Chapter 25
Dixie
Spending two nights away from Penn hasn’t felt right, but I have to respect his feelings.
He’s giving me time to figure out what I want, but I wish he’d fought a little harder.
Convinced me that choosing him won’t mean I’m risking everything, only for him to change his mind when I’m at my most vulnerable.
The passenger side of Penn’s pickup is cold and lonely today. He keeps both hands on the wheel rather than his right on my thigh like he normally does. He doesn’t even glance in my direction as he drives me to Zep’s house.
“I could have driven myself,” I say, my voice quiet. “I didn’t mean to burden you.”
“I have club business to handle, so it’s on the way,” Penn says. “I wasn’t sure you knew where they lived.”
I didn’t, but it’s not like I’m directionally challenged. My phone has GPS. “Okay.”
The truck rolls to a stop in front of a large house with a lot of personality. The type of house that’s been around for generations, and I think it’s beautiful.
“I’ll be back in a few hours, but you can text me if you need something sooner,” he says. “Be careful.”
I want to ask him if this is the end of us. If he’d rather I find another place to stay. Maybe I should just take Lainey up on her offer to let me stay at her place. As awkward and uncomfortable as it would be if Wylie showed up, it would be warmer than Penn has been lately.
But I don’t ask him. Because deep down, I’m a chicken. “You, too.”
I get out of the pickup and head up the front steps without looking back. Penn doesn’t drive away until Misty’s opened the door and I’m inside. That’s something, right? He didn’t just take off to leave me without knowing I wasn’t stranded.
“How are you doing? This is always the hardest part of the pregnancy. You feel okay compared to morning sickness, but you can’t always breathe. Or go fifteen minutes without worrying you’ll pee your pants when the kid kicks your bladder,” Misty says.
She’s only been home a few days, but she looks ten times better than she did in the hospital. “That’s not as bad as the back pain. That’s what’s really killing me right now.”
“Come sit down,” she says. “Take some pressure off.”
I don’t need to be told twice. “Thanks.”
“Do you need anything to drink?”
“I’m good, thank you.”
Bernie hurries into the living room holding out a piece of paper. “Look, Dixie! I’m drawing a picture of the baby. I don’t know if I should draw blue or pink, so I made purple.”
Purple seems like a decent compromise, I suppose. “It’s beautiful, Bernie.”
“Baby, why don’t you go color in your room for a little bit? Dixie and I need to have a big-girl talk.”
“One day, I’m going to be old enough to have big-girl talks, too,” she says. “Do you need me to check on Lucy?”
Misty’s eyes widen. “No! I mean, she’s sleeping. I have the monitor, so if she wakes up, I’ll take care of her.”
“Okay, Mommy.”
Bernie clambers up the stairs, and Misty falls back against the couch. “I love her, and I love how much she adores being a big sister.”
“But?”
“But she’s woken Lucy up more times than I can count while checking on her. And when Lucy’s awake, she’s a screamer.”
“I suppose I have things like that to look forward to,” I say.
The thought of getting up in the middle of the night to handle a screaming baby weighs on me. How am I going to balance that with being a working mother? And who will watch him when I’m working at the bar?
All things I need to figure out now.
“I heard your baby dad came back into the picture the other night,” Misty says. “Wanna talk about that?”
“You heard… How?”
“Small town,” she says with a smirk. “Even smaller club.”
Groaning, I rest my head on the back of the couch. “Stephen wants me back. He says he made a mistake when he let me go. And tried to kill me.”
“Wait, back up?”
“You didn’t hear about that? Yeah, he’s the one who had my place set on fire. I wasn’t supposed to be at work that night.”
“And you’re considering getting back with him because…?”
I know everyone who knows of the situation wants an answer to this question, but Misty’s the only one who has actually come out and asked me. “He’s the father of my son.”
“Zep isn’t Bernie’s bio dad, but if anything happens to me, she’s staying with him, not Ben.”
It hits me that I don’t actually know the full history of Misty and Bernie. Just that she had Bernie as a teenager. “You never wanted to be with him to have Bernie’s mom and dad together?”
“Yeah, back before I learned he was a drug-dealing addict,” she says.
“The truth is, Mom and Dad being together doesn’t mean it’s better for the child.
It can actually do more harm. Bernie at least knows what it looks like to have her mom loved and cared for, which would not have been what she saw with Ben. ”
That hits close to home. All I’ve ever seen is toxic love. Daddy loving Mom, but not loving her enough to stay faithful. And Mom loving Daddy too much and costing herself her sanity. How am I supposed to have a normal relationship when I’ve never actually witnessed one?
“How’d you do it?” I ask.
Misty tilts her head. “I need a little more context.”
“You had Bernie so young. You did it on your own. How did you do it?”
“By the grace of God,” she says with a laugh. “It was hard. It was really hard, and honestly, we kind of grew up together. I got really lucky finding Zep.”
