“She wants me to take Camden. Permanently.” Man, I’m glad I’m stopped. Turning to Cole as his dark, gruff declaration sucked the oxygen from the cabin, my eyes almost boggled from their sockets. The air went frigid, and despite the time of year, I could see my breath when I exhaled a shallow wheeze. Cole reached to scratch his jaw roughly, and I gulped down the dense lump in my throat.
“What? Why?” Cole paled a shade or two, covering his mouth with his palm as tumultuous emotions roiled in his eyes. “Does she think he’s in danger? Is Mathew being a dick in that department, too?”
“Nah, nothing like that . . . so she says. She says she’s stressed out and can’t take it anymore that she’s working two jobs and never has anything. Camden’s having trouble in school because she’s such a mess. Of course, she doesn’t think she is, but he’s lashing out at the female teacher and loving up on the male attendant. I’m not sure what if any of what she said is true, but . . .” Trailing off uncertainly, Cole caught my eye as Parker sat back heavily in shock. My truck jostled a bit, and I gripped the wheel in white-knuckle tightness as the pain shimmering in his eyes. “I don’t know what to do. She said she’d sign over parental rights and everything without contesting anything, but I just know this’ll backfire on me. But what about Camden? He’s only five, not even five for another month.”
“I can’t tell you what to do, Cole, but I’ll back you up on whatever decision you make.” Reaching to clap a hand on his shoulder, I nodded before an impatient beep squeezed through the cracked open windows. Slowly rolling forward, I sniffled a little to try to clear my head of this dirty whirlwind. “Is that what she called you about when we did that pickup?”
“Yeah. I’ve been sitting on it since, but I can’t . . . I can’t open that door. Kayla already shits on me, and I can’t imagine it’d get better if I took him. Then, I’d have to take her too, or she’d find some other way to use him against me.”
“You don’t think she’d drop off the face of the earth without Camden tying her down anymore?” Parker, for once, wasn’t talkin’ shit, and a deep loathing thickened his tone. “I mean, it’s not uncommon. Even people that love their kids don’t stick around if they don’t have to.”
“Your parents were career military, Parker. That’s not the same at all. I know you feel some type of way because your grandma raised you, but that’s all the difference. They did love you enough to make that hard choice. Kayla’s doing it because she’s a fucking irresponsible cunt. Did it ever occur to you that you were a mistake?” Cole stabbed Parker where it hurt, and the tension in the cabin rose significantly as my passenger turned to shoot him a glare. “Your parents weren’t wrong for giving you to your grandma when you were born. No, parents should give up their whole life for their kids, but don’t fucking cheapen what they did. They gave you to someone who can provide stability and love you, and they paid for it all. Do you know how difficult it is for someone to be raised, bouncing around place to place, never having friends, never decorating your own room because you know in a year it won’t be yours anymore? What about being stationed overseas? Can you fucking learn Korean or something when you can barely fucking learn English?”
Cole’s voice roughened increasingly as he spoke, and I flexed my fingers around the wheel. He and Kayla hadn’t had an easy life in Las Vegas. That’s why he ran away when we finished high school. Spyder’s uncle put up with us and our shit out of the goodness of his heart, and Cole had been just as, if not more, devastated when he died.
But, as much as I felt for him, I couldn’t get in the middle of him and his sister’s shit. I didn’t want to. As heartless as it was, I thought he should drop Kayla and Camden for his own sake. She was a leech.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that, Cole.” Cole rasped a sigh at Parker’s apology but jerked his head in a nod. “I just think, if she’s throwing him away, she’d do it completely and go live her life the way she’s been trying to this whole time?”
“Yeah, until she wants something from me. Until the drugs and the money stop coming in, or she gets pregnant again, or she’s homeless, or . . . any multitude of reasons that are her own fault. If I take Camden, I’ll be opening that door. She’s his mother, and why can’t I help out? Well, she’ll go back to court and take him away. She’ll call CPS on me and accuse me of being a kiddy diddler. It goes way beyond simply giving him a home and stability. They’ll ask, how can I afford shit when I don’t have an official job. They’ll want me to live by myself because Davey caught a ton of shit when he quit the force. And they’ll try to drag Mathew in because he’s the biological father. It’s not just about Camden, even if it should be.”
“O-oh.” It was kinda cute, Parker’s idealistic view of the world. But rarely did things work the way they were intended or designed. “Really? I thought they’d be jumping for joy, not having to put the kid in the system.”
“You’d think so, but CPS is like
