Page 52 of Tripped By Love

Clayton didn’t back away. In fact, he laughed. “Truth hurt? Wake up, man, before she knocks herself up with your kid and tries to trap you, too.”

Marco grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him toward the door. “Keep talking, asshole, and I won’t be able to stop myself from littering the ground with your blood.”

“A threat? You’re threatening me?” Clayton’s eyes gleamed with satisfaction, straightening his suit once he’d steadied himself again.

“No,” Marco snarled. “I’m promising you that if you don’t leave Cassidy and Chevelle alone, it won’t end well.”

Clayton looked around the restaurant. One couple had ducked out while the exchange had been going on, but Laney and the last remaining couple were watching with wide eyes. “I’m sure everyone in here heard it. I’ll be filing a complaint with the police. I’ll be requesting the removal of this violent man from my child’s life.”

“You can try, but you won’t succeed.” It wasn’t Marco who spoke. It was Brady, coming down the stairs at a jog. Fury on his face that I’d never seen on my brother before. That I didn’t even know Brady had in him.

Clayton took in Brady with narrowed eyes. “Won’t I? A musician with loose morals and a flood of deviants surrounding him isn’t exactly the upbringing I expect for my son, and I think the courts will agree.”

“You calling our two very upstanding, highly respected parents deviants, Hardy? I think they and the entire academic world around them would object to those words.”

“A drop in the sea of destruction surrounding Chevelle,” he said. He turned disapproving eyes at me. “And who names their son after a vehicle? I’ll be changing that.”

The entire time Marco, Brady, and Clayton had been sparring, my body had been frozen, horror stilling me. But when he disparaged the name I’d carefully chosen so that my child could go his own path, it returned the anger to me in a flood.

“Go ahead and file a complaint with the police,” I snapped. “I’m going to file a restraining order of my own. I fear you may do something irrational. I fear forChevelle’ssafety,” I emphasized my child’s name.

Clayton snorted. “I’m a respected lawyer and professor. I know my rights.”

“You study business law, Clayton. Business. Not family law. But I can guarantee you, no court is going to hand youmyson. Not when I show them just how little you wanted him.”

“I’ll keep repeating it if I have to: a man has a right to change his mind.”

Marco crowded his space again, and this time, Clayton backed off. He threw one last, disparaging look in my direction and then left with the bell chiming behind him.

I sank onto the nearest barstool, head in my hands, trying to control the trembling and tears that threatened to overtake me as panic filled my blood.