Worst Way

Chapter One

Riley's POV:

Everyone has this vision in their head that they think will be what their life will look like when they get older. Some saw themself playing for a professional sports team or holding down their dream job on Wall Street. Some saw themself raising a family with the girl they fell in love with in high school while others dreamed of meeting the person they spend their life with when they least expected it. And some, well, they saw themself living the life of a perpetual bachelor or bachelorette because they had been hurt one too many times and swore they would never deal with that pain again.

But me? Well, all I had ever wanted was to sing my songs hoping that people connected with them as much as I do, raise a family with the woman that I thought hung the moon, and have the type of marriage that I'd watched my parents have all of my life.

But we all know what they say about best laid plans...

While the dream of singing my songs for the world came true, I didn't have the marriage that I had dreamed I would have by the time I was this age. I wasn't writing love songs for the women that I loved, seeing her face in every lyric. Instead, I was writing them hoping that someone could relate to them. I wasn't having little arguments over how the interior of the home I'd just finished having built should be decorated. However, the dream of starting a family had come true, in the form of my six-year-old daughter, Kelli. To say she was the best thing to ever happen to me, my biggest supporter, and the one girl on the face of this earth that was capable of getting me to give in to whatever she wanted with one simple look, would be an understatement.

Kelli is and always will be the apple of my eye, my whole reason to be the best man I can be. I just wish that I could have made things work with Hannah, my ex and Kelli's mom. But, you can't make things work when only one person is really trying. The spotlight that came with modeling, the lifestyle that Hannah had fallen in love with, and the people that she met while doing so had been more alluring to her than watching her daughter grow and learn to be her own person. She hadn't been there to see Kelli's first steps. Hadn't been there to hear her string her first sentence together. Hadn't been there when Kelli smiled with sheer pride when she had successfully tied her shoe for the first time. In fact, Hannah hadn't been there for much other than Kelli's first few months of life, the ones where even though she was present, she didn't really care for the little life that she and I had created.

It was hard not to be bitter towards Hannah for the way that she had walked out of both Kelli and my lives, but I tried my best because I never wanted Kelli to feel like she was to blame for her mothers actions. I knew the day would come when she would undoubtedly feel like she was part of the reason that her mom had left us, but I would handle that when it came about. I just hope that it happens well into the future and I can better tell her what happened without the sting, betrayal, and the hurt she caused by walking out on us jading my words.

As it was, at six years old she was already asking questions that I didn't really know how to answer. Questions like why the little girls in her school had their moms dropping them off at school while she either had me, my parents, or my sisters –Lindy and Casey. She was already asking things like 'Why did she leave?' and just the other day, she hit me with the 'Did she not love us?'. And both questions left me tongue tied and not really knowing what to say.

Anger had bubbled up to the point that all I could see was red. But instead of telling Kelli that the woman who was her mother was a piece of shit, instead of telling her the hard truths right now, I'd given her a weak excuse, telling her that sometimes things don't work out like we want them to. Thankfully, she let the question die after that and didn't press me any further. Thank God for small miracles...