I slammed the phone down just as Jacy and Edward appeared in the doorway. Jacy hightailed it right up the stairs without saying anything to me, and Edward frowned at the phone in my hand as he sat at the table beside me.

"What's up with her?" I asked, pointing at the ceiling. It sounded like Jacy was erecting a ten-story building in her room.

"She wants to show me the cop badge your old man gave her. What's wrong with you?"

"I have a meeting after work tomorrow, and no one can pick Jacy up from school."

"Where is her school?"

"Park. And Elm."

"Five blocks? Can't she walk that?"

I shook my head immediately. "I watch way too much true crime tv to ever let that happen." I didn't tell him about the podcasts. Or the late-night google rabbit holes I fell down.

"I could pick her up."

I stared at him. "She needs dinner. And homework help. I won't be home until seven. She's a handful sometimes… all the time, actually."

Edward leaned in, eyes on fire, voice low.

"You'll let me go face deep into your pussy, but you won't let me pick up your kid?"

Jacy bounded into the kitchen, and he straightened in his chair, focusing his full attention on her cop badge as though that word hadn't just come out of his mouth. My crotch ached, the ghost of him rubbing his face between my thighs, the physical part of him sitting there with my daughter acting like that stupid badge was the coolest thing he'd ever seen.

He was so wonderfully confusing.

"Edward is picking you up from school tomorrow, ok?"

I might as well have told Jacy we were permanently relocating to a candy factory. "Really?"

"Really. But no shenanigans." I pointed at her, knowing full well she instigated a lot of my bad ideas. "Skatepark, then home. You can make dinner together, but you have to do your homework—no skate competitions through my kitchen. Otherwise, next week's Monday chore is scrubbing the skid marks off the linoleum. Both of you."

They made the exact same disgusted face at me.

"Can we go get ice cream after? All of us? When you get home?"

How was I supposed to say no to that? This girl was my bad influence, through and through. I looked at Edward, eyebrows clear up under his hat and curls framing his face, a big fat grin on him.

"That sounds like an excellent idea."

AN

Can't argue with logic, right?

My heart belongs to HH.

Thank you for reading.

xo/HB

(where my murderinos at? holla!)