OFF THE CUFF

Prologue

I rocked the baby in my arms, trying to settle her down. Was she hungry? Did she have a dirty diaper?

My heart sped up as I stared down at her scrunched-up face. What was I thinking?

Panic began to settle in. Only four hours had passed since Social Services called and told me I had a niece. Then, they told me I had to take the baby, or she was going into foster care. Did I let someone else take her? The decision had been a total gut reaction—of course I’d take her.

I wasn’t even aware that my little sister, Ryn, was pregnant, but I hadn’t seen my sister in six months. Not since her last appearance, when she was strung out and desperate for money.

Was she pregnant then? I did the math and began to shake as anger filled me. For years Ryn had chosen drugs over everything, and it seemed having a baby had done nothing to change that.

She ran. Left the hospital and was gone. Disappearing into another c***k den.

“Are you hungry?” I asked the tiny baby in my arms. The baby girl didn’t even have a name. My sister couldn’t even do that for her.

Once again, because my sister was addicted to drugs, I was left trying to pick up the pieces.

The baby let out another high-pitched cry, deepening the vibrations inside me. What had I gotten myself into? I knew nothing about babies, and in one afternoon, I had one.

Tears filled my eyes as well and I blew out an unsteady breath.

Thankfully, Social Services was able to provide me with some staples to get me by, but I was going to be spending all night on sss one-clicking the crap out of the baby section.

It was only Tuesday. What was I going to do about work in the morning? I’d found a job that I loved and had an amazing boss, but how was he going to react when I suddenly had to take time off? Did I even qualify for any type of family leave?

The suddenness of my parenthood was going to be a huge adjustment, and I needed to strategize. That would have to wait until after I talked to my boss.

If I wasn’t a hyperventilating mess by then.

The biggest hurdle would be my boyfriend, Pete.

In the four years we’d been together we’d talked about our future, about getting married and having kids, but in all that time he’d never done anything to make it happen.

Every time I brought it up, he came back with some excuse. “We’re still young, Roe. We’ve got time.”

A vibrating buzz moved through my veins and worry crawled in. I began to second guess myself, but another little grunt from the bundle in my arms tugged at my heart and reminded me that no matter what, she was worth it.

The door lock clicked and I turned toward the entry, my stomach in knots. Pete stopped mid-step, his brown eyes wide.

“What the hell is that crying?” Pete said as he stared at the baby in my arms. “Are you babysitting?”

“Hey, babe.”

He glanced around the room, his eyes bouncing to the bags lying on the floor. “Explain,” he said as he scowled at the baby in my arms.

I knew that tone. After years together I’d heard all of his intonations, and the hard edge and sharp snap of the word through clenched teeth told me that this conversation was not going to go well.

“This is my niece,” I said, turning the baby to show him her face in hopes it would tame him.

“Ryn had a baby?” he asked, then looked at her, his mouth turned down.

“And she’s going to live here.”

His eyes widened. “Here? With us?”

I swallowed hard. “Yes.”

He shook his head. “No. Call Ryn and tell her to come pick her brat up.”

“Pete! What the heck?” I knew where he was coming from. Ryn had dumped problems on our doorstep many times over the past few years, but this wasn’t the same. This was a baby who needed me. An innocent who needed help.

“Where the hell are we going to put a baby? This apartment is barely big enough for the two of us.”

While the Lenox Hill apartment we were living in was larger than our previous apartment, it was still a small one-bedroom—New York City living at its finest.

“I don’t know, but we can figure it out.”

He shook his head. “No. No, it can’t stay here.”

“She has nowhere else to go,” I said through clenched teeth. There was no discussion—she was staying.

“I don’t give a crap. It’s not our problem! Let someone else deal with it.”

I lifted my chin and shook my head. “She’s family. I’m not going to give her to strangers.”

His gaze narrowed. “It’s not staying.”

“Pete, please,” I said in an attempt to steer the conversation away from the full-blown explosion it was about to become.

Over the years we’d had it out only a few times, but as we went back and forth now, I noticed how this was the most worked up either of us had become in months.

He shook his head. “No, Roe.”

“We can’t even talk about it?” I asked.

“What is there to talk about? I don’t want a kid right now, especially not your crackhead sister’s!”

“What are you saying?” I asked. The c***k forming in my heart knew the answer.

Surely the man I’d lived with since college, the first man I’d ever loved, wasn’t about to make me decide, make me choose between him and a completely helpless little girl.

“What I’m saying is that it’s that thing or me.”

And there it was—the ultimatum. The one I knew was coming. Somehow I’d still convinced myself that Pete wasn’t going to disappoint me. I needed clarification.

“You’re asking me to abandon my two-week-old niece?”

He crossed his arms in front of me and sneered at the baby. “I’m telling you that if you don’t give it back, I’m out.”

