Page 3

Three

West

One second, I’m pinning her to the door.

The next, I’m curled in a ball, gripping…well, my balls.

Christ, even with a cup, she still managed to get both of them.

Groaning, I roll over to my hands and knees, struggling to sit up, but I manage it just as the door shuts with a soft click.

“Fuck,” I mutter, groaning again as I lurch up to my feet and reach for the handle.

I’m twisting it and taking off after her in the next instant, my gait uneven for a few paces before I manage to shake off the pain and head toward the exit, thankful that I took my skates off earlier, that I don’t have to worry about dulling the blades by walking on something that isn’t the black mats that lead from the locker rooms down to the ice.

But, truthfully, I wouldn’t give a fuck what kind of floor I’m walking on as I haul ass after Belle.

I’d take whatever verbal reaming the equipment guys would lay on me for ruining my skate blades, no matter how brutal it was.

I turn the corner just in time to see a flash of brown hair gleaming in the overhead lights, spreading out behind her like a cape as she takes a right down another hallway—this one being the one that leads out to the underground parking garage.

Which means she’s close to making it to her car.

Close to escaping.

I grind my teeth together, push through the fatigue sinking into my body, my legs from an intense game against the Sierra, and ignore the ache in my balls, then speed up until I’m sprinting down the corridor, turning the corner?—

The exit door slams shut.

“Fuck,” I mutter again, but I don’t stop, reaching the door a heartbeat after it latches, slamming my hands against the metal bar that opens it, shoving the panel wide, gaze searching the hushed, darkened parking lot.

There.

I whip to the left, hustle several rows over, and see Belle struggling to insert a key into the door of a piece of shit car. The sedan is so fucking rusted and taped together—literally taped together with duct tape—that it’s a miracle it somehow managed to make it into the underground garage at all.

I half expect the handle to be torn free as she wrestles with that key, gets the door to unlock, and yanks it open.

But it stays in place and the heavy panel swings wide, and?—

She gasps.

Because I’ve thrown out my hand to catch it. “I know you’re in a hurry, sweet cheeks,” I drawl, “but I don’t think Huddy will appreciate you denting his ride.”

It’s a sweet ride too, a Porsche he somehow crams his big body into.

I prefer the legroom in my Land Rover.

“I need to go,” she says quietly.

“You need to go.” I let the words hang in the air, my unspoken question—you need to go after showing up after all these years, saying that shit?—sitting heavy between us.

I know she feels it because her throat works, eyes dancing away.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” she whispers. “And I know I shouldn’t have come here.”

“Then why did you?”

More silence, her unspoken answer to my question weighing the conversation down even further.

I want to shake her, want to force her to give me a fucking explanation.

But I’ve never been able to make Belle do anything she doesn’t want to do—not ten years ago when we were teenagers—and I know I have no hope of making that happen with this stranger—yet not—standing in front of me.

So, I wait.

And I hope that I can wait her out.

Her one weakness…patience.

She burns hot, makes rash decisions?—

Burned. Made.

The reminder is a visceral slap.

I don’t know this woman in front of me, this woman from my past, this woman who left a wound so vast that no matter how much I tried to bury it, to ignore it, was still there, still aching, still oozing out sickness into my soul.

Because she doesn’t speak.

Just keeps her pretty brown eyes on mine and doesn’t speak .

“Let’s start with something easy,” I say, breaking the silence, biting back my frustration. “Do you live here?”

Those eyes slide to the side.

Then come back to mine.

“Define here ,” she replies.

Progress. And…not. I stifle a sigh. “You’re really going to pull that shit now?”

“No,” she says, and the ice in her tone, the tart that slips across the space and jabs at me, makes my dick hard. I’m a sick fuck, what can I say? But I’ve always loved it when this woman gives me attitude, always loved it because it meant I could kiss her until she went soft for me…

Then could kiss her some more.

“No,” she says again, tart intensifying. “What I’m going to do is go home?—”

“So you do live here in town.”

She stills, eyes going wide, clearly realizing her mistake.

Not that she lets me sit in that victory.

Her chin lifts. “I’m leaving.”

She turns for the open door again, yanking at the panel.

I hold it fast, but something in the back seat draws my focus.

Movement.

A jerk at the door. A hand shoving at my chest. “Let. Go ,” she grunts.

But I’m not paying attention to Belle right now.

I’m staring through the back window of that shitty fucking car, trying to discern what’s making that movement…

And then I do .

Because I see a kid who’s all of nine or ten slowly sitting up, hair disheveled, eyes sleepy?—

Gray eyes sleepy.

Everything in me locks down.

And then bursts free when I hear,

“Mom?”