Tinder Ella: A Modern Day Single Dad Fairy-Tale Read online

  Tinder Ella

  A Single Dad Fairy-Tale

  Eddie Cleveland

  Tinder Ella was edited by Lawrence Editing

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  Copyright © 2017 by Eddie Cleveland

  All rights reserved.

  No parts of any of these books may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Newsletter Sign Up

  Prologue

  Prologue

  Prologue

  1. Ella

  2. Jackson

  3. Ella

  4. Ella

  5. Jackson

  6. Ella

  7. Jackson

  8. Ella

  9. Jackson

  10. Ella

  11. Jackson

  12. Ella

  13. Jackson

  14. Ella

  15. Jackson

  16. Ella

  17. Ella

  18. Jackson

  19. Ella

  20. Ella

  21. Jackson

  22. Ella

  23. Jackson

  24. Ella

  25. Jackson

  26. Ella

  27. Jackson

  28. Ella

  29. Jackson

  30. Jackson

  31. Ella

  32. Jackson

  33. Ella

  34. Ella

  35. Jackson

  36. Ella

  37. Ella

  Epilogue

  Epilogue

  The Woodsman’s Baby

  The Beauty’s Beast

  Navy SEAL Bad Boy

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  Prologue

  Jackson

  I stare straight ahead and rest my hand against the cool, hard, familiar heel of my pistol. My fingers coil around the handle like a boa constrictor squeezing out the last moments of a rabbit’s life. Like how darkness has slowly suffocated the fight from me. The thrashing and screaming are all over. I’m remarkably calm now that I know this is done. Now that I’ve lost the will to live.

  Now that I’m going to kill myself.

  It was never supposed to go this way. I blink, my tired eyes gritty as if I’ve rubbed sandpaper over them. When was the last time I really slept? It’s all a haze. Ever since the night our Humvee got hit. I just can’t keep the days and weeks and months straight anymore. I had a promising career in the SEALs, where I was shooting up the ranks, surrounded by the best men I’ve ever known. Then, all my dreams, my future, my entire fucking life, it all blew up and burned in the fiery explosion of the IED. As the flames ripped through our armored vehicle, as they sizzled across Heinkel’s flesh, killing him, they destroyed us.

  They say things are forged by fire. We like to talk about the phoenix that rose from the ashes, stronger and more beautiful. That’s fucking bullshit. That fire took everything from me. My brothers. My career. And now, my life.

  I lift the gun from my empty kitchen table. The weight in my hand is comforting. My heartbeat slows and my breathing grows deep and steady as I glance down at the black steel. A sad smile twists my lips as memories of when I first joined the SEALs flood my mind. Those were the best days of my life. Proving myself at demolition training, finding my tribe, getting assigned to my unit, and meeting the guys who would become closer than blood to me.

  Tears blur my vision as I mourn the man I thought I’d be. The brave, strong, elite soldier who’d never break and never falter. Now look at me. I’m not strong, I’m not brave. I’m not even a fucking soldier anymore. I’m nothing. No one.

  Water streaks back toward my hairline as I frown up at the ceiling. “What else am I supposed to do, huh? Keep living like a trapped rat? Stuck in some kind of hole while the water slowly drowns me? I know you said this is a sin, but fuck, God, why aren’t you helping me? Why did you leave us out there to die? If you didn’t want me to end it like this, why didn’t you take me in the explosion? Instead of leaving me fucking useless and alone.” Anger taints my words as my voice chokes up in my throat and snot runs from my nose.

  My tears fall down my face and my hand lifts the pistol with a tremble, tucking it under my chin. I’m such a fucking coward now. My hands shake at the idea of pulling the trigger. What have I become? I don’t even recognize myself anymore. I rest my grizzled jaw down onto the muzzle and steady my twitching hand with my free one.

  “I’m talking to myself, aren’t I? Like a fucking little kid who still believes in Santa, I’m hanging onto some sad idea that you’re even up there. That you even care. If you existed, I would’ve never seen the things I’ve seen.”

  The barrel pinches the sensitive flesh under my jawbone as I look up at my ceiling again. “If you’re there, if you give a shit about me, give me a sign, God. I just need a sign that...” My voice quivers as hot tears fall over my cheeks and spill onto my hands. “That any of this gets better. That my life won’t be this fog of anger and despair. That my dreams won’t just be watching the men I loved die. That this stops hurting so fucking much.” I howl. My finger moves to the trigger and I try to hold the gun tight in my grip, but it’s hard to do when my shoulders are shaking so hard.

  “Please,” I plead with God, or maybe with nothing. Maybe with myself. Maybe only with my demons.

