Page 4 of Night By Night
Meanwhile, in the two years following Lois’ murder, he’d saved every penny he could. Between that and what minuscule savings he had left after paying all the legal expenses from the custody battle and adoption, he’d swung this move.
Barely.
This house was an older three-two, not large at all. Except it felt huge and empty with what little furniture they had. They didn’t have a lot to start with, because he’d drastically downsized when they’d moved to the smaller apartment. Before they moved this time, he sold everything he could for extra money and to save space. He’d towed a large, completely full U-Haul trailer behind his pick-up truck to move everything they had left. He’d turn that in tomorrow morning on his way to his new job, which he also had thanks to Bryce helping point him to leads.
“Are we living here for good, Daddy?” JJ asked.
He’d never get over that. Every time she called him that it still hit him squarely in the feels, even though she’d pretty much called him that ever since she could talk.
Hell, he’d been there at her birth, had been there throughout her entire life. To her, hewasher father, even before he’d legally adopted her. Didn’t matter that biologically he was her uncle. She’d never seen Cameron in person until the day he murdered Lois. Hank had also been honest with JJ that a bad man was her bio father, so he gave himself a promotion from uncle to her dad.
He gently tugged on a pigtail. “Yeah, sweetie. We’re here for good. At least for a few years. If I can save up money to buy us a house of our own we might move, but that’ll take me a while.”
“Can we still have my birthday on the beach?”
He smiled. “Yes, sweetheart. You and I are absolutely going to celebrate your birthday on the beach.”
“Yes!” She rolled onto her back on the couch and flailed her arms and legs in the air in celebration, making him laugh.
That reminded him—he needed to contact some old friends from high school and see if he couldn’t get at least a few people to show up. She wouldn’t care that she didn’t know them, but it would help make it feel more like a celebration.
She’d be turning six in two weeks and she’d never seen the ocean. Before their life fell apart, he and Lois both had been building up this very moment for her. They’d wanted to move back to Florida and raise her here.
Thirty-two and starting his life over as a single parent wasn’t a situation he’d ever expected to find himself in. Lois had been two years older than him. She’d been going to college when she first met Cameron and the fucker swept her off her feet.
Hank had hated him on first sight, and Cameron had done his best to drive a wedge between the siblings over the years.
At least that was one thing he’d failed at. Cameron hadn’t counted on how strong their bond was, especially in the wake of their parents’ sudden death in a car accident. And he hadn’t hit her, at first. It was years of chipping away at her, mental abuse she’d hidden from Hank, until the day she discovered she was pregnant and Cameron put her in the hospital.
And Hank had him put in jail.
He shook himself out of his thoughts. “Time to get your shower so we can put you to bed, pumpkin. First day of school at your new school tomorrow.”
“Okay!” She jumped off the couch andzoomedfrom the room.
With the move behind them, the full gravity of their situation slowly started sinking in. He needed to quickly reestablish a network of friends here in Sarasota. He’d be enrolling JJ in school tomorrow morning, had all that info ready, but there were only something like four weeks left in the school year here. He’d need full-time child care for her, and that was something he didn’t have lined up yet, a chore he dreaded.
Trust didn’t come easy for him now.
Atall.
Not just a trust issue, but a money issue, too.
It wasn’t like he’d be dating anytime soon, either. Although his situation was far less entangled than it had been in Pittsburgh. No more worries about looking over his shoulder to see if someone from Cameron’s family was spying on him on a date so they could contact the woman behind his back and tell them lies about him.
Crazy fuckers.
After the second time that happened, four years ago now, he realized someone was going through his Facebook feed and getting info from there. That’d been before Lois was murdered, when they were still in the middle of the legal battle.
So he’d locked his Facebook account down, deleted everyone from his friends list who he thought might possibly have so much as the most remote of connections to Cameron’s family and friends, or who were mutual friends with anyone associated with Cameron and his family, and deleted nearly all his old posts, or set them to viewable by him only. He left very few posts visible and those were set to friends only.
Not that he’d been very active on the site to start with but he’d started posting again after JJ was born, in an attempt to stay in touch with friends in Florida.
He also hadn’t bothered trying to date since that last time, too paranoid about being followed, or whether or not maybe someone was really who they said they were, or if maybe they were a spy for Cameron’s family.
The handful of friends he had left on the site were mostly people he’d known in high school, like his old best friend, Maddox, and another good friend, Bryce. And a few distant relatives.
I really need to get in touch with Maddox.
