Mike scoffs, shaking his head, clearly frazzled and unused to anyone taking up for me. I’m sure he came here thinking he could intimidate me and make me cower, and now he doesn’t know what to do with himself. “What’s it to you, anyway? Who the hell are you?” he deflects, and I feel Winston step closer to me.
“I’m her boss. I take care of all my employees. Especially single moms with bullies for ex-husbands,” Winston declares.
“And she’ll be family soon enough, if my nephew Talon plays his cards right with her sister. This is his brother. And no one fucks with our family,” Asher says, slapping Bax on the back. “Ain’t that right?”
“Sure is,” Bax replies, a sinister-looking grin on his handsome face that makes Mike look like he’s about to pee himself.
He tries to brush them all off, but he just comes off like a wimp when he says, “Whatever.” But then he looks at me, and the second bomb of the night is dropped on me. “What you’re asking for is utterly ridiculous. I’m not paying that, and I will be fighting for full custody.” My legs start to shake, and then he gives me his final blow. “It would be wise of you to start finding somewhere else to live.”
My knees buckle as he turns toward the door of the restaurant, and Winston catches me against his chest as Asher and Bax follow Mike inside.
“Shhh, naekkeo. Shhh, it’s okay, it’s okay,” Winston murmurs into the top of my head, and I realize I’m trembling all over.
I shake my head frantically, tilting my head up to look at him, but his face is blurry from the tears filling my eyes. “It’s not okay. He’s going to try to take my girls from me. And he has the money to do it, Winston. I don’t. I don’t have anything to fight him with,” I whimper, and the tears overflow my lower lids and my chin wobbles.
“You have me,” he implores, gripping me tighter and shaking me a little. “You may not think so, but you have me. All of me. And I’m not going to let anything happen to you or your girls.”
I shake my head again, even though I want nothing more than to believe him. “I can’t let you do that. How is it going to look to everyone if you ride into battle for me and… pay for all this shit I have no doubt is going to add up to be astronomical if he’s really going to go for full custody? A boss doesn’t just do that for their employee, Win.”
“I don’t give a fuck what it looks like. No one is taking your babies from you. I don’t care how much it takes,” he growls, and if I weren’t so upset, I’d swoon.
Why couldn’t he be single?
The thought snaps me back to reality. “How are you going to pay whatever it takes if your wife finds out about what we did and takes everything from you for cheating?” I step out of his hold, and his arms drop to his sides, his face a mask. “I… I need a minute. Can you go check on my tables please? Or have one of the other girls do it? I just… need a minute.” My hands lift to my temples, and I close my eyes.
I feel him come closer for a moment, but I don’t move. I hear him breathe me in before sighing his frustration, and he murmurs, “Just trust me, Cece,” and then he’s gone.
When I open my eyes again, I pull my phone out of my apron and sink down on the bench right here in the outdoor waiting area, and I do something I haven’t done in a very long time.
I call to cry to my mom.
17
Cece
I spend the drive home preparing myself for the confrontation I’m no doubt about to have with my sister. Before she and Talon left with the girls after dinner to take them to get frozen yogurt, she made it clear she would be waiting for me to get home to find out what the hell happened with Mike.
It’s a little later than I normally get home though, so hopefully she went to bed. I spent the last thirty minutes going back and forth with Winston yet again about how he can’t treat me any differently than he would his other employees. I told him over and over again, even after he swore he’d do the same thing for any of us girls, that it didn’t look right from the outside for him to not only pay for the initial filing for divorce and the retainer for my lawyer, but to offer to pay to fight for custody of my kids. Which I knew from the internet could cost an astronomical amount if things got ugly.