Seeing how Zep reacted thinking he’d done this terrible harm to Misty still breaks my heart. And it showed just how much he loves her. “He was beside himself.”
“I know. He told me you helped him. Thank you for that,” she says and takes my hand, giving it a small squeeze.
“I don’t know what to do,” I admit. “This thing with Penn doesn’t really feel as temporary as I keep telling myself it has to be, but it doesn’t really feel permanent, either. And I’m so scared I’ll end up doing it all on my own.”
“Penn won’t let you do anything on your own. He called the night you went to stay at his house and asked about what vitamins he needed to pick up for you,” she says with a laugh. “The thing I’ve learned about the men in this club is that when they love, they love hard.”
“But Penn doesn’t love me.”
The words feel like a stone in my stomach, and I didn’t think they’d hurt this much. But why does it hurt?
“I’m pretty sure he does. He’s had his eye on you for a while, and he’s finally getting something he hasn’t before,” she says. “You know, assuming you don’t go back to your ex. Who tried to kill you. Like a psycho.”
“Him or me?”
“Both, if you go back,” she says. “I know I should be impartial and let you make your own decisions, but you’re kind of fucked up if you think he’s not going to try again. Only a crazy person tries to kill his pregnant girlfriend. Especially by setting a house on fire.”
The laugh escapes before I realize it, and I can’t believe she said that. But the truth is, she’s completely right. “He says he feels really bad about it. If it makes a difference.”
“Oh, yeah, so much. He’s only a sociopath now,” she says, laughing with me.
“Is it really so wrong of me to want my child’s father in the picture?” I ask once I’ve settled down.
The thing about Misty that I respect is that she has as close to a similar situation as I can find around here. And her perspective means more than everyone else who either hasn’t had kids or is with the man they’ve been with since middle school. She’s actually lived a life.
“Is it wrong? No. But DNA doesn’t mean it’s right, either. If you love this guy, and I mean really love him… which you’d have to in order to look over the fact he tried to kill you,” she says, emphasizing the last part with wide eyes, “then maybe you need to give him a shot.”
“But you wouldn’t do that, would you?”
“Fuck no,” she says. “But we aren’t the same person. I’m not going to tell you what to do, but I do reserve the right to judge you for making the wrong decision.”
I laugh, hugging my belly. “If you keep making me laugh, I might end up peeing on your couch.”
“Not the first time it’s happened,” she says. “How do you feel about Penn?”
“Excuse me?”
“Do you love him? Because if you do, leaving him for a man who gave you sperm—which is really the best thing you can say about him—would be a big mistake. Penn’s been hurt in the past, and I don’t think he’d forgive easily,” she says. “If he ever did.”
I know Penn’s been hurt before. He told me how much it changed him, and I hated to see that pain in his eyes.
And knowing I’ve hurt him simply by considering Stephen’s proposal to be together hurts me.
The last thing I ever want to do is hurt him.
He’s done so much for me. More than I’d ever ask for.
“How are you now that you’re home?” I ask, changing the subject.
I’d hoped to get some clarity in my decision, but it’s even more muddled now. It’s best to focus on her instead.
“I’m good. And Zep’s amazing. Not only is he a great father to Bernie, but he’s been such a help with Lucy. He gets up with her in the middle of the night, even though he can’t feed her yet. I haven’t had enough time to get milk pumped and stored, but if she’s up, he’s up.”
“Really?”
Misty nods with a dreamy smile. “He refuses to let me do this alone. It’s no secret I raised Bernie on my own until Zep came into the picture, and he goes out of his way to make sure I never have to do that again.”
“That’s amazing, Misty.”
“I think Penn would be the same way. He looks at you the same way Zep looks at me. And Pacino looks at Phoebe. Hell, he looks at you the way I look at Phoebe. That woman is basically a goddamn angel.”
I laugh and lean back. But then I think about what she said. Penn has been around for every tragedy. And he’s never pushed me. He let me set the pace, and even though he wanted more, he didn’t want to overstep while I lived under his roof.
Not to mention how he’s more than happy to make sure I’m satisfied, even if he doesn’t get his in return. He dotes on me, even when it annoys me, and he looks like he’s been given the greatest gift in the world when he feels the baby kicking.
Being at the ultrasound made his entire day. Week, even. And he said he was happy. Not to mention that he didn’t try to correct the doctor when he called Penn the father. Which was incredibly sexy.
Holy shit.
I’m in love with Penn Calloway.
How didn’t I realize this?
“And then Lucy has the biggest blowout I’ve ever seen,” Misty says, pulling me from my thoughts. “I can’t wait until you experience that, and then we can share in our misery of poopy grossness.”
“Can’t wait,” I say, trying my hardest to focus on our conversation.
It’s hard now that I know how I feel about Penn. And what I need to do.