Mike instantly leaned forward, his eyes locked to hers and he growled, “Do not f**kin’ go there.”

“I should understand who’s involved in our children’s lives, Mike,” she stated and he studied her, with effort forcing down his rising anger.

She wasn’t pissed. She wasn’t catty. She wasn’t sharp. She seemed calm and rational.

He didn’t get it.

“You met her at Reesee’s party,” he reminded her.

“Yes, we spoke for about a second. But where does she come from? What does she do? What –?”

He cut her off. “None of that is any of your business.”

“No and Rees are at an impressionable age so I disagree.”

“Are you shittin’ me?” Mike asked softly, his efforts at controlling his anger failing rapidly.

“Well…no,” she replied.

“Rees has got her period,” Mike announced and Audrey blinked.

“What?” she asked.

“Rees has got her period,” Mike repeated. “She’s usin’ tampons. You good with that?”

Mike watched her head jerk back then she stammered, “I…uh…”

Mike spoke into her stammering. “I don’t know shit about it. Is it cool for a fifteen year old girl to use tampons?”

Audrey’s brows drew together. “Why are we talking about this?”

Why were they talking about this?

Jesus.

“Because our daughter has become a woman in that sense,” Mike explained tersely and unnecessarily. “I don’t buy her that shit but she’s got it. I don’t know anything about it and there is no f**kin’ way she’s gonna talk to me. No found that shit in the bathroom while he was lookin’ for somethin’ else, God knows what. It was buried, hidden behind a bunch of other shit. I didn’t think much about it until Dusty talked to me. Since Dusty spoke to me, what I think now is that every girl gets her period and every woman lives with that until they don’t have to live with it anymore. And there’s absolutely no reason she should be hiding tampons. Her brother is a teenager and he might rib her because he’s a teenager. But he’ll one day be a man with a woman who has to deal with that shit so he’ll also have to learn to keep his mouth shut and roll with the cycle. I can teach him that. But who’s takin’ care of our daughter?”

Her face was pale when Mike was done speaking and he knew, whoever it was, it was not Audrey.

“Not you,” he whispered. “Shit’s goin’ down with her body and now she’s got a new boyfriend and she’s f**kin’ clueless with nowhere to turn but her friends who also are f**kin’ clueless.”

“I’ll speak with her,” Audrey said immediately.

“Not to be a dick but I’m not sure she’s open to that from you. You’ve been pissed, bitter and self-absorbed a long time, Audrey, so you bought that. Our kids do time with you. They live with me but they do time with you. My advice, you stop worryin’ about who I got in my bed and that finally wakin’ you up to the fact we are irrevocably done and you start worryin’ about your kids. No’s gonna be in college soon, Reesee not long after. You let them get that far without steppin’ up, you’ll find later it’ll be harder to break through. And you’ll also find that you’ve missed out on something precious that there’s no way in hell you’ll get back.”

“Since meeting Dusty, I’ve already found that, Mike,” she whispered, eyes on him, wounded, message crystal clear.

Shit, shit, f**k.

“Not my problem.”

To that, she announced, “I’m still in love with you.”

Shit, shit, f**k.

“Again,” he growled, “not my problem.”

“Mike –” she started and he leaned deep into her.

“Honest to God? Honest to f**kin’ God?” he ground out. “I just told you your daughter got her period, has no clue but does have a new boyfriend and you don’t even ask who she’s seein’? You just wanna talk about you?” He sat back. “Nothin’s changed. Not one f**kin’ thing. You’re learning about yourself? Bullshit. You were, you’d learn you got serious issues, you’re a shit mother and you need to start dancin’ fast before the best things in your life you got left leave you behind.”

Her face looked like he’d struck her and he didn’t give a f**k.

Instead, he clipped, “We done?”

“I don’t…I don’t want this Dusty talking to Rees about –” she started.

“Too late,” Mike cut her off. “Reesee trusts Dusty and so do I. It’s already happening.”

Audrey straightened her shoulders. “I don’t know this woman. I’m not comfortable with her guiding my daughter through important times in her life.”

“Clue in, Audrey, if you’d been the Mom you should have been, your daughter would not have needed to turn to my woman in the first f**kin’ place.”

Again, she looked stricken but Mike again did not give one, single f**k. She’d bought that too and it was not his f**king problem.

“We done?” he repeated.

He watched with waning patience as she pulled her shit together.

Then she said quietly, “I’m sorry. Honestly, Mike, this was not how I intended this talk to go.”

“Well, this is where it went. Now, we done?”

She held his eyes.

Then she nodded.

He stood, leaving the once-sipped latte behind.

“Don’t forget the treats,” she said quickly, grabbing the bag and holding it out to him.

He stared at it a second wishing he was the type of man to walk away. But he wasn’t that type of man. His kids loved the shit Mimi made and their mother bought it for them. So he took the bag only for her not to let it go.

Fuck.

His eyes went to her.

“Really, I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Honestly, this was not how I wanted this to go.”

“You get one more thing,” he told her, “and that is to explain what you wanted from this.”

“We need to be…closer…or something. For the kids. We need to improve our relationship. I just got off-track straight off the bat. And…I…well, truly, Mike, I’m sorry.”

She let go of the bag.

Mike didn’t let go of her eyes.

“You want that, first you show me you give a shit about our children. At the same time you lay off about Dusty and I don’t mean just to me. I hear that you’re sayin’ shit to our kids or any-fucking-body about my woman, we got problems. You manage to do all that then we’ll talk about improving our relationship. Until then, Audrey, we’re back to where we were a couple of weeks ago.”