Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 71226 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 356(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71226 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 356(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
Before I could offer to walk her wherever she needed to go, the door jingled and the woman I’d been waiting on for hours finally walked through the door.
“Mayday, mayday,” the woman muttered under her breath as she clocked who’d come in. “It’s the worst professor in the history of professors, and she’s looking right at you.”
My stomach clenched. “What’s worse is I have a baby with the woman.”
“Poor you.” She paused. “I thought she was a lesbian?”
“She is,” I grumbled.
“Then how?” she wondered. “The way she talked in class, she sounded like men were like flesh-eating bacteria stuffed into a male body. The way she made it sound, she’d rather die than touch a man with a ten-foot pole.”
“Apparently, that only comes into effect when you’re not trying to have a baby with a dumbass.”
The woman snorted. “Good luck with that.”
I’d need it.
She gathered her books and took off, leaving me to deal with the snake slithering toward me on my own.
“Who was that?” she asked when she got to me.
“I don’t know,” I admitted truthfully. “She told me to stop drinking so much coffee.”
“You should, it’s not good for you. Almost all coffee grounds that come to the US have mold spores in them.”
I didn’t dignify that with a response.
Mold or not, I wasn’t giving up my coffee.
“Let’s get this over with,” she said. “I’m not giving you him every other week.”
I shook my head. “Court orders say differently.”
She scoffed. “They can say it all that they want, but he’s my child. Mine and Brooke’s. He doesn’t know you and won’t ever know you.”
“Brooke isn’t his father, though. I am,” I pointed out. “And literally, we have court orders. They said that you’d be in contempt of court if you didn’t give me my time with him.”
Nadine stayed stubbornly silent.
I sighed. “Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”
Nadine crossed her arms over her chest. “It’s already hard. What’s a little harder?”
With that she walked out and left me standing there.
I placed my coffee by the trash cans and walked out, anger lacing my every step.
Maybe that was why I did what I did next.
My brain was on autopilot as I walked across the campus to my truck.
I’d just stepped off the curb headed toward the nearly deserted parking lot when I heard the screams.
I turned, wondering if I’d heard what I thought I heard, and saw it.
A car door opened.
The screams were coming from inside.
I hurried toward the door, my fingers reaching out to yank the man backward off of the woman in the car that was flat on her back.
When I yanked, he hit his head on the car door and practically folded in half.
I let him fall to the ground, and his head hit the curb of the concrete with a sickening crack.
I dialed 911 before I could process what had happened.
Those gray eyes that I’d seen in the coffee shop stared at me with hope and fear.
Then the person in the front seat started to move, and gray eyes jolted and latched onto the seat belt.
She moved with impressive speed, wrapping the seat belt around the man’s throat so fast that I barely even spotted the move.
But then the man that’d fallen out of the car was on me.
I cursed myself for thinking the man was down.
I knew better.
I also knew that I couldn’t be two places at once, and the most immediate threat was currently playing whack-a-mole with my right kidney.
I moved in a swift counteraction, took the guy’s feet out from under him, and kicked him backward once he went to sit up.
As I did, his head hit the side of the car, and he was once again out.
I looked toward the car again and saw the woman staring blankly at the man slumped over the steering wheel.
“9-1-1, what’s your emergency!”
I placed the phone to my ear and told them everything that had just happened.
“Are you armed?”
“No.”
“You and the girl get away from the car in case they wake back up.”
Gray eyes and I moved toward the large concrete retaining wall and sat on it.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
She nodded, swallowing thickly.
“Who’s your favorite baseball player?” I asked, hoping to take her mind off of what had just happened.
Hopefully reminding her that she was okay.
Hell, I could use the reminder myself.
“Nolan Ryan,” she rasped. “You?”
“Gary Gentry,” I answered. “He was a pitcher for the Mets in 1969.”
“A little out of your age bracket, isn’t it?”
I shrugged. “Baseball is my thing. His stats were amazing.”
“I like Nolan Ryan because he decked Rob Ventura in the face.”
I laughed, but sobered as I watched the cops round the curve of the road.
“Whatever happens next,” she whispered as she wrapped her arms around herself. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what?” I asked.
She looked me squarely in the eyes and said, “For putting you into the mess that’s my life.”