Anticipation (Urban) Book 3 | The Sideline Series

Chapter 1

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Sincere; 4 years Later

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Since that bad Christmas, four years ago when Effrin revealed to the family his secret family, every Christmas since hasn't been the same. Some of the family moved past Effrin's family, coming to accept it, while others, like my family who've wanted nothing to do with Effrin from the beginning, now have a reason to keep the two of us separated but there's no use in doing that since we've been separated all of this time. 

Four years and counting.

I could never be with him ever again. Not because of the secret he hid from me, but the mere fact of him having another child that isn't mine. The first few months of me finding out, and still living with him and seeing the kid, really got me feeling bad for him and how he got himself caught up with Kay. But, why should I feel sorry for him when he bought that upon himself?

I know I was sleeping around, and my sleeping around was equivalent to Effrin sleeping around, but I never got pregnant by somebody else. His actions are going to be following him around for the next 18 plus years. Effrin's definitely got himself in some deep shit that he's not going to be able to get himself out of but I'm not going to be apart of it and neither is my daughter. 

After six months of staying with Effrin after his secret came out I got up enough money to move out of his house, even though he was complaining about not being apart of Victoria's life. That was a big dispute of ours but for the past few years we've been successfully co-parenting. I get her Monday through Thursday and he gets her Friday through Sunday. I was aiming for her staying with me all week and him just getting her on the weekends but our parents thought it be best for him to have some more time with Victoria, too.

As for Victoria, my baby was four and a half years old, a year older than Hazel, Dawn and Jason's daughter. Just a few months after Christmas Dawn found out she was three and a half months pregnant with Jason's baby. Their hold facade at Christmas was simply...a facade. They never ended up breaking up, Dawn was just in her feelings because of what I was going through and because she was pregnant.

I looked down at my phone and the message I had gotten from Effrin. I sighed and opened up the message. If it weren't for Victoria I would have cut off all ties with him. The only time the two of us communicate right now is for Victoria and Victoria only. The first few months of co-parenting were hard, since he was always trying to apologize, but that eventually stopped along with his harassing calls and text messages. The two of us are happily separated, him with some other girl that isn't Kay and me having fun with Trey and taking care of my daughter.

The message I got from Effrin was two pictures of Victoria from earlier today. One of them was when she was in her dance class. Effrin and I didn't agree on much, but what we did agree on was that we wanted Victoria to seize every opportunity we didn't. Right now, she's in dance, taking swimming lessons, in early aged tutoring and taking art classes. It might seem like much now, but I want her to be able to never have to depend on a man and can carry her own, with her own career.

The picture of Victoria at her dance was class was a picture of her standing in front of the bar, smiling. She was too small to reaching up to the bar yet but she didn't care. All she cared about was posing for the picture Effrin was taking of her. I could see Effrin trying to take her picture in the mirror behind Victoria, as she posed in front of him with her pink tutu on and missing teeth. The other picture of her was when she was at her Dentist appointment today. She was laid back on the chair, with the spit sucker hanging out of her mouth as her doctor checked out the few teeth that she had.