Redstonesf 15, p.1
Nice Buns (Cheap Thrills Series Book 7), page 1
Copyright © 2021 Mary B Moore
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, copied or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system without written expressed permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, businesses, places, events and incident are products of the authors imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is purely coincidental.
Cover design: Jay Aheer, Simply Defined Art
Cover Photograph: Reginald Deanching, RplusM Photography
Model: Ryan Stanton
Editor: B&C.
The use of actors, artists, movies, TV Shows, and song titles/ lyrics throughout this book are done so for storytelling purposes and should in no way be seen as advertisement. Trademark names are used in an editorial fashion with no intention of infringement of the respective owner’s trademark.
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All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the Copyright Act 1911 and the Copyright Act 1988, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior express, written consent of the author.
This book is intended for mature adults only and contains consensual sexual content and language that may offend some. Suggested reading audience is 18 years or older. I consider this book as Adult Romance.
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Alex
Regrets—I’ve got them.
Mistakes—I’ve made them.
And I lived with them every day. Wondering if I’d made the right choice back then or if I should have walked away the day my superiors called me into their offices to discuss the case.
I didn’t, and it’s something I’ll always wonder if I should have done it differently. Now I worked next to my son, and I loved every minute of it and the peace I’d finally found in life.
Until my new neighbor moved in and distracted me from the orderly course I was on.
Evie
My mom was a romantic. That’s where I’d gone wrong with my ex-husband, thinking anything the man did could ever possibly be considered romance. The divorce had given me back my freedom, though, and I had custody of my son, Cody, so I was putting it behind me.
All I was planning to do was to start over and focus on the two of us. Everyone had known my business back in where we’d been living, so this time I’d keep my head down and stay in the background.
That was until I totally embarrassed myself taking the box from the bakers in town out of my car. To be fair, I was talking about the buns, but if the nice buns shoe fits…
To all of the single parents out there—don’t accept anything less than the best.
* * *
And to my son, I love you to the moon and back. We’ve got this, bud. Xoxo
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Epilogue
About the Author
Also by Mary B. Moore
Prologue
Evie
To all of the people who’ve been cheated on—how did you find out about it?
Me: I was watching a video that’d gone viral on social media of a kid doing a stupid stunt that went wrong. It had me dreading the day my son called me saying he was in the hospital because he’d jumped up on a metal railing on his skateboard, that’d then slipped, and he’d landed legs akimbo on the bar and had burst his balls.
Sounds innocent, right? Well, in the background of the video was a motel, and just as the kid’s nuts hit the metal and the video zoomed in more, I noticed a familiar red car in the background.
Squinting, I’d tried to read the plate number, but I couldn’t do it until they changed angle. Then, as the guy lay crying on the ground, out came my husband from a door in the background behind him with a woman. Not only that, but he’d kissed her, then looked straight at the camera and grinned.
And this discovery had just happened ten minutes ago.
To begin with, I was numb. But as I watched the video over and over, taking screenshots so I could zoom in on the screen and make sure it was Neil, the numbness gave way to anger like I’d never felt in my life.
See, at the end of the video, it zoomed in on the kid lying in a hospital bed, and just above his head was the date on a dry erase board next to his name.
My son’s birthday.
The birthday his father had missed three days ago.
He’d told us he had a business trip he couldn’t get out of in Atlanta and had apologized profusely for how his ‘job was taking him away from his son on one of the most important days of the year.’
But I recognized that motel. I knew the park the poor kid became a gelding in, too. It was fifteen minutes away from where we lived.
Storming up to the bedroom, I opened the closet and went to Neil’s side. If he was a smart man, he’d have gotten rid of any evidence of his bullshit.
It took me only forty-three seconds to find proof that he was the dumbest, cheating, lying, full of shit, asshole in the world.
He’d left a receipt for the motel in his pocket, and one for his parking was on the floor next to his shoe. There were also condoms in all of his suit pockets—both the jacket and slacks—which was impressive or he just had delusions of grandeur. He’d never been able to go more than once since day one and said any book, movie, or man who claimed it was doable was lying or popping little blue pills.
At least he was using protection, I guess. Not that I’d touched him in years since I’d found him telling a woman he’d never met in real life, only on the internet, that he loved her. I’d only taken him back because I had no experience with divorce and wanted the best for our son, Cody, and thought having both parents in the house until he left for college would do that.
