“I’ll go. Alone. Don’t want to scare her.”
“Keen, I’m going with you. Even if I have to stay outside, I’m not letting you go without back up. Derek is crazy. If he thinks Evangeline is going to walk and talk…”
Keenan understood what his cousin meant. Her life might be even more in danger now that Derek knew she could leave him and end up talking about his operation.
“Okay, Ro. Let’s go.”
Keenan watched Evangeline enter the room. Although Donovan had advised him on all the legal stuff and even brought along the paperwork, Keenan still had a knot in his stomach.
He would confront Evangeline about not willing to do anything with Tommy. Hopefully get some answers before she’d shut things down. And in his wildest dreams, she would even sign the papers to waive her parental rights.
He had little hope that she would sign them. Not because she’d been a dedicated mother who suddenly had a change of heart. It had more the do with the monumental importance of the outcome of this talk. He didn’t dare to hope she would set them free.
With the papers in one hand, he knocked on the same motel door again. “Keenan… I can’t believe… How did you find me?” Evangeline’s hollow eyes flew past Keenan’s body in search of something. Tommy maybe?
Her hand flew to her chest when Ronan glared at her. “Oh…”
She then took a step back and motioned him to come inside, quickly. Ronan followed along. Keenan didn’t want to argue with him he was meant to stay outside. He wanted to use his time wisely and not bicker with Ronan about once again not listening.
“What are you doing here?” She narrowed her pale blue eyes. They had the same shape and form as Tommy’s and it reminded him of the reason he stood there.
“I’m here for two things.”
Evangeline shifted on her socks that she must have slipped into when he got out of the car. He willed the thought away of her carrying Tommy inside of her belly. She also had liked to walk around on her socks, no matter how hot it was in the summer.
He shook his head. The woman he knew then stood miles apart from the woman standing in front of him. With her gray skin, sunken cheeks and bloodshot eyes shooting daggers at him.
When she put a hand through her dirty hair, she gut stuck in the tangles. “You can’t just show up and—”
“Actually, I can. I’m not here to see you for old times' sake and catch up. I’m most certainly not here to get you back.”
She pursed her lips and said, “Good.”
His eyes went over her arms, searching for marks. He’d seen the surveillance pictures, she still needed her fix. He hated to indeed find the angry needle marks.
She quickly covered her arm with a shaking hand and spat, “My hourly rate is a hundred bucks, so you and your sidekick better make this quick.”
She smirked like she knew her sneer would shock him.
“I wouldn’t touch you with—”
“Ro, stop.”
Keenan took a few steps closer to the bed from where behind Evangeline stood. Her eyes flitted over the room and she grabbed an ice bucket standing on the bedside table next to her. What did she think, doing with that bucket?
“Get away from me.”
“Eve…” He deliberately used his nickname for her. He wanted to remind her who she used to be. Before the drugs. And before all the deceit.
“No. I’m no longer the dutiful Eve, the perfect mom who’s living in a fixer-upper across the street from family, having Sunday brunches talking about teething. That Eve… she’s gone.”
There was no lie there. And because that Eve was gone, he needed her to sign over her parental rights. He didn’t want this stranger, standing in front of him with fresh needle marks, to have any say in his son’s upbringing. If something happened to him, he wanted Ryleigh to be the one to care for Tommy. Not this woman who seemed ready to scratch his eyes out at any moment now.
“I’m not doing this with you,” she said.
He wanted to bring up her addiction and her life as a prostitute, but he needed to have her signature first. Then, he would try to help her out of this situation.
He wanted her to recover. To make a better life for herself. But as his cousins already warned him, he realized that most of these cases don’t have a happy ending.