Page 77 of Branded (Breakers Hockey)

Six

Jules

“Ready, Mom?” Ethan called, his feet stomping across the floor.

And once again, I thanked the universe that we’d found a ground-floor apartment. Keeping on my neighbors’ good side would be impossible with the way my little guy stomped around.

Elephants had nothing on him.

And his voice.

Sweet baby Jesus, I loved my son.

But at zero-dark-thirty (okay, at seven-thirty in the morning after I’d worked late), there wasn’t enough coffee in the world to make the lack of sleep bearable. His little voice was nails on a chalkboard.

I wasn’t a morning person.

I hadn’t ever been.

Which had made the late nights with Ethan as a colicky newborn and later, working at CeCe’s, not a trial—or not as much as a typical mom, I supposed.

I could stay up through the night, and do it many nights on end, without turning into a lunatic.

But being coherent for the school drop-off line?

Yeah, that was fucking torture.

Unfortunately, I’d had to learn how to pull it together—couldn’t be a zombie while dodging kids and operating a mobile death machine.

“Ready, bud,” I called back, wrapping up the piece of toast I’d made for him. Wheat, since I had to throw something healthy in there because his breakfast of choice included copious amounts of butter and cinnamon and sugar.

I would eat when I got back home.

Or maybe I’d pass out in my bed until my alarm went and I had to be coherent for the school pickup line.

God, I loved my bed.

I wanted to crawl between the blankets, to sleep for a hundred years.

Either that or for the six hours Ethan was at school.

My son’s pounding feet grew closer, and he skidded around the corner into the kitchen, hair mussed, shirt on backward (and swear to God, the kid had a fifty-fifty shot at getting it on correctly, but he chose the wrong fifty percent every single time ).

Ethan grabbed the toast, immediately peeled away the paper towel and took a huge bite, his next words muffled.

“Why aren’t you wearing your school shirt? ”

I was in sweats and a hoodie, no bra. My feet were crammed into my ugly but supremely comfortable UGG knockoff boots.

What I wasn’t in was Ethan’s school shirt—which was a whole different brand of ugly and reserved solely for volunteers—an orangey tie-dyed tee that was emblazoned with a dragon and absolutely dwarfed my frame.

“It’s Reading Day, remember?”

Oh, fuck.

It was Reading Day—or, at least, the day I helped out wrangling kindergarteners through some grade-level books to improve their reading skills.

Which basically meant that it was Torture Day.

I didn’t mind being in the classroom (minus the fact that it was early ), but kids—mine, those in the class—were exhausting and I always left after my time sweaty and exhausted, my mind throbbing.

“Right,” I said, thinking quick. “You grab your backpack and hop in the car. I forgot I needed my shirt.”

Making sure Ethan actually did snag his bag on the way out to the car, I zipped down the hall, ripped off the hoodie, wrestled my boobs—too big, too annoying, too much always in the way—into a sports bra and then grabbed the shirt and yanked it over my head.

Thank fuck I’d done laundry yesterday and didn’t have to look for it.

I’d known exactly where it was.

Boots swapped for sneakers, so I didn’t sweat my feet off.

A zip-up hoodie covering my torso. My purse from the table in the hall.

The front door locked and my ass in the driver’s seat.

Christ. I was already sweating, which was bad enough.

But what was worse?

My bed was going to have to wait.

“Julie?”

I looked up from the stack of books I was organizing by reading level, meeting the gaze of Ethan’s teacher.

His expression was serious, and immediately my stomach clenched.

I was a young mom. I’d been judged for it far too often.

Serious expressions from people in authority often meant that I was fucking up.

“Yes, Mr. Philips?” I asked, rising away from the bookshelf, standing to face him.

“Randall,” he said. “Please.”

I inhaled slowly, forced my exhale to be just as slow, and nodded, but didn’t commit to calling him by his first name.

He was just…

A bit too… something .

He smiled, eyes drifting to the open door for a moment, presumably checking with a glance on his class, all of whom were currently running their wiggles out on the kinder playground. Then they came back to mine and his volume lowered, his body shifting closer.

Too close for casual conversation at my son’s school.

That . That was the something.

And it set off the churning in my gut.

