Page 56 of Risky Game

Damn her for teasing me and leaving me. I slapped her ass and let her go, moving back to my breakfast.

It was two and a half days.

I’d be fine without Ruby. Without her smiles and her body and her moans and kisses.

I was fine without a woman for months. A whole weekend was nothing.

Vanessa wiped tears off her cheeks, and I dropped my head into my hand, groaning. “Well, that went well.”

Outside, Amelia was curled into a ball on the lounge chair. Feet pulled up to her bottom, head dropped to her knees. Her little arms were wrapped around her shins, holding her together.

Of course she had to hold herself together. Her mom and I had broken her.

“I’m so sorry. I honestly had no idea she was getting those ideas from the things I said.” Vanessa sniffed and blotted her cheeks.

The family Zoom call had not gone well. Started when Amelia asked when her mom was going to say goodbye to Renaldo and ended with us explaining, as gently as possible, that Mommy and Daddy were not going to live together again.

“I want you both!” she’d screamed and then had run out the door.

“I can come back and see her, at least spend some time with her.”

I was staring at my daughter. I hadn’t yet found a fence company to come put a safety one around the edge of the pool and with Amelia’s state, I didn’t trust her not to do something dangerous like fling herself into the pool without her swimmies on.

“I think that would only confuse her right now, don’t you?”

“Like I have a clue. See what I’ve already done to her?”

In all fairness, my job and my decisions had done this. I faced Vanessa and shrugged. “I think we can both agree it’s not you who did this to her.”

“Whatever. We worked until we didn’t. I should have had a care for her, though. She cried for five straight days when you left. I should have anticipated this happening.”

“Thank you, Vanessa. Rub salt in the wound, please.”

She rolled her eyes. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

“I know.” I wanted someone to lash out at, though. Someone to blame for making my daughter cry.

Unfortunately, that person was me.

God, I was fucking screwing this up.

“So what now?” I asked.

I could at least solve the problem instead of continuing to dwell on it.

The only good thing to come out of this conversation was knowing where Vanessa stood with certainty. The morning conversation had helped, but hearing her apologize to Amelia cemented it. She wasn’t trying some sneaky way to see if we could work things out. She’d simply said a few things that allowed a little girl to have hope.

And we crushed it.

Awesome. We were awesome at this parenting thing.

“I’ll be more cautious with my words,” Vanessa assured me. “And I’ll call her more often if you think that would help. I know she’s so little, but can you get her an iPad or something that’s just hers so we don’t have to keep communicating through your phone or Ruby’s? Something that’s hers so she can talk to me whenever she wants? And you too, of course?”

“We’d always agreed no electronics until she was older.”

Vanessa gave me a sad smile. “We always used to agree on a lot of things.”

“Ouch.” Damn. She hadn’t been trying to be harsh, but the accusation slammed into me like a pile of bricks anyway.

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