Page 113 of Ruled Out

In protest, Jon throws his arms in the air. “Hey! Wait up. I didn’t—damn it!”

He sets off after her, and I hit the gas, chasing after Kate, Jessie, and Zach.

“This is hard work!” Kate shouts a couple of places ahead of me as we take the first corner, and Zach almost skids off the ball, desperate to catch up to the front.

“My ass is already going numb!” I holler back, painfully aware I’m in a skirt and there are at least a dozen other people watching us with their children.

When Felicity overtakes me on the second lap, I quickly realize that this is probably not my wheelhouse.

“Yep, Hopper Balls are not for me,” I shout ahead.

“It’s the taking part that matters, Sweetheart.” Jessie laughs as he overtakes me too.

“Oh, really?” In a last-ditch move to save face, I bounce to the right and straight into him, knocking him off course. “Ha-ha-ha-ha-haaaa!”

He narrows his eyes at me and straightens himself up, ready to bounce back toward me, when he suddenly stops and lets go of the handle on his Hopper, redirecting his hand to the pocket of his pants.

The second he pulls out his phone and looks at the screen, I can tell something isn’t right.

Abandoning his Hopper Ball, he stands and rushes off in the opposite direction, speaking into the phone, although I can’tmake out anything he’s saying with the noise and music around us.

I jump to my feet and call after him, stumbling over one of the blankets set out with toys as I chase my boyfriend down across the yard. “Jessie?”

When he pulls up at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the house, he drops his head between his shoulders, and my heart sinks into the earth beneath us.

Oh no.

“Jessie?” My voice breaks this time.

“Okay,” I hear him say. “I’ll be there. Yeah, on the next flight.”

As soon as he disconnects the call, he spins around, his eyes red; he’s stressed and breathing erratic. “I have to go.”

He’s not even looking at me.

“Jessie, I’m here.”

Blinking a couple of times, he focuses on me and scratches his nails down the side of his face. “My mom,” he pushes out. “The stairs. She fell down the stairs, and I need to get back home. Now.”

I step up to him, throwing my arms around his neck and standing on my tiptoes.

“Everything okay?” Jensen asks, approaching us carefully.

“I need to get to the airport, like, right now,” Jessie says to him, his hands coming to my waist. “My mom is … she’s in bad shape, and I need to get back.”

“Wait, I can come with you.”

Jessie looks down at me and shakes his head. “No, Mia. I need you to head back home and wait for me there.” He looks back to Jensen. I know why he isn’t asking me to drop him at the airport, because I’ll insist on taking the flight with him and he wants me nowhere near his dad.

“Let me grab my keys,” Jensen says, already unzipping his costume.

Setting a kiss on my forehead, Jessie pulls away from me and races up the stairs.

“Is she okay? When will you be back? I don’t care if he’s there. I can come,” I blurt out.

When he spins back around, I see the tears in his eyes.

“I don’t know. I’ll call you when I get to Dallas.” He brushes a hand over the scruff of his jaw. “Just stay here, where you’re safe, yeah? For me.”