Page 63 of Bittersweet

“Are we going to your place?” She was still giving him a flirtatious look.

“I don’t have a place here.”

Her forehead creased. “I thought you were still in Canton.”

“I’ve been in Grand Rapids for a while.”

“Oh.”

“The address you gave the prison is your brothers’ house, right?”

“Yeah.”

He drove the forty minutes it took to get from the prison to her brothers’ home south of Detroit. They didn’t talk much, and Kayla fell asleep.

“Are you staying around here?” Naya finally broke the silence. “Because I had this vision of us.” She looked back at Kayla. “Giving it another try. Raising our precious girl together.”

Logan rolled his eyes. “I don’t love you, Naya.”

“Hey, I don’t love you either, but I’m thinking about Kayla.”

He doubted that.

“What’s better than having a mom and dad raise their kid together?”

“Having a mom and dad who love each other and raise their kid together.”

Naya rolled her eyes and stared out the window.

Driving up to Naya’s childhood home filled him with dread. He could still remember Naya’s lifeless body in that bedroom. The house belonged to her brothers now, and it hadn’t changed since high school—as dumpy now as it had been back then, maybe more so. Multiple cars were parked in the yard around the house, most probably not in working order. The house had rickety steps up to the front porch, siding was drooping, shutters were sagging, windows had cracks or boards over them.

Logan was pretty sure both of Naya’s brothers were still involved in illegal dealings, so he hated to leave her there, but he wasn’t her keeper. She had to stay clean and out of the drug life on her own.

“Don’t I get some time with her today?” Naya asked.

“She needs dinner soon, and then it will be her bedtime. We’ll come see you tomorrow.”

“All the way from Grand Rapids?”

“We’re at my parents for now.”

“I thought your parents weren’t around.”

“My foster parents.”

“Oh, I forgot about them.”

That didn’t surprise him. He’d gone to live with them after Naya’s near overdose, so she had never met them.

“What time?” Naya asked as she got out of the car.

“We’ll come at about ten o’clock. We can take her to the park,” Logan told her.

Naya glanced through the window at their sleeping daughter. “Ten?”

“Yeah.”

A sense of foreboding settled over Logan as he backed out of the driveway, followed by extreme thankfulness that he’d gotten out of that life when he had.

---