Page 49 of Love Complicated

“This is awful,” Tori groans, sighing as she attempts to stand Ada up. She’s soaked from head to toe in water, having decided she was a mop for the bleachers at some point today.

She’s got a sucker in her hand, hopefully one her mother gave her, and she’s running it along the bleachers as if she’s painting the metal in cherry flavored juice. Red streaks mix with the water, and it begins to look like someone has bled over the slate-colored metal. I don’t know whether to be grossed out or not. At least she’s building her immune system.

The final horn blares, the play clock down to zero. The Cubs lose 32-0.

Guess what else happened?

Austin didn’t show.

Standing, I make my way down from the still slippery bleachers with Tori and Ada to the sidelines where Cash has knocked over the table filled with Gatorade. I want to slap the little shit for throwing a tantrum over the loss, but I know it’s not because they lost.

Grady is beside him, frowning, understanding exactly why his brother is acting out. “He was busy. Maybe next time he’ll come?”

“He’s never coming!” Cash screams in Grady’s face. “He has a new family!”

My face falls. I don’t mean for it to, but it does, along with my heart. I want to rush to him and hold him, tell him everything will be fine, but I don’t know if there’s any truth to it.

My heart pounds in my ears, searching for something to say to him and wanting to murder Austin for not coming. I swallow over the dryness in my throat that feels like I have sawdust in my mouth. I stand there, shaking, and then I get pissed, my face heating, anger hitting me that he didn’t have the decency to reply or show up for his kids.

Ridge is standing near Cash and motions to the table. “Pick that up.” And he does, without having to be asked twice. I ask him at least ten times a day to not put his mouth guard on the kitchen counter, and he ignores me every time. Yet here Ridge just simply says three words and Cash magically listens?

Ridge glances at Cash and knocks him on the side of the head, lightly, playfully. “Boy, you throw another fit like that and you won’t play in the next game.”

“I didn’t do it because we lost,” Cash defends, setting the bottles of Gatorade and water back on the table, one by one.

Ridge kneels to his level, dipping his head until my defiant boy meets his stare. “I know that, but what kind of example are you showing your teammates when you act this way?”

My stomach drops when I see Cash’s tears rolling down his pink cheeks. My heart hurts for Cash, but it’s also tugging at the way Ridge is talking to him, quietly, attentively, unlike the way Austin would have dealt with this situation. Sure, he would have demanded he pick the spilled drinks up, but then he would have walked away without explanation.

Ridge takes the time to get down to his level, physically and emotionally. The thing with Ridge is, like he said, he’s been where Cash is. He knows what it’s like to half split custody and wonder what, if anything, could have changed the outcome of his parents’ divorce.

“You know what’s sexier than a bad boy?” Tori asks, holding Ada on her hip. She doesn’t realize the sucker Ada had earlier is now stuck in her hair.

I stare at Tori’s overly large sunglasses she’s now wearing since the sun came out and wish she’d take them off. They make her face look like a fly, and she’s far too cute to be a fly. “What’s that?”

“A bad boy who steps up for the shitty dad.”

Ridge stands, his brow drawn together, and I think about us in his mom’s car. I know it’s not the right moment to flash back to something like that, but I can’t help it. The intensity of his stare is a reminder of everything Ridge is. It’s all there. His aggression. Resentment.

Tori’s right. A man who steps up is far sexier than a shitty fucking dad who can’t show up for his kids.

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