Page 166 of Bitter When He Begs

Sage doesn’t let up. “Second, if you watched the same game I did, you’d know Luca didn’t just play well. He carried that fucking team on his back. He played with bruised ribs and still left the field a winner.”

“You watch your mouth, boy,” my dad says, his tone cold.

“Youwatch your fucking tone,” Sage shoots back. “You think you can just show up and tear him down? News flash, sir, Lucadoesn’t owe you a damn thing. You’re the one who should be embarrassed, standing here trying to belittle your own son when all he’s done is prove over and over again that he’s better than you ever gave him credit for.”

I don’t even realize I’ve stopped breathing until I exhale.

My dad takes a breath, shoulders pulling back like he’s weighing how much of a scene he wants to make. For a moment, I swear I see it—the real man underneath the Armani and calculated indifference. The man who left bruises without ever raising a hand.

“You should be shaking hands with scouts,” he says coolly, his eyes flicking to Sage before sliding back to me, unimpressed. “Not playing house with some—”

“Some what?” Sage’s voice cuts right through whatever venom my dad was about to spit.

I feel my stomach drop and my pulse spike, because fuck, the last thing I need is Sage getting tangled up in this mess. I grab his arm. “Baby—”

“No, Luca, I wanna hear it.” He crosses his arms, standing toe to toe with my dad like he’s not at all intimidated, like he’s not facing down a man who could tear into him with nothing but words and leave scars worse than any physical wound. “Go ahead, Mr. Devereaux, tell meexactlywhat I am.”

That’s when my dad’s mouth finally tightens—just a flicker. A crack in the mask. “A distraction. A liability, and nothing more than a mouthy little boyfriend who thinks playing house with my son gives him insight.”

Sage scoffs.

“No, I’m the one who loves him. The one who sees him when no one else does. I’m the one who stayed, and if you think for a second that I’m scared of you—” He steps forward. Not enough to threaten, but enough to make the message clear. “—you’ve grossly misjudged your audience.”

My dad straightens, adjusting his cufflinks like that’s supposed to make him feel in control again. “You’re awfully confident for someone riding Devereaux coattails.”

Sage laughs in my dad’s face. “Oh, you think this is about you and your money? My last name is Blackwell, sir.”

Holy. Fucking. Shit. Sage didnotjust name drop.

My boy hates throwing his last name around. I know that like I know how he takes his coffee, like I know the exact way his breath catches when I run my mouth down his neck. He’s told me more than once he’d burn his trust fund to the ground if it meant being seen for who he is instead of the name stitched into his lineage.

But right now, he’s wielding it like a weapon because that’s the only fucking language Leonardo Devereaux speaks—power, legacy, status.

And Sage just wiped the floor with him in his own dialect.

My dad blinks, recalibrating, and I swear—for the first time in my life—I see him stumble. Not physically, but in the way his eyes flicker. In the way his chin lifts like he’s trying to regain altitude in a conversation he no longer controls. “And you think you’ve earned the right to speak on my relationship with my son?”

“I think you lost that right the moment you decided your approval was more important than your love,” Sage says, his voice going quiet in the way I know he’s far from done. “You don’t get to show up and pretend like Luca owes you anything after the shit you’ve pulled. He’s not some investment that underperformed. He’s yourson.”

My dad’s lips press together into a hard, thin line and I’m still staring at Sage like I’ve never seen him before. Like I’m seeing all the edges I didn’t know he had sharpened under the surface, held back only because I’d never needed him to draw blood for me until now.

And fuck, is he drawing.

“Lastly, if the Devereaux name is so fucking sacred that Luca being himself is considered a disappointment, then maybe it’s not a name worth keeping.” He looks my dad straight in the eye, not flinching, not backing down even as tension pulses off the man in waves. “Because he’s got the Blackwell name at his back now. And trust me when I say, that means a hell of a lot more.”

Sage steps back, just one pace, not in retreat, but in triumph. His hand finds mine without looking, his fingers threading through mine like muscle memory, like this was always the plan. Then he turns to me like he didn’t just drop a verbal ICBM in the middle of the stadium. “Ready to go?”

I blink. My jaw’s probably hanging open while my brain is trying to reboot. “Uh. Yeah.”

He reaches for my hand and laces our fingers like we’re just going to brunch. My heart is jackhammering in my chest, and I’m still not entirely convinced I’m not hallucinating from the pain in my ribs.

My father says nothing as Sage pulls me away from him, he doesn’t even try to stop us. When I glance back, he’s still standing there, motionless, caught in the wreckage of his own arrogance.

We get to my truck, and he turns back to me. “You okay, baby?”

I exhale like I haven’t done it in ten minutes. “You just… nuked my dad with words.”

He shrugs like it was nothing. “Fucker deserved it.”