1. Sage Richards #2
My mom left me and my younger brother when I was going on thirteen years old.
My stepdad, Sebastian, was a godsend. Even when my dad never showed up to get me, Bash never treated me like anything other than his own daughter.
He showed me love even before I was practically dropped on his doorstep.
He raised me and made sure that I knew that he loved me.
It wasn’t his fault that I always felt like a burden.
It was just a fact. It was not his responsibility to raise me.
My little brother, Supreme, was his actual son. My dad was a dead-beat bitch who never bothered to care that another man was raising his daughter, as long as it didn’t cost him a dime. Sebastian was the epitome of a man. He showed me genuine, unconditional love even when I didn’t deserve it.
For the first year or so, I got in fights, got arrested for shoplifting, got pregnant.
I did all the things an unruly teenage girl did.
Bash never stopped looking for ways to help me channel my pain and anger.
Dance saved me from going down the wrong path.
I was so thankful for Sebastian. At the same time, I could never stop feeling like I didn’t belong there.
When I came to my senses, I worked hard to be a good daughter and not give him too much trouble.
In my heart, I knew that he could wake up one day and decide that raising someone else’s child was too much and force me to go back and live with my mom.
I couldn’t say what I would have done in his situation.
I just knew that I was grateful every day for what he did for me.
For that reason, I moved away and vowed to never have to depend on my brother or stepdad for anything.
They had done more than enough for me over the years.
Sebastian didn’t blink when I told him that I wanted to go to school for dance.
He’d enrolled me in ballet and tap-dancing lessons once he discovered my love of dancing.
I wasn’t a professional, but as they say: Those who can’t do, teach.
When I had the idea to open the studio, my plan was to be self-sustained just in case things went left with Jaylen. After five years, I realized that I had become too comfortable. Jaylen paid the mortgage on the building. He footed the bills at home. He did everything.
Whenever I even suggested chipping in to help, it became a big thing about me not thinking he had money like my brother.
He wanted so much to prove that he could take care of me and JJ that I eventually dropped the subject altogether.
It was good to be able to put all my money back into the studio.
Now as I stared at a foreclosure notice while listening to the phone roll over to voicemail again, the only thought rolling through my head was I fucking knew better.
I drank half a bottle of Jaylen’s thirty-year-old scotch and crashed into bed, only to be jarred awake by my phone buzzing under my face.
Jaylen had some explaining to do. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to hear an explanation at this point.
What could he really say? Then again, was it even him?
I was pretty sure he was hiding out, knowing that the inevitable was on the way.
Besides, his ass better not had been calling me.
He needed to be front and center, ready to pay those people whatever the fuck he owed them.
I was so sick and tired of his bullshit that I wanted to scream.
Another series of buzzing motivated me enough to roll over and answer.
After wiping the drool off both my phone and my face with my shirt, I squinted at the unfamiliar number that had sent me several text messages in the past ten minutes.
It was just after midnight, so I wasn’t even sure who the hell it could be until it dawned on me that JJ wasn’t home.
It was just my luck that on one of the worst nights of my life, JJ would want to come home in the middle of a sleepover.
I hated answering strange numbers, but seeing that it was midnight, I swiped to answer anyway.
“Hello,” I grumbled.
As soon as I said hello, whoever was on the other end hung up.
I frowned and rolled over onto my back and tapped the message icon since there were five text messages.
The first one was a picture. I rubbed my eyes with the back of my hand as my eyes began to focus on the picture.
Suddenly, I sat up straight in bed like I was coming out of a nightmare because what the hell was I seeing?
Who the hell would send me a picture of Jaylen asleep?
922-317-0382: You should stop calling Jaylen. We’re trying to sleep.
“What the hell?” I mumbled to myself as I swung my legs over the side of the bed.
I stepped into my slippers as I scrolled down to see a picture of Jaylen asleep wearing different clothes.
In this particular picture, there was a blonde lying on his chest rubbing a small baby bump.
My legs almost gave out as I continued to march toward the door.
I had no idea where I was going, but I needed some air.
The third attachment was a clear shot of Jaylen and his assistant, Rebecca, standing outside of a house. The street sign in the back wasn’t one I recognized. Quickly, I left the messaging app and entered it into my GPS. It showed a street about thirty minutes away.
I didn’t know who the hell they thought they were playing with, but I was about to make it clear that I wasn’t the one.
I didn’t even know why I did it, but I called that number that was bold enough to call me in the middle of the night.
They didn’t answer, but Rebecca or whoever was playing on my phone had the audacity to send another text.
922-317-0382: You know I’m his assistant. He asked me to handle things for him as I always do.
Handle things? Did she say handle things?
She said that like I was something to handle instead of the woman he’d been stringing along for the past ten years.
When I found out that I was pregnant, I was terrified.
We were both in college, and he was about to be drafted soon.
Initially, he accused me of trying to trap him, but a few weeks later, he came back tearful and apologetic, begging for a chance to make things right.
Jaylen went into the draft and took me with him, promising that we would get married and raise our child as a family. Ten years later, we were still glorified roommates, and he was laid up in bed with another woman probably selling her the same dreams.
922-317-0382: It’s really time to move on. This is actually getting pathetic if you ask me.
Did that girl call me pathetic? She was absolutely right, but it wasn’t her fucking place to say so.
I was pathetic for staying with him, so I didn’t have to say my brother and Sebastian were right.
I was pathetic for defending him and sacrificing for him for years.
I was pathetic for convincing myself that he was actually the man he’d promised to be when he failed to follow through time after time.
I was pathetic all right, but I was about to show her pathetic.
922-317-0382: As you can see we’re trying to build a family. You need to accept and respect that. I got tired of waiting for him to tell you the truth, so I forced his hand.
922-317-0382: Good luck keeping that big, pretty house without Jaylen’s money.
See, I wasn’t going to direct my anger toward her because, apparently, she was pregnant and hormonal.
She didn’t owe me shit. The man who I’d been sleeping next to for the past decade was the one who owed me.
Here I was wondering how the hell we were going to keep a roof over our heads, and his ass was laid up somewhere else with a woman who was supposed to work for him.
When I made it to the street from the sign, I realized that I was likely on the wrong end of the block.
It took about five minutes for me to pull up in front of the house from the picture Rebecca sent.
If I weren’t sure that I was at the right place, the black AMG parked out front was a dead giveaway.
I didn’t even turn off my engine before jumping out and storming up to the door.
I punched in the door code. Of course, it was Jaylen’s birthday.
No matter how many times I fussed at him about using the same code for everything, he refused to listen.
This time his hard head worked in my favor.
I walked through the dark living room, grabbing a fire poker from in front of the fireplace as I passed.
Following the sound of a TV playing at a low volume in the distance, I marched through the house.