Once I’ve managed to locate and pull on a marginally clean shirt, once I’ve put on shoes and raked a hand through my wild hair, I grab the kids and go leave them with a neighbor for the day.

Not the one across the street who’s turned out to be a chain-smoking granny, about a thousand years old, lost in a web of wrinkles and attitude. No, a young mom of three, five houses down, who looks hurried and overwhelmed in a flowery dress and a scarf wrapped around her head.

I pay her a big wad of dollars to keep an eye over the little brats while I work. It’s the fifth day in a row, and it feels wrong.

And expensive for my limited funds.

Cole clings to my leg as I turn toward the door to go. Guilt stabs sharp teeth into my soul. I shove it deep and ignore it, detaching my son from my leg and setting him aside.

Mary watches me from a few feet away, accusation in her eyes, her small mouth tight.

Hell.

“It’s okay, Mr. Hansen. I’ve got them,” the woman says. Her name is Sally, or Dolly, or something equally unimportant to me.

I nod, a dark thread of worry winding its way through the tangled mess of my thoughts. “I’ll call at noon.”

As I walk to my truck, I think again how much cheaper hiring a nanny would be. Better for the kids, too. More… stable. God knows stability hasn’t been part of their lives so far.

Yeah, I know, I’m failing as a father.

Then again, what’s new? What the fuck ever. I just need a nanny to keep an eye on the kids while I’m away at work, but the two who applied for the position earlier this week didn’t even look at my kids when they entered the house. It was obvious they didn’t give a fuck.

Instant disqualification.

So okay, I’ll keep looking. There are bound to be more women looking for a job in this town. I’ll find another.

Just… not her.

Not Octavia.

She’s not suitable. Not acceptable. Not… I dunno. She’s way too young. And headstrong. Not what I had in mind.

So that’s that. End of story.

Jasper’s Garage is on the other side of the town, a ten-minute drive. I could have walked, but I’m late as it is. Not giving the best of impressions during my first week of work.

What do I care about impressions, though? As long as I keep the job, I don’t give a damn, and Jasper Jones won’t kick me out. Good mechanics are hard to come by in this neck of the woods, it seems, and the money he’s paying me is good.

Or… I could let him kick me out. I could walk away. Take the kids and keep moving, keep searching for salvation. But the scary thing is… I’m not sure I even fucking care anymore.

There’s a guy I don’t know smoking right outside the garage door. I stride inside and check the tasks of the day, then head over to the bays and locate the car I’m supposed to work on.

Jasper’s right hand, Evan, nods at me without a comment, and I get to work. I like the fact he’s a man of few words.

My words are few, too. Not many to start with, and they’ve dried away over the years.

Which is just as well.

I lose myself in my work. Rivets, chassis, rumbling engines. All this is so familiar it almost feels like home.

Almost.

Lying on my back under the car, I frown up at the dark metal, and it fades, so that I see a night without stars, a road vanishing in black mist, and I shiver.

* * *

Cole fell and hit his knee sometime during the day, and the neighbor supposedly looking after him didn’t think to let me know. Mary is shooting me baleful glances and won’t speak to me when I go to pick them up in the later afternoon.

Girl hates me.

I have to drag her to the bathroom to brush her teeth, and then her hair tie gets caught in her hair, and she wails as I try to take it out, even though I try my godfucking best not to hurt her.

I don’t wanna hurt them.

Gritting my teeth, I wrestle the damn thing out of her golden curls and sit her down on the closed toilet seat. Just in time to catch Cole before he pitches over into the bathtub.

While I hold on to my son’s small body as he flails and whines, Mary takes the opportunity to jump off the toilet and run out of the bathroom, wailing some more.

I stand in the middle of the badly lit bathroom, trying to catch my breath, not sure what the fuck to do. My kids don’t know me anymore. They don’t like me.

They sure as hell don’t love me.

I took them away from the only other family they still have—my mom, who took care of them while I lost myself. I barely saw them over the past three years, and then I yanked them away from the only home they remember and brought them here, to this small town in the middle of nowhere, leaving them during the day with a woman who can’t look after them.

I’d fucking hate me, too.

Cole screams and I curse, putting him down. He runs away from me as fast as his little feet can carry him, and I step back until I hit the wall and slide down.

Fuck this shit. I was never good at this. She was. She wanted kids. She loved them, and I… I was helpless when it came to her.

Now that sounds like I regret them. Which isn’t true. I love them.

I just don’t know how to deal with it.

Christ, I need to sleep. It’s been a while since I last managed a couple of hours in a night. I’ll force it on myself, since nothing else works. Everything, anything to forget the past. To forget Cole’s little mournful face as I walked out this morning, Mary’s wail.

By the time I push back to my feet and splash my face at the sink, then make my way to the kid’s bedroom, the brats are two lumps under their covers, pretending to be asleep.

Like every night.

They won’t let me tuck them in.

“Good night,” I whisper, not sure they hear me. I stare at them a bit longer, remembering when I first held them in my arms, tiny, squirming bundles of energy and life.

My kids.

Switching off the light, I turn around and walk out to the kitchen. I leave the lights off. By touch I find the sleeping pills and swallow two with a gulp of water.

Resist the urge to take more. All of them.

Then I head into the living room and sink down on the sofa, turn on the TV and stare at it without seeing anything.

At some point, I’ll fall asleep. There’s no escape. And I know the nightmares are waiting for me.

* * *

The coffee is stale and toxic, like nuclear waste, burning my mouth. Across the sky dawn is breaking in red and yellow.

At long fucking last.

Dressed only in my sweatpants and a thin T-shirt, I’m standing on the porch, a mug in my hand I don’t remember getting from the kitchen, and a bitter fog in my lungs.

I’m on my last smoke. My last inhale.

My head is full of swirling darkness.

And then I look down at the steps leading to the yard, remembering that girl—yesterday, was it only yesterday?—the wannabe nanny, all star-eyed innocence, her mouth sinfully full, her small tits and slender body, her dark hair—and my body tightens with a pang of arousal.

With a curse, I head back inside and hunt for the bottle of booze under the kitchen sink, sparing a single thought to whether the kids might discover it in that not so well-thought hiding place, and Christ, I’m drinking before going to work, dammit—then I replace the coffee with pure Scotch and wash the night down.

Taking a deep drag from my cig, I lean against the sink with a groan. I’m a mess. I can’t take care of the kids. What was I thinking?

Leaving. That was what I was thinking. All I could think of at some point.

Not having to put up with the questions and the concern anymore. Not having to hide from everyone who watched, waiting for me to fall apart.

But I didn’t. Not as far as they could see.

It was a no-win situation. If I fell apart, I wasn’t a real man. If I didn’t, well… I had a heart of stone.

I thump my chest once, softly, with my fist. Maybe it has turned to fucking stone. God knows it feels that way. Cold. Heavy.

Unfeeling.

Maybe it was the only way.

In any case…. yeah, I had to leave, and take kids with me. Leaving them behind wasn’t an option.

Even if they hate me.

Maybe I should have left them. Maybe they’d have been happier without me. Not like they’d miss me. Maybe…

Yeah, whatever. It’s done, now. We’re here.

And I need to get my head on straight before it’s too late.