Page 4

Four

Belle

I hear Quinn’s voice, and ice spreads out through my insides.

Not the fake cold I slap on to keep everyone at bay, but the real shit, the terror that grips tightly in iron claws and shakes and shakes and shakes until I’m torn open and my insides are spilling out onto the floor.

Dumb.

I’m so fucking dumb.

Fingers wrap around my arm. Tightly .

“Mom?” West growls.

“You’re hurting me,” I whisper, though he’s not. Not really. Still, his hold immediately loosens.

“ Mom?” I hear again, worry in Quinn’s voice.

He’s smart, my kid, so fucking smart that there’s no way that he didn’t pick up on the scene or the tension.

“Buckle up, kid,” I tell him. “We’re going.”

“Mom—”

“ Now , kid.”

It’s said in my Mom Tone, a tone I don’t pull out regularly—which is lucky for me today because it means that Quinn listens without further protest, and I hear his belt click as I lean in, jam the keys in the ignition and start up the engine. “I’ll just be a minute.”

He opens his mouth, but one look has it clicking closed again.

I straighten out of the car, close the door, then turn back to the man who’s positively vibrating with rage behind me. West is beautiful in his anger, the dark slashes of his eyebrows as he glares at me, the stubble on his cheeks calling for a woman’s fingers, the hard lines of his jaw, his cheekbones, his nose that whisper for gentle kisses.

“Do not fucking tell me?—”

I step close, settling my hand on his chest, and tamp down on my idiocy, my shame, and give him what he needs to know.

“He’s not yours.”

West had been in the process of reaching down, readying to remove my hand from his body, if the tight fingers around my wrist are any indication.

My words have him freezing.

“Whose then?” he rasps.

Bile rises, burning a path in my throat.

“Not yours,” I push out, knowing that even though I try to force my tone back to normal, try to make this all seem casual and no big deal (and circling back to delusional ), I fail miserably. “That’s all you need to know.”

His eyes tell me he knows I’m lying.

But he doesn’t call me on it.

Instead, he flicks his gaze to the rear window.

My eyes follow his, see that Quinn is watching us.

“I need to go,” I tell him.

“If you honestly think that I’m letting you go after showing up in my locker room?—”

“It’s not yours,” I mutter.

His brows flick up in question.

“It’s the Eagles’ locker room,” I tell him.

A flash of irritation through his eyes. “And am I not a player for the Eagles?”

I don’t know why I’m even arguing about this. “I’m going to go.”

“You’re not just leaving,” he snaps. “Not after that scene in the locker room, not after all these years.”

“You don’t get to have an opinion about what I’m going to do.”

“Right,” he mutters.

My brows drag together—because he’s agreeing with me all of a sudden? But before I get the chance to get the hell out of here, he’s reaching forward, yanking open the door, and tearing my keys from the ignition.

“What are you?—?”

He turns, looks in the back seat. “You as confused as I am, kid?”

“Quinn,” I begin.

Neither of them look at me.

“Yeah,” Quinn mutters.

“Good,” West says, reaching forward and yanking at the lock for the back door. “Then let’s all go inside and we’ll sort this out.”

Quinn unbuckles and pushes open the door, slipping out before I can stop him.

“I—”

Another beat as they both ignore me.

“Quinn—”

My kid glances back over his shoulder at me, expression telling me I’m not going to like what he says next.

And it’s true.

I don’t.

Because it’s a lie.

“I need to use the bathroom, Mom,” he says as he follows West back toward the arena.

A throb in my temple, and no, I don’t know the inner working of my son’s bladder, but he’s nine. He’s not a toddler going through potty training. We watched the game, and though he ate his body weight in snacks and drank a jug of soda, he also used the bathroom before we walked to the car and I left him out here to wait.

Mom of the year, I know.

But it’s barely been an hour.

I know nature’s not calling.

And…this is the only safe place I could leave him.

I have a press pass, which means I have access to park in this gated structure beneath the arena.

And I couldn’t leave my kid in an open, unmanned parking lot while waiting to ask the only man I’ve ever loved a huge favor he has no need to grant me.

Hell, if anything, he’d be stupid as shit to help me after all I did to him.

But I had to ask.

For Quinn, I had to ask.

Only now, as I watch the two of them take off across the lot, move to the door to the arena, and walk inside, I know?—

Like everything else in my life…

I’ve gone and fucked that up too.