Sweet Sunshine Read Online Free Page B

actually believed the stuff spewing from her mouth. She’d done her best to bleed me dry, and had it not been for the fact I was smart enough to keep our bank accounts separate when she conveniently ended up pregnant and insisted I marry her, God only knows the damage she would have done.
    “You want happiness so badly? You want to build a life with your old-as-fuck, wrinkly-balled boyfriend? Have at it. I won’t stop you. All you have to do is give me full custody of Eliza and we’ll be out of your hair, that’s what you want anyway, right?”
    It was a fight we’d had incessantly since I told her I didn’t want to be married to her anymore. She held Eliza over my head, using her as a pawn through the entire proceedings. I tried to get custody of my daughter, I fucking fought for it, but there was nothing to prove she was an unfit mother. That’s what killed me the most, knowing she had no interest in raising her own flesh and blood, but wouldn’t give her to me because she was a game piece she could continue to play even when we were officially over.
    Her sharp, biting laughter echoed in my ear. “And miss out on making you as miserable as you make me?” The manipulative bitch. “I don’t think so, Derrick. You could always try and take me to court, but seeing as your income as a deputy is laughable, and Harold would insist on paying for me to have the best lawyers in Wyoming, you don’t have a leg to stand on. Now are you going to keep Eliza or not?”
    “You know I am,” I ground out.
    “Good,” she chirped and that damned smile I could hear in her voice grated on my already frayed nerves. “See, that wasn’t so hard was it.”
    I pulled the phone away from my ear and disconnected before I could say something that would put everything I was working for in jeopardy. I’d been keeping a log of every time I kept Eliza on Layla’s days, of how many times her school had called me when her mother just hadn’t shown up to get her, of the bronchitis she got last winter that was left unattended so long it turned into full-blown pneumonia that put my baby girl in the hospital for three of the worst days I’d ever had to live through.
    I kept a record of everything. If it was the last thing I did, I was going to get my child out of that house and into a home where she was surrounded by nothing but love. But I had to be patient in order to do that, and when it came to my Eliza’s welfare, patience was a virtue I struggled with on a daily basis.
    That was why, at only nine years old, I’d given her a cellphone so she’d always be able to reach me. Did it make me feel like shit, having to explain to a little kid that she couldn’t let her mom know she had it because she’d take it away? Of course it did, I never wanted to have to put Eliza in that position. But desperate times called for desperate measures. And I wouldn’t leave her without a way to get to me.
    “You okay, man?” Perkins, one of the other deputies in the Sheriff’s department, asked.
    “Yeah,” I grunted, standing from the battered chair and re-pocketing my phone. “I need coffee. I’ll be back in a few.”
    I turned without a backward glance, my mind set on one thing, and that was getting the best cup of coffee in Pembrooke to try and calm my tattered nerves. I should have known better than to answer the phone to Layla without caffeine in my system. Wouldn’t be a mistake I made twice.
    Pushing through the doors of the station, I dragged my ass, and my bad mood, down the board walked sidewalks toward Sinful Sweets, silently praying no one stopped me to chat. I was just pissed off enough to rip even the most unsuspecting person’s head off. And it didn’t help that in order to get my favorite coffee, I had to deal with the other woman in my life hell bent on doing my head in.
    I could only hope Chloe wasn’t working the counter when I got there. I still hadn’t figured out what the hell was up with her, why she’d gone from