Page 91 of Vegas Heat: The Expansion Team Complete Series

My instincts are usually spot on, and right now, my gut is telling me that my mother is lying.

I could be wrong, but I’ve lived with Troy Bodine for the last three years, and not once has he ever shown even an ounce of violence. I’ve worked with him at the stadium for the last month, too, and even there he’s calm and rational.

I have to believe in my own experiences with these people, and my mother has proven to me more than once that she’s a liar while Troy has proven to me over and over that he’s a good man and a good father.

It’s a little gross as his daughter to hear that he’s a… dominant in the bedroom, but that’s between him and his partner.

Oh, God. Joanie just told me to tell him she finished his task. Was it something sexual? She specifically said she was all tied up and that was the reason she couldn’t do dinner with me tonight.

I feel a little sick at the thought.

“I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true,” my mother hisses at my father.

“There’s another lie.” He shakes his head. “Do you even know how to tell the truth?”

“What a lovely family reunion,” I mutter dryly.

“Come on, Christine. You told me the baby was someone else’s, and eighteen years later, that baby shows up looking for me…looking for the truth.” He slings an arm around my shoulders and draws me in close. “The truth that was kept from her for her entire life.”

“I was protecting her from the monster you are,” she says.

“You were protecting yourself from your own embarrassment. If you truly thought you were protecting her from me, you would’ve sent the checks I sent to help you with your child back rather than cashing them the moment they arrived.”

Cooper watches them like he’s watching a tennis match, his head bobbing back and forth between them, and I feel awkwardly sandwiched in the middle.

“Why are you here?” Troy asks. He drops his arm from around me.

“To make sure she knows the truth.”

“But why now ?” he presses, a question I’d love to hear the answer to as well. “Is it, oh, because I have an expansion draft next week and you want to try to ruin my life again? Or is it because you somehow found out I recently got engaged and I’m actually happy for once in my adult life?”

My mother sniffs as she juts her chin up high into the air. “It’s none of those things. Coincidences, if that. I want her to know the real man you are, and I want her to decide whether she wants to stay here or come home with me.”

It might be that moment when I realize just exactly how delusional my mother actually is.

Does she really think I’m going to give up everything I have going here in Vegas and head back to Colorado to be with her one semester shy of graduating from UNLV?

My dad turns to me. “I just want you to be happy, Gabriella.”

And that’s the crux of it, isn’t it? My mom wants to play games and put me in the middle, and my dad wants me to live my life and be happy.

I just want you to be happy .

How would he feel if I told him it’s his best friend that makes me happy?

I glance at Cooper, and his eyes are on me, but I can’t quite read what’s in them. Is he having the same thoughts I am about my dad’s words?

Regardless, I draw strength from his gaze before I turn to my mother. “What’s there to decide?” I ask softly. “My life is here now. Dad and I have grown close. I’ve made friends.” I nod toward Cooper. “I’m working an internship that might open big doors on my career. I’m happy here, Mom.” And I was never happy with you, but I’m thriving despite that.

I leave that last part out.

Silence falls over the room as we all await whatever she has to say to that.

When her words come, they’re the epitome of why I left Denver in the first place. “Of course you’re happy here. You have no responsibilities, and your father hands everything to you on a silver platter. You know, when I was your age, I had a two-year-old I had to care for as a single parent. I gave up everything to give you a good life, and you don’t even care.”

I set my hand on my hip, ready to defend myself, ready to tell her that I do, in fact, work hard and I do, in fact, have plenty of responsibilities, when I realize…I don’t have to.

It doesn’t matter what she thinks. I know the truth, and I’m happy with it. I drop my hand so I’m in a less defensive stance, and I keep it simple. “I’m sorry I ruined your life.”

She juts her chin up again. “I never said that.”

“You sure as hell implied it,” Cooper says, and I hear the venom in his tone. I glance over at him, and our eyes lock again. He seems to calm when he sees that I’m not upset.

I would have to respect her in order to be upset, and after all this time…I just don’t.

“Stay out of this,” she hisses at him.

“He’s been a great friend to me since he moved here, Mother. Don’t talk to him like that,” I say, and this time I can’t keep the defensiveness out of my tone. It’s not her place to come here into my father’s house and disrespect his friend.

“What are your plans while you’re in town, Christine?” my dad asks her, clearly trying to save this whole fiasco.

“I figured I’d just stay with Gabby,” she says.

I blink at her a few times, completely dumbfounded. “You know I live with him,” I say, jutting my thumb toward my father. “I don’t think you’re exactly welcome to stay here.”

“She can stay here,” Troy says. “I’ve got work to do, and then I’ll be heading over to my fiancée’s house.”

“Hm,” my mother hums. “Abandoning your child to run off to another woman. Shocker.”

My dad just stares at her a long beat before he says, “I have work to do. If you’ll excuse me,” and he walks out of the room. Cooper shrugs and follows him, and I stand staring at my mother.

“Care to tell me what really went down between you two all those years ago?” I ask. “But, like, the truth this time?”

She lets out a long sigh. “You’ve heard the story before.”

“Tell me one more time.” I walk over to the couch and flop down, and I can’t believe she really thinks she’ll be staying here with us.

I don’t want her here.

I don’t even want her in Nevada.

“I’d just found out I was pregnant, and I’d planned to tell Troy after the game. He’d gotten me a seat just above the dugout, and there was another woman in my row who kept trying to get his attention. She told her friend how she’d been intimate with him, and after the game, she ran down to the dugout and hugged him. He was talking to his manager, and then he left without so much as a goodbye. He ghosted me, sweetheart. Is that what they call it? He didn’t call me, didn’t get in touch. As far as I knew, he ran off with that other woman, and I was embarrassed and alone and filled with shame for what I allowed him to do to me.”

I know she’s leaving out parts of the story, and I assume they are parts my father will fill in later for me.

But one question remains: why is she here now ?

I suspect my father may be right. She wants to mess things up for him ahead of the draft, ahead of his wedding…and I pray that’s the answer, because if she’s not here to mess up his life, she might be here to mess up mine.

And her next question confirms that hunch.

“So what’s really going on between you and that Cooper jerk?”

I blow out a breath.

Is it wrong to kick your mother out of your father’s house?