Not once did I think he’d lie to his child’s face and put his dick ahead of his kid’s birthday.
Well, fuck him.
“How long has the affair been going on for?” I asked as soon as he came through the door three hours later.
Cody was upstairs gaming, so he wouldn’t come down any time soon and overhear the conversation. I never wanted my baby to hear anything like this, especially not about his father.
Jumping, Neil looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “Excuse me?”
I’d never once had a spine during our marriage. I’d had enough of being beaten down, though, and now I was taking hold of the reins with both hands.
For years I’d forced myself to smile in public, and the only time I smiled in my house was for my son. No more.
“You heard me. How long?”
Dropping his keys onto the table near the door, he smirked, and it was ugly. “And who would I be having an affair with, Evita?”
Pulling out the receipts from my pocket, I dropped them on the floor, hiding the smile that wanted to break free as he watched them with a frown on his face. Then, pulling out my phone, I sent him the screenshots, one by one, all thirty-three of them, along with a copy of the video.
“I’d take a look at them if I was you. They make for some interesting reading. Maybe the two of you should look for a career change and become porn stars. You’d make a killing.”
Keeping his eyes on me, he pulled his phone out of his pants pocket. Then, cockily, he lowered his eyes, unlocked it, and started to look through it all.
The second it registered what he was reading, his expression changed from smug to furious.
“Where did you get these?”
“Amazing what you stumble across on the internet these days, isn’t it?”
Unable to look at him anymore, I spun on my heel and walked toward the kitchen.
Things had been bad between us since our son, Cody, was two. I’d come home from taking him to the hospital because he’d had an infection in his ear that’d dehydrated him thanks to the constant vomiting and had picked up the laptop when it wouldn’t stop making noises.
On the screen had been a chat, and with messages coming through so frantically, I’d immediately thought the worst and tha
Yeah, no. It’d been the woman he’d been having an online affair with.
Because Cody was asleep, I’d scrolled through them with tears rolling down my face at the lies and nasty shit he’d told her about me. She’d been married as well, with three daughters, but she was hinting at leaving her husband and moving closer to where we were.
And guess what? One of the biggest complaints he had about me was that I was always with Cody, and he felt like it was us against him. Those were his exact words, like we were all three years old, not adults with a little kid to look after.
Her reply was: How selfish.
A mother of three calling me selfish for looking after a small child. Did hers have to raise themselves?
Tired, fed up, and over his shit, I’d ended the marriage the same day and thrown him out of the house.
He’d come back two weeks later in tears, begging for another chance, and like the fool I was, I’d given it to him for Cody’s sake. My parents had been together since they were nineteen, and no one in my family had ever had a reason to get divorced, so I’d thought I was doing the best thing for my child.
More fool me. Once the trust was shattered in a marriage, few can get it back to where it was before it happened.
We went to couple’s therapy and tried everything, but, as the therapist explained, if I wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened and go back to how it’d been before this, I’d have to let it go completely. I couldn’t do that, so I went along with the motions, never once complaining when he fell asleep in his study every night, and focused on my son.
But this was too far.
The fact he’d chosen his affair over his son’s birthday, had lied to his crying kid’s face, had ruined that special day with his absence, and had done it to have sex with a random woman in a motel fifteen minutes away from our home lit a fire in me.
And I’ll repeat—the video had gone viral.
Thousands if not millions of people would see him smiling smugly at the camera. Our friends would see it. Our families would end up seeing it. I could only hope they watched it until the end and saw the date and realized what he’d done.
He was a liar. He was a cheat. He was a selfish and manipulative bastard. And I was done.
Even our two dogs, Rocket and Razzle, were done with him. They’d never even raised their heads when he’d come in, and come to think of it, I don’t think they’d done it for a while. They were lazy by nature, but not this lazy.
“You’ll understand why I’m making the decision I am,” I told him when I heard his footsteps behind me. “You have three days to celebrate Cody’s birthday with him and pack up your stuff, and then I’d like you out of here.
“I’ve contacted a lawyer about the divorce, and she’s putting things in motion for me. I’ll retain custody of him, but you can visit him whenever you want—”
“That suits me fine,” he interrupted, trying to sound blasé but failing miserably. He wasn’t sad or upset, he was pissed because he was in the wrong. “You can keep him. I don’t want the responsibility of being a parent, anyway.”