I couldn’t believe it. My stomach dropped as I looked at him. Really looked at him. His brown hair was an unkempt as always, brown eyes narrowed, and the sleeves of his dress shirt were rolled up, exposing a string of tattoos. To me he was tall, but he was more than a couple inches shorter than six feet. However, in this stance he seemed larger and more imposing.

Trust didn’t come naturally to me. I had reasons, shaped from my life experiences, and I often held a part of myself back. I had one foot out the door at all times. And yet, after years with Pete, I’d silently given him the benefit of the doubt. Believed that our relationship was solid in ways I hadn’t before.

A large part of me, deep down, knew the minute the social worker explained my options that somehow this exact situation was coming. Pete’s response further hardened my heart.

Internally, I could almost feel our connection severing and the one with the baby in my arms growing stronger. I wasn’t letting her go. Not for him or anyone.

“You can’t mean that,” I said.

“I’m dead serious, Roe. I don’t want your sister’s problem. She’s caused us enough issues over the years, or do you not remember giving her our f*****g rent money for rehab, only for her to leave three days later?” He leaned in, his eyes slits. “Besides, you’re just not worth all of this.”

There it was, the real reason he wasn’t okay helping me to care for my sister’s child. The words were a punch to the gut, then a deep scrape in my chest as they burned into my heart.

My shoulders dropped, and I unknowingly curled tighter around the innocent child I held.

“Excuse me, what? I’m not worth it?” I asked, seething. I was always the good little girlfriend. Went along with just about anything he wanted to do. That was partially due to my desire to be wanted and also because I was normally a pretty easygoing person.

Most of the time.

But he’d just pushed me past acquiescing.

My whole body shook, but when I spoke, it was with a vicious-edged calm. “So if I told you I was pregnant, what then? Would you tell me to get rid of it?”

“That’s different, and you f*****g know it,” he growled.

“Then, if I took her back, I could go off birth control and we could have a baby?” I asked, forcing him to answer honestly.

He froze, his jaw twitching. “I’m not ready for that.”

“And I’m not ready for this,” I hissed. “But guess what? Life doesn’t always make you ready for things.”

“I love you, baby, but this—” he waved his hand at the baby in my arms “—isn’t happening. Not with me. I’m not staying.”

A harsh laugh left me. “You f*****g selfish bastard. You love me?” I scoffed and rolled my eyes. We were finally at the pinnacle of what had been building under the surface for a long time. “I’m sure you haven’t even kept it in your pants the last four months.”

We hadn’t had s*x in longer than that, which made me wonder—if he wasn’t getting it with me, who was he getting it from? By the pink mark on his neck, it was his coworker, Jennifer. I’d watched them flirting at the holiday party his work had the year before. He denied it then, but things had definitely cooled off between us after that.

“I’m selfish? You didn’t even talk to me about this. And you don’t know what you’re talking about as far as my f*****g d**k is concerned.”

“Would it have changed anything?” I asked, my teeth gritted.

“It still would have been f*****g no.”

Again, there it was. The truth. We’d become too comfortable, and our relationship was stagnant. No longer growing or evolving.

It was still difficult to process that it had come to this. That he wanted to throw our relationship away because of a baby. Though I knew that wasn’t true. We’d been building to this, but he was too much of a f*****g coward to break up. The baby was an excuse he was taking full advantage of.

“Then I think it’s time for you to go,” I said through clenched teeth.

“You’re making a mistake, picking that over me,” he sneered.

Another harsh laugh escaped. “I think my mistake was thinking we ever had a future.”

He stood there fuming before he turned and stormed into the bedroom. After quickly packing a suitcase, he hit up the bathroom, then came back into the room and picked up his laptop. I never moved from where I was standing as my relationship crumbled around my feet.

“I’ll be back for the rest,” he said as he walked to the door and threw on his coat. He turned back and stared at me. “Last chance.”

My eyes locked with his. “Get out.”

He turned and walked out, the door slamming behind him. As soon as he was gone, I let loose a sob as the silence soaked in.

The baby started to cry with me, and I pulled her close and pressed my lips to her forehead.

“It’s okay,” I whispered to the tiny baby in my arms as tears slipped down my cheeks. “We don’t need him. We’ll be okay.”

Pete’s decision hurt. Badly. Regardless of whether I held part of myself back from him or not, we’d spent so many years together. His response to the precious newborn was the last straw. It forced us both to see our relationship for what it had become.

I should have known I couldn’t trust him. Looking back at our relationship, I knew he’d let me down in so many ways—from failing to pick me up after I had my wisdom teeth removed, to small things like using all the towels and not washing them.

None of that mattered now.

Still, I mourned the loss.

It was going to be hard, but once I had her in my arms, I knew I was never letting her go.