Page 14 of Small-Town Secrets
What were the odds?
Sure, we were living in a small town and there probably weren't that many people who could teach karate, butcome on!How likely was it that my children would be taught by the one alpha I was still afraid of?
Everything I'd worked for so hard these past two years... Aaron had the power to take it all from me.
If he knew...
But he could never know!
So I did the only thing Icoulddo.
That night, after dinner, I served my boys some cookies in front of the TV and then I broke the news to them. "Kids, I'm very sorry, but we can't afford karate anymore."
They both whirled around to me. Tyler even got up from the couch, even though his favorite show was on, a new adaptation ofThe Midnight Ranger. "But chary pays for it!"
"Charity," I corrected him. "You're right, they did pay for it, but it's time that we stood on our own feet as a family."
"That's not fair!" Chris protested, a little more quietly than his brother. "We almost got the yellow belt!"
"I know it's not fair, but you two shouldn't be learning karate anyway, as long as you're not behaving at school."
"Did Mr. Davis tell you about the fight?" Tyler asked, an expression of shock coloring his features.
Seeing as I'd fled the scene with the boys as soon as I'd seen ‘Mr. Davis’, I hadn't heard about any fight, but I realized instantly that I could use this to my advantage. The twins had been getting into more than one fight recently so it wasn't too hard to piece together what must have happened. "How can I let you two take karate lessons as long as your first response to someone insulting you is to punch them?"
"But that was Tyler!" Chris spoke up. "It's not my fault!"
"Even if it was Tyler today, you've acted the same way in the past," I reminded him. Chris wasn't any more innocent than his brother, he was just much better at not getting caught, or spinning things in a way that he couldn't be blamed. Whoever upset Tyler risked getting a fist to the face, but where Tyler favored quick solutions, Chris was the kind of kid for whom the saying ‘revenge is a dish best served cold’ was invented. He’d strike at you in unusual ways long after you'd forgotten to be on your guard. "I can't send you to karate lessons before I know that you're going to behave and your behavior today was completely unacceptable."
Lips drawn into a tight line, I looked at my children, whose expressions mirrored my own. Without touching the cookies, Chris stood from the couch and left the room.
"Where are you going?" I called after him.
"Bedroom," he said, never looking back.
I suppressed a sigh. So my first born was going upstairs to pout. Fine. I looked at my second child. It seemed Tyler was going to do much the same thing as Chris, only that he preferred to do his pouting while aggressively stuffing cookies into his mouth and watching TV.
Fine then. I left him to it.
Honestly, I wasn't enjoying doing this to my kids. Theylovedkarate. But there was no way I could let them spend that much time with Aaron. They could go back to karate once their old instructor was back.
That was soon enough, wasn’t it?
I was only doing what was best for my kids, right?
Then why was I feeling so horrible?
* * *
The next day, on my lunch break, I slipped out of the flower shop and into the tattoo parlor on the other side of the street, only one block down. Poking my head in, I let my eyes roam the studio in search of my friend. If I was lucky, he might have a minute to talk to me.
I really needed to talk to someone.
Raphael was standing off to the side and talking to a young woman while holding a large folder in his hand and pointing at things. Probably designs. When my friend noticed me, he nodded to one of the comfy waiting chairs on the opposite end of the studio. Knowing that he wasn't going to make me waittoolong, I took a seat.
There were some tattoo magazines spread out on a low table next to the chairs. I grabbed one, if only to distract myself. Sometimes I toyed with the thought of having Raphael tattoo me, but I didn't have the funds yet, and while Raphael offered to give me a tattoo at nothing more than material cost, I wanted to wait until I was able to pay him for his talent. He would be working with a lot of scar tissue on my arms, and that couldn't be easy.
I could accept charity when it benefited my children, but personally I was tired of getting preferential treatment for being a poor abused omega. Everyone kept seeing me as a victim, and that wasn't who I wanted to be any longer.
