Justified Read Online Free

agree with anyone who called me trash—yet in the midst of my strong feelings, it broke my heart to think of my little man growing up without a daddy. The baby deserved better. I glanced at the diner’s tinted plate-glass windows, feeling like an actor on a reality-television show, wanting the studio audience to choose my fate.
    If someone had asked me that morning if I would ever speak to Tyler again, I would have said, Not in a million years . He had gone too far, left my heart battered and my cheeks bruised. Yet here I stood not only speaking to him but considering letting him call me.
    A good Christian would keep on forgiving, but when I looked back at him, a hint of nausea grazed my insides. He seemed to be inspecting my clothing, and then his eyes bounced to the diner windows, and he squared his shoulders.
    He would never change.
    Even though my life was falling apart, I hadn’t given up my dream of a happy ending. A future involving roses and candles and sweet, kind words, not vanity and drunkenness and abusive rage.
    â€œNo.” I opened the door to Dixie’s. “Don’t call me.”

Chapter Five
    When I walked through the entrance of Dixie’s Diner, most of the merry patrons returned their attention to the piles of food in front of them, but a few couldn’t keep their eyes from ping-ponging back and forth between Tyler and me as he pulled away.
    The only person openly glaring was Ruthie.
    â€œSit.” The wooden legs of the chair across from her grated against the floor as she shoved it with her foot. “What did the un­dependable, shallow egomaniac want?”
    I glanced at the two women on each side of her—Ruthie’s aunt Velma and her mother, Lynda—and wished we were alone. Tyler’s appearance rattled me, and I would have liked to discuss it with my friend … but not her entire family.
    I eased into the seat, scooting back an inch to account for my swollen belly. “I don’t know what you mean.”
    â€œDon’t play stupid.” Ruthie smirked.
    Velma’s plump palm patted my arm. “Aw, Ruthie, give the girl a break. Plain as day the boy caught her off guard.”
    A grunt of disgust came from Ruthie’s mother, but she didn’t look up from the laminated menu. She merely raised one condescending eyebrow and tucked her hair behind her ear. I never knew what to make of Lynda Turner.
    My mother once described her as an unambitious small-town floozy, but Mother, understandably, was biased.
    Velma Pickett, on the other hand, she described as homemade soap —functional, old-fashioned, not much to look at. But ironically, Ruthie’s aunt Velma, more often than her mother, caused a stifling wave of guilt to press against me like a sauna. Even though she hadn’t set foot in a church building since her marriage to Ansel thirty years before, she still had more jewels in her crown than I ever would.
    All three women shared the same skeptical brown eyes, compelling me to open my own menu. “Tyler asked about the baby. He didn’t want anything.”
    â€œTyler Cruz?” Lynda finally spoke. “Wanting nothing?”
    Ruthie glanced at her mother out of the corner of her eye, but she didn’t rebuke her the way she often did.
    â€œThe man doesn’t exactly have a good track record for love and devotion,” Lynda said.
    She had worked at the diner over a year, so she had no reason to read that menu. She merely used it as a prop to hide behind, like a hot-wire fence separating her from the rest of the world.
    I pressed my lips together to keep from snapping at her. The woman had every right to hate my family. Especially my father. “I know Tyler’s a mess, but so am I.”
    â€œNo, you’re not,” Ruthie said. “You’re making something of your life and taking responsibility for your actions.” Her head jerked to the window. “He’s only flumping along doing