Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Mazzy
Now
My chin dropping onto my chest woke me for the third time tonight.
Drat.
How could I have ever thought law school was for me when I hated studying and loved sleeping?
Oh yeah, I’d come up with the idea of being a lawyer when I was young, childless, and only needed four hours of sleep and a large cup of coffee to get me through the day.
Technically, I was still young, but I didn’t feel that way. The last few years had hit me hard. There was only so much tumult and grief a body could take before it said, Yeah, I’m going to go ahead and age ten years right now. ’K, thanks, bye.
But I kept marching on. There was no choice. My chest ached. My eyes constantly had bags beneath them. That was par for the course, as my aunt would say anytime I looked close to getting beaten down.
“A mother’s curse is to be tired but unable to sleep.”
Aunt Barb was full of all sorts of wisdom that essentially amounted to suck it up, buttercup.
I couldn’t really complain, though, not when she’d taken Katty and me in.
We were living rent-free in her house while I attended law school.
Even if she wasn’t exactly matronly or sweet, she was kind, and that was what I needed.
Plus, Katty thought she was hilarious, and my aunt doted on her. What more could I have asked for?
My dad.
I shook off the thought. Now wasn’t the time to—
A knock on my door interrupted me before I could get too maudlin. A second later, my cousin, Kylie, burst in.
“Oh, good, you’re awake.” She plopped down at my kitchen table, propped her chin on her fists, and stared at me.
I swiveled away from my computer to fully face her. “If I hadn’t been, you bursting in would have done the trick.”
She waved me off. “I knew you’d be studying. It’s what you do every night.” The corners of her eyes pinched. “You do remember you’re only twenty-four, right?”
“For a few more weeks, then I’ll be in my mid-twenties—just in time for my burgeoning quarter-life crisis.”
She laughed like I was joking, but that was Kylie.
She was two years younger than me and floated through life in the way only a person with a solid support system and no worries could.
I didn’t begrudge her any of it. If anything, I lived vicariously through her.
Between my job, school, and my daughter, that was all I had time for.
“Anyway”—she rolled her eyes—“guess who got a job?”
“You?”
“Yep.” She shimmied her shoulders, preening. “You’re looking at DMC’s newest content creator.”
“What exactly does that entail?”
“They send me out to hot spots, and I get paid to create content. My first campaign is Denver sports—which, lame—but it’s a start.”
“That sounds right up your alley.” Kylie’s dream was to be an influencer. To be fair, she’d put a lot of energy into her various social media platforms and had built up a decent following, so this did sound like the stepping stone to reach her goal.
“Right?” She canted toward me, her eyes widening. “My first stop on the campaign might interest you. I’m going to a Denver Mountain Lions game tomorrow night.”
I scrunched my nose. “Why would that interest me?”
“You know why.” She made her eyes even wider. “Because…Katty’s dad…”
“Again, why would that interest me?”
I’d done my level best to put Ben out of my mind. Considering we lived in the same town, I’d done a pretty good job of it.
I didn’t talk about him or search him up online.
Kylie and Aunt Barb knew he was a pro rugby player, but I’d never given them his name.
One day, Kateryna would want to know more about her biological dad, and I’d have to face that, but we weren’t there yet.
Hopefully, I had a couple more years before I had to tell her the story of her origin that wouldn’t make her feel unwanted.
Because she was. Everyone who knew her fell for her. All the decisions I’d made in the last few years, she was the very best.
“Don’t play dumb, Mazzy,” she admonished. “Aren’t you curious about him? Is he still playing? Does he look good? Is he lost in a sea of regret? Have the years been terribly, horrifically unkind to him? Does he have cauliflower ears and a smashed nose?”
“Kylie,” I snapped. “Cut it out. I don’t want to know anything about him.”
She had the decency to seem chagrined, but that didn’t stop her. “I’m just saying, wouldn’t it be nice to know he’d gotten ugly and sad since the last time you saw him?”
I shook my head. “There is no way for Ben to be ugly. I doubt he’s sad either.”
The moment she perked up, I realized my mistake. If I hadn’t been working so hard not to think about him, I would have stopped myself before saying his name.
“Ben?”
“No.” I put up my hand. “Forget it. That’s a no-go situation, okay? Please just drop it.”
She folded her arms over her chest. “He deserves to know what a piece of shit he is.”
“He knows, Ky. He doesn’t care.”
That was the truth of it. If Ben had cared and regretted what he’d said to me, he could have found me. He could have razed heaven and earth to track me down. But I’d gotten lost, exactly as he’d told me to, and he’d walked away without looking back.
That had told me all I’d needed to know.
Ben Wells didn’t want to be a father. Not then. Not now.