Hustle Him (Bank Shot Romance #2)(3)
Author: Jennifer Foor

His parents were still pretty young and had two kids that were in school themselves. My husband happened to be their accidental teenage pregnancy that had led to their twenty five year marriage. Unfortunately, as much as they loved their grandkids, they were much too busy working and raising their two youngest, Gabe and Gwen. Yeah, they went with all the same letters.

My mother died when I was sixteen of an aneurism. She was fine when I went to school and by the time I came home she was gone. My father did a pretty good job raising me, but he’d drank himself to death and died of liver failure three years ago. Ever since then, I’d had to depend on myself for everything.

I’d been with Gavin since we were fifteen years old. Our on again off again relationship through high school was like gasoline to the fire. At times it was downright violent and, for some reason, we both kept coming back for more. When I got pregnant at seventeen, it was pretty much a given that we were going to get married. His parents wanted us to be just like them and, much to our surprise, we had made a pretty good life for ourselves. Granted, we worked our butts off and rarely had time for each other, but what married couple with young children did?

Gavin started doing tattoos when he was twenty one. He’d always been great at art anyway, so it just made sense. He started working for the current shop he was at about four years ago. An old friend of his started it and added Gavin to the list of artists there. The job was great and the pay was pretty good too, but what happened at the shop was not alright with me.

They had these little groupie chicks in there all the time. They’d just hang out and drink with the older guys that worked there, including my husband. Of course, he liked the attention, and last year, I found out that he’d hooked up with one of them after hours.

It broke my heart.

Every single day I was busy busting my ass trying to help pay the bills and make sure our children were taken care of, while he was out sticking his dick in some little wall banger. It made me sick.

I wanted to leave him, but without my parents and no real friends, I looked at my children and knew that they needed stability. It was bad enough that all of the other kid’s parents talked behind our backs because we looked different than them. Gavin had used my arm and other parts of my body as a human canvas. At first, all of my tattoos were easily covered, but after he finished with my sleeve was when I really started to hear the whispers and see the dirty looks. It didn’t matter that they were beautiful flowers or my children’s names. I looked different and they hated me for it.

I was never asked to go on field trips or to join the PTA. Even when I volunteered for class parties, I was never picked. I knew the reason, but it not only hurt my children, it hurt me too. I was a damn good mother; better than half of the mother’s in my children’s classes. Still, they saw what they wanted in me and never gave me a chance otherwise. My husband and I had tattoos. I had my nose pierced.

So what?

I had the same problem with finding a job. Even after taking a bunch of college courses online after my first child was born, people just wouldn’t hire me for anything that had to deal directly with the public. I ended up borrowing money from my father to complete a bartending course. It worked out to benefit me more in the long run. I had a great clientele and made pretty good money doing it. Plus, half of our town ended up at the bar at night.

In the past six months, I hadn’t been seeing eye to eye with my husband. For some reason, he wanted me home all of the time. I was registered on two pool leagues that I shot on during the time I was working. If the league fell on my day off, I would still show up to be able to socialize and not have it be part of my job. I didn’t have real friends, none that I would call trustworthy, that is.

The problem was that I’d met them all from working in the bar. Getting to know someone at that kind of place isn’t exactly a good thing. Most people that come into a bar alone are there because they have problems that they want to drink away. I’d heard every kind of story and at the end of the day my team consisted of two town drunks, a seventy year old farmer that lost his wife to cancer, and three brothers that were more focused on who could get laid the fastest each week.

My husband, who I had been in love with since puberty, didn’t understand why I needed a social life outside of work. He felt that my line of work was the only socializing I would ever need. In fact, he said my real job was maintaining the town gossip and learning everyone’s dirty secrets.

I don’t know why he complained. I contributed to our family and managed to make things work. At the end of the day, I loved them and would do anything to make sure they never had to need for anything.

It wasn’t until this past winter when things started to really fall apart. I’d noticed Gavin was being distant. He would come home all giddy and want to spend time with the kids, more than usual. I thought maybe he just wanted to be a better father at first. I didn’t mind that he was ignoring me for the kids. They were the most important anyway.

As the winter months past, we communicated less. One night, I sat him down and told him how I felt. He blamed it all on me and my guilty conscious, claiming that I wasn’t going to let his one indiscretion go.

I wanted to forget, but I also wanted to believe that I was still a desirable woman. I had needs and he just wasn’t fulfilling them. One day I went and talked to his mother for a few hours. She suggested that I give him his space and maybe he was just going through a ‘man stage’.

I got back into the rhythm of my daily routine and tried to brush off my suspicions.

One morning, after getting the kids up and ready for school, I started to feel lousy. As the day progressed, so did my health. I called work and let them know that I wouldn’t be able to come in. Since I rarely ever took a day off, they were great about it and wished me well. I took some cold medicine and went straight to bed.

When I woke up, got the kids off the bus and finally got started on dinner, Gavin was walking in the door. Right away he noticed that I wasn’t dressed for work. “What’s wrong with you? You know you’re going to be late?”

“I called out sick.” I stirred the pot of soup and didn’t look up at him.

“That’s just great! You get a damn stuffy nose and suddenly can’t work. Pathetic!” I heard him turn around and head out of the kitchen. His words hurt me. Even when I was sick, I still did everything I needed to do. His lack of compassion rubbed me the wrong way. Why hadn’t he even asked if I was okay, or what was wrong with me?