Set my inner radar pinging. No, alarming .

I slid a foot back, but he’d boxed me in at the bookshelves, and I didn’t have a lot of room to make space between us.

“I happened to notice that Ethan doesn’t mention his dad”—his gaze slid down, stopping at my hands, which were clenched tight around the pile of books—“is…are you two okay?”

A seemingly innocuous question.

But I’d been down this road before.

I knew what a Ring Glance felt like, knew that this conversation was heading, imminently, toward disaster.

I was young.

I was decent looking.

There was something vulnerable about me, no matter how hard I fought to weld steel to my bones, to make myself appear capable and competent and having my shit together, that meant men always…did this.

Smothering an internal sigh, I slid the books a little higher.

And look at that, his gaze came back to mine.

Almost like I had eyes.

Or magical powers.

“Ethan’s dad has never been involved in his life,” I said matter-of-factly. “He wasn’t interested, and I decided it was better for Ethan to only have people in his circle who truly want to be there.”

It had been an easy decision, even though it had shredded through my insides.

I’d been stupid—young and certain our relationship had been something different.

Or, well, something different for me. Because I’d been all in. I’d loved Nate with all my heart. He just…hadn’t felt the same, and he’d made that fact brutally clear.

See? Young. Stupid.

In love.

And Ethan had suffered because of it.

The guilt that always existed beneath the surface, bubbling up, waiting to boil over, water flowing over the rim of a hot pan, sizzling as it made its way to the stovetop.

But I’d gotten good at bracing, at waiting for it to turn to steam and disappear.

Of course, it always burned me on its way out.

But then again, punishing myself, scalding my insides with that guilt was the only way to bank it.

I’d chosen a man who wasn’t kind, who hadn’t been interested in being a father, had contested every bit of support I’d asked for, so much so that I’d yet to receive a dollar.

It was all currently in a trust, tied up in litigation that continued to cost me money and left me stressed and sad and angry.

I’d managed to get my hospital bills paid for, at least, because they would have been crippling, but only recently had the results of the DNA test—taken a full two years before—been accepted as coming from an accredited lab.

This being a blood test taken after the saliva one hadn’t been “gathered properly.”

Try explaining to a toddler why I needed to hold him down for a pointless blood draw.

More hurts Ethan had suffered.

As I navigated reports of tersely worded emails and phone calls between my lawyer and his.

We were protected now—legally, I had full custody.

But I was still chasing Nate for child support.

And I probably always would be.

It was a fight I was going to keep up with, though.

The money was Ethan’s—or should be, anyway—and hopefully, one day, I’d be able to collect enough to pay for him to go to college or to put a down payment on a house or…whatever he might need it for.

“Ethan is a good kid,” Mr. Philips said, and I clenched the books tighter, bracing against his closeness, the familiarity, and I knew— knew —that whiplash was going to come my way.

I could feel it in the air.

“Yes, he is,” I agreed.

“And you’re a good mom.” His lips curved. “I can tell, you know.” Said like he was bestowing on me the greatest of all gifts—his approval.

That made my skin crawl.

“Well, thanks,” I murmured. “I should finish with the books?—”

Urgency flaring in his eyes. “I just wanted to ask?—”

Multiple screams on the playground.

It made me jump and drew his gaze again, his brows dragging together, and when it came again, he half-turned, opening some space between us, giving me an escape route, and relief slid through me.

Maybe I’d read it wrong?

Maybe I was too cynical, too jaded, too uncomfortable with all men.

Shoving the books on the shelf—and no, they weren’t perfectly in order, but I wasn’t going to worry about that, not with the alarms still blaring in my mind—I scooted through the opening.

“I’ll let you take care of that,” I said, waving a hand to the noise that was still continuing.

The screams had been female, so I knew Ethan was fine.

“Julie—”

“Bye, Mr. Philips!” I called, booking it for the door, knowing that running wouldn’t solve this, knowing that his interest, his familiarity, was going to become an issue that needed finagling.

Knowing that this was going to become another fucking thing to shoulder.

I hustled down the hall, slipped out through the office, and headed for my car, my eyes prickling.

Because the weights I carried were already so damned heavy.