An almost animalistic noise drowned out my gasp, and when I turned around to see where it’d come from, it was to find Cody standing pale-faced in the doorway.
And he’d heard what the asshole had said.
“You— You don’t want me?”
I saw the expression on Neil’s face change from a sneer to fake sympathy before he glanced over at him, not even turning fully or looking ashamed at how badly he’d fucked up.
“You and your mom are close, kid, so you need to live with her. I’ll see you when I’ve got time, okay?”
Cody, my brave little eight-year-old mini-man, tilted his chin in the air, doing his best not to show his dad how close to tears he was.
“If you don’t want the responsibility of being a parent, I don’t want the responsibility of being your kid when you feel like it. All my friends’ dads do things with them, but you can never be bothered with me. Their dads go to stuff and are proud of their sons, but you’ve never once done that. You just sit there, looking bored and playing on your phone.”
Instead of putting Cody’s mind at ease, Neil just sighed. “Let’s not be dramatic. Everyone finds going to school for their kids boring. I’m not the only one who’s found a way to get through it with my phone.”
I opened my mouth to tell him to stop, but Cody got there first.
“Rot in hell.”
Straightening up, Neil glared at him. “You’ll have some goddamn respect when you—”
“Why?” Cody yelled, his arms rigid at his sides. “You just said you didn’t want to be my dad, so why do you get respect?”
Looking from him to me, Neil sneered. “You disgust me. I don’t know how I stayed married to you for as long as I did.”
I blinked at the hatred in his voice, wondering what I’d done to deserve it, but most importantly, I felt anxious about not wanting my son to witness this.
“The marriage has been more of a co-habiting arrangement for years now, Neil. You know that as well as I do.
“Now, for the sake of my son, I’d appreciate it if you could please hold back anything else you’ve got to say until he’s not here to hear it.” I kept my tone even and my voice low, hoping it would diffuse the anger in him and save Cody from being hurt further.
“No, Mom, I want to hear what he’s got to say. I think I deserve it,” Cody said, crossing his arms in front of his chest.
My poor, poor boy.
“Sweetheart, why don’t you—"
Of course the bastard had to interrupt me.
“You’ll always be alone, Evita. I mean, look at you.” He looked like he’d tasted something disgusting as he scanned me from head to toe. “Good luck, you’re going to need it.”
“Leave my mom alone,” Cody screamed, completely losing it.
Storming over to where he’d dropped his stuff as he came in, I scooped it all up and walked back to where Neil was standing and dropped it at his feet.
“You need to leave. I’ve paid for more of this house than you have, and I’ve got a child who lives in it.”
Yeah, I earned more as a hairstylist here in Pflugerville than he did in his job in Austin, but I’d also had savings my grandparents had started for me when I was born that’d paid for a substantial down payment on the place. I wasn’t losing one cent of it to him.
“Once we’ve found a new place to live, I’ll put this one on the market, and whatever the lawyer says you’re eligible to receive from the sale, you’ll get.”
Neil went to interrupt, but I didn’t give him a chance. “Now, as the resident of the property, I’m asking you to leave. If you need to collect anything, you can do it when my dad’s present to ensure you don’t take what you’re not entitled to.”
He’d never seen me like this. I’d always been the one to roll over and go with what he said, but not this time.
Not any other time.
Wisely, Neil chose not to say another word as he picked up what I’d dropped in front of him and stormed out of the house, slamming the door behind him.
Instead of running to me like he usually did when he was upset, Cody turned and ran to his room. When he did this, it was his way of not wanting but needing time to himself.
It killed me to do it, but I gave my boy all of thirty minutes before I checked on him to find him gaming with his headset on. He was laughing and taking part, but there was a sadness about him.
He shouldn’t have heard any of what had been said tonight or have the burden of it anywhere near him. I hated that it hadn’t worked out that way.
Later on, when he came through to my room and lay across my bed with his head on my stomach, I promised I’d make his life the best and happiest I could, and we made plans. What our house would look like, how he’d have the chickens he’d always wanted but that Neil had said hell no to, and how our dogs would be able to run around in the garden without him losing his mind for no reason about it.
