Page 93 of Vegas Heat: The Expansion Team Complete Series

When I get back home, my mother is waiting in my room. On my bed. Like we’re going to have some sort of sleepover or something.

I sigh as I walk into the room that should be a sanctuary and instead has turned into some strange nightmare.

When I left Denver, I didn’t look back.

It’s not like my childhood was all bad, but once I learned the truth about my mother, I knew that not only had my entire life been a lie, but my relationship with my mother had been incredibly toxic.

I knew she did the best she could, but I also can’t say I’ve missed my life with her since I moved to Vegas.

It was hard at first as my dad and I got to know one another and I was starting school away from pretty much everything I’d ever known, but I found a good group of friends pretty quickly. My relationship with my father grew while I found myself busier and busier—oftentimes too busy to make the call back home to my mother. We grew apart while the people here became my family, and I’m happier than I’ve ever been—in particular since I first met Cooper.

But seeing my mother lounging on my bed like she belongs here seems to negate everything I’ve worked so hard for.

She’ll tell me I’m wrong for wanting to be here. She’ll make me feel like I’ve made all the worst possible decisions. She’