Single Parent

Chapter 7

"Bye Daddy!" Sophia waved at me as I walked over to my car and opened the door. I smiled at her and waved back. 

"Bye Sophia honey. Be a good girl."

"Promise! Love you Daddy!"

"Love you more baby." I laughed and got into the car and drove away from my parents house. 

I drove straight back to my house and took the couple of hours before the guys came over to tidy up all of Sophia's things and put her toys in her room and her clothes away, so that if you walked in, you wouldn't even know that a child lived with me. It was the way I liked things on a Friday night, when I was going out, incase whoever I decided to hook up with came back to mine. 

I was sat in the lounge, watching football with a beer when my phone rang. If it was someone I knew, and could guess why they were calling, I would ignore it, but it was a new number, so I picked it up. 

"Hello?"

"Is this...is this Nathan?"

"Yeah..."

"It's Rosanna, the uh...you probably don't remember but-"

"You figured he doesn't love you yet?" I joked but my laugh turned into a frown when I heard a small sob over the line. "Rosie?"

"You're the first person to call me that in years."

"Where are you?" She gave me an address and I told her to wait where she was and I'd be ten minutes. 

I was quicker than ten minutes. I called up the guys and told them to head out and I'd call them in a bit. I pulled up outside the diner she gave me the address to, and I went inside and saw her sat at a table, hunched over. 

"Rosie?" Her head shot up and I saw the way her cheek was swollen and her eye was black, and when I glanced down at her hand it was wrapped with a piece of bloody cloth and her wrist didn't look good. 

"Thank you for coming."

"It's no problem. Can I get two coffees please? And a glass of ice?" I called over to the waitress and she nodded with a flirty smile. "What happened?" She shook her head and I took the glass of ice from the waitress and took hold of Rosie's hand and removed the cloth, putting her wrist on a pile of napkins to stop it from causing too much pain. "What happened to your hand?"

"Glass." She mumbled, wincing as I put the ice on her wounds and wiped them with a napkin softly. "It was a glass."

"And your wrist?" When she stayed silent, I knew the answer. "Do you have your things with you?"

"That's all I have." She gestured to a small bag on the floor and I gave her a sad smile. "I just had nowhere to go, and no-one to call. I'm so sorry, you don't have to do anything."

"Don't be stupid. Look, come with me and we can grab something to eat at mine and I'll find you some painkillers and you can use my bathroom and I'll get you some clothes to change into and you can sleep on the couch if you want and in the morning we can find you somewhere to stay."

"That's unnecessary Nathan-"

"Nate. No arguments. Come on." I stood up and put some money on the table and grabbed her small bag, and her good arm and led her out to my car and drove back to my house. 

She was silent the entire drive back to my house. But when we pulled up outside, she started to protest, saying stuff about how I shouldn't be doing this and how my girlfriend would be angry, which was an assumption on her part that was most likely because of how tidy the place was. 

After plenty of reassurance, and dragging her inside, I gave her a towel and a pair of sweats and a t-shirt, and waited downstairs for her to shower and tidy up before I would make her talk.