sat on the couch, still wearing her faded purple housecoat despite the afternoon hour, watching the television with an expression of disconnected ambivalence. Dad, thank goodness, was at the factory where he worked as a janitor. Karly didn’t think she could manage to sit in the same room with the man and remain civil.
    “Mom?” Karly stepped in front of the television, blocking the game show from her mother’s view. “I brought Emma home.”
    “Really?” Mom didn’t move, but her eyes flicked to Karly before returning to the TV. “Did you two have a sleepover?”
    “No. She ran away.” Karly scowled while her mother clicked buttons on the remote control. “Did you hear what I said, Mom?”
    As she waited for her mother to answer, Karly surveyed the living room as if seeing it for the first time. Although dark and dingy, the cramped space was scrupulously clean. Worn sofa cushions hid beneath a knit, multi-colored afghan. Cigarette smoke yellowed the flowered wallpaper. Framed photographs of Mitch hung on the walls and lined the bookshelves; there were no pictures of Karly or Emma anywhere in sight.
    “Mom!” With a sigh of exasperation, Karly turned the television off and waved a hand in front of her mother’s blank face. She looked healthy, despite the previous