  The room is eerily silent. There’s nothing to indicate I’m doing anything but stalling. I don’t know why I expected anything different. What did I think would happen? The sky would open? Light would pierce my window and shine on me like a spotlight from Heaven? It’s stupid.

  I’m stupid.

  And I’m done. My index finger circles the trigger and I take a deep lungful of air, pulling back the hammer with my thumb. I close my eyes and push the tip of the gun into my skin.

  “That’s what I thought.” I grind my teeth together. Sweat breaks out across my forehead and my heart thumps in my chest hard as I get ready to pull the trigger.

  Br-ring! Br-ring!

  I open one eye, unsure if I’m actually hearing my phone go off right now, or if I’m hallucinating.

  Br-ring! Br-ring!

  The gun clatters down against the table as I stand up in total shock. My muscles twitch as I stare in disbelief at my cell phone on the counter. Its screen is lit up bright, blaring at me, with an unfamiliar number blazed across the top of it. Slowly, I walk over to the counter and pick it up. Is this really happening? I stare up at the ceiling, but this time in awe and surprise as I swipe my thumb over the cell and bring it to my ear.

  “Hullo.” The sweat that formed across my forehead trickles down and gets
lost in my eyebrows.

  “Hello, is this Jackson Wilcox?” A friendly woman’s voice reaches through the fog of my confusion like a steady hand on my shoulder.

  “Uh, yeah.” For a second I’m almost unsure if that’s the right answer. This moment, this interruption, it’s all too surreal to process.

  “Hello, my name is Doreen Vickers and I’m with Child Welfare Services. Sir, I have some news for you and, um, it might be a shock.” Her tone turns nervous. I’m pretty sure I can hear her feet pacing against the hard floor.

  “Try me.” I shake my head in disbelief. How much more shocking can any of this get, really?

  “Okay then, Mr. Wilcox, right now we have a child in our care. Her mother, Janet Millville, I believe you two were together at one point?”

  I nod silently as a flash of Janet’s milky skin and fiery red hair flashes through my mind.

  Doreen continues, “I’m sorry to inform you that she was killed in a car accident last week. Her daughter, well, Ms. Millville wanted the biological father to be the guardian if anything happened to her. I’m not sure what you know about Chloe, but she’s at our facility right now and I would like you to come in to talk to me about making arrangements with you or whether you’d like to keep her in the system,” Doreen rambles.

  My mind locks up. I can’t make sense of why she’s calling me. I can’t make sense of any of this. Janet is dead? She had a daughter? What’s happening here?

  “I’m sorry, why are you calling me? I haven’t heard from Janet in almost, well, four years now.” Heat stains the back of my neck as my brain scrambles to piece this together for me.

  “Mr. Wilcox, I’m calling you because we have Chloe in our care and she’s your daughter.”

  Prologue

  Jackson

  I sit in the reception area and rub my hands over my pants. No matter how many times I brush my damp palms over the denim, it doesn’t wick away the sweat coating my fingers. I feel raw. Like every inch of my skin is painfully new and being exposed to the world for the first time. This morning feels like a lifetime ago. Like the fragmented images of a dream that haunts you from time to time, but you can’t place the reason why.

  I can’t believe Janet was pregnant and she never told me. My mind has been reeling since I hung up the phone this morning.

  When we broke it off, she didn’t even hint that she knew she was carrying my child. Did she know then? I’ve been combing over the details I can recall of how we ended things.

  “I can’t do this anymore, Jackson.” Her eyes were already red, like she’d spent the entire night crying.

  “Why? What’s wrong?” I had thought we were doing great. We’d been together for almost a year and we still couldn’t get enough of each other.

  “I can’t be with a man who’s already in love with something else. I can’t spend my life competing for your time, for your attention, for you.” She sniffled and tucked her long, red hair behind her ears.

  “Hey, what are you talking about?” I stepped into her and tried to wrap my arms around her, but she crossed her arms, eyes cast down to her feet. “You know there’s nobody but you, babe. Why are you saying that?”

  “Jackson, I’m not talking about another woman.” She breathed out hard and her lips quivered. “I’m talking about the SEALs. That’s your true first love, and”—her voice cracked—“it always will be. The best I can do is be a distant second in your life. We need more than that.” Her gaze remained fixated to the floor.

  “We need more than that.” At the time she said it, I assumed she meant that she and I needed more. Is that what she meant? Or did she already know there was another person who would need more time, more love, more of me than I could possibly give?

  “Mr. Wilcox?”

  My head snaps up to attention at the woman standing in front of me. She holds out her hand to greet me, an uncertain smile resting on her lips.

  I stand up on shaky legs and wrap my hand around hers, shaking it gently. “Yes”—I nod—“that’s me.”

  “Come with me, sir, we have quite a bit to talk about.” She turns and her long skirt flings out around her ankles before twirling in tight against her legs like an umbrella being closed around the handle. My eyes briefly flicker over her loosely twisted bun of graying hair as I follow her down the hall to her office.

  I scan the room, happy for the reminder of her name attached to the office door. I was already feeling so much that I could barely process what she was telling me on the phone, let alone remember her name.

  Doreen Vickers - Director of Child Welfare Services

  I sit down without waiting for her to offer me a seat, pressing my lips tight together, hoping she can make sense of all this for me. I know I can’t take care of a child. Hell, I can’t even look after myself. But I need Doreen here to reassure me that someone else will do the job. I need to know this isn’t just one more thing I fuck up in the world. The child, my child, needs to be well taken care of.

  “Mr. Wilcox, thank you for coming in on such short notice.” Her darkly stained lips smile at me, but I don’t have the heart to return it.

  “No problem,” I answer gruffly, clearing my throat.

  “I’ll get right to it.” She shuffles a folder on her desk. “As I told you on the phone, Janet Millville was unfortunately killed in a car accident last week.”

  “Was the child in the car? Did she get hurt?” I manage to ask through gritted teeth, my gut twisting up into knots at the idea of the little girl watching her mother die.

  “No, no. Nothing like that. She was in daycare when it happened.” The warmth of her brown eyes surrounds me almost like a mother’s hug.

  “Good.” I nod.

  “So, Janet had a will and in it she expressed that she wanted you to have full custody of your daughter if anything happened to her,” Doreen explains.

  I slowly shake my head. I know Janet didn’t have any brothers or sisters, but she was really close to her parents. “I didn’t even know I had a daughter. Doesn’t it make more sense for her to go to her grandparents? She has no idea who I am.” I rub my hand down over my neck.

  “Apparently Janet’s father was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease and it has progressed pretty quickly. He’s already lost mobility in his limbs. Her mother was giving him full-time care, but then took a nasty fall that resulted in a spiral fracture. The doctors informed her she has osteoporosis and that caring for a young child is physically impossible for her.” Doreen frowns slightly at the folder.

  “Fuck,” I whisper. “Sorry, I mean, I just meant that’s awful.” I can’t even begin to understand the pain her mother must be suffering through. First to watch her husband slowly become a shell of the man she once knew, then to lose her only child only to top it all off with a debilitating disease herself. It’s like life just stabbed her in the gut and then twisted the knife right up into her heart.

  “It is,” Doreen agrees. “Both of her parents are receiving outside care right now. That’s why Janet made the arrangements for you to take custody if anything should happen to her. Now, I know this is a lot to process, but obviously the best interest of the child is the priority here. So, if there’s any reason you can’t or won’t be able to take in Chloe, we are prepared to put her into the foster care system and try to find a good match for her.”

  I bite my tongue. I refuse to tell her that I can think of more than a few reasons why I should never be responsible for a child. Mainly the fact that I was ready to blow my brains out this morning. Maybe I should tell her. The kid would probably find a better family in the system.

  But what if she doesn’t?

  What if I sign those papers and the little girl goes from watching her grandfather deteriorate and losing her mother to a life of loneliness and abuse? What if my ‘responsible decision’ is the worst thing I could ever do for her? What if, in fifteen years, she ends up sitting at a kitchen table with a gun tucked under her chin all because I decided I was too broken to even try
to give her a good life?

  “No, I’ll take custody of her,” I find myself saying the words with a force, with a conviction, I haven’t felt in a long time. My daughter needs me. And maybe there’s a part of me that needs her too.

  “Are you certain?” Doreen peers across the desk at me. “Would you like some time to think it over more?”

  Everything inside me screams that I’m not certain. I’m not ready for this. I don’t even know if I can do it. I don’t have the first clue about raising a little girl. Outside, I keep my face stony, never revealing the swirling cyclone of emotions rushing around in my gut.

  “I don’t need any time. I’ll do it.”

  “Okay then.” Doreen beams at me, her brown eyes crinkling in the corners. “There’s a lot of paperwork to go over and some hoops to jump through, but we can get through most of it pretty quickly.” She opens up the file folder and grabs a pen.

  “Great,” I answer flatly. All I can do is hope this isn’t the worst decision I’ve ever made. It’s one thing to fuck up my own life, but I can’t stand the idea of doing anything but my best for this little girl.