LITTLE BIT STRONGER | A COUNTRY ROMANCE

Chapter Twenty-Two

"Just fucking give it to me at the sale price, Minnie!" Felicia shouted.

"I can't. You know I can't. I could get in trouble. That's not even the same brand..."

"Don't be so fucking stupid!"

Kate had the option to walk away. Felicia was so caught up in her bullshit that she hadn't noticed her yet.

Two years before, Minnie came to the emergency room with horrible abdominal pains. Kate was filling in for one of the nurses on vacation and examined her.

Within seconds, it was clear Minnie was pregnant. She was barely fifteen and looked even younger. They delivered her daughter - premature by almost two months.

Kate was amazed at how Minnie took to being a mother. The teenager - still a child herself - stayed with the baby in the NICU for two weeks and did everything the medical staff suggested to bond with her little girl.

A close friend of Kate's from high school worked for child services and investigated the circumstances.

It was discovered that Minnie's step-uncle was the father of her child. He was in his forties and Minnie was too scared to tell anyone that he raped her.

She thought she might be pregnant but hoped she was wrong. Like many young people in impossible situations, she hoped the problem would simply go away.

Kate asked and Roberta agreed to represent Minnie's interests pro bono.

These days, she rented half of a small duplex that Roberta owned. She worked at the store part-time, was finishing high school, and took excellent care of her child.

She was seventeen years old, had already been through so much trauma, endured it, and was being publicly berated by the likes of Felicia - a garbage human being by any standard.

Kate couldn't walk away.

"Leave her alone." She said the words firmly and loud enough that the entire front of the store went still.

Felicia turned her head and rolled her eyes. "Bitch, mind your business."

"She is my business. Leave her alone."

"You wanna go? I'll kick your old ass."

Kate smiled slowly. She stepped around her cart and stood less than two feet from Felicia - who quite obviously hadn't expected such a result.

"Pick up your purse, Felicia." The younger woman did so before she realized she meant to. "Leave. Leave right now and things won't escalate."

Blinking, Felicia wrapped her bravado around herself. "You think you scare me, bitch?"

"I think I should."

The words made Felicia pause again. Then she laughed. "You don't scare me. You're just a washed up hag. Can't even hold onto your man."

"You're screaming at a teenage girl in a grocery store. You have less class and more ignorance than I realized. Leave."

"Let me get one thing straight with you, Kate. Brian is mine and if you can't handle it, too fucking bad."

This time, it was Kate who laughed. "Oh, you poor fool. I don't want him. He's spent two years fucking your dirty ass. Who knows what he's picked up. You can tell him to stay away from my house, to stop calling me, to stop begging me to take him back." Kate winked. "I'm not interested. He's your problem now...and you are his."

Felicia raised her hands to slap her and Kate grabbed both of her wrists. She held them and stared into the eyes of the woman Brian had chosen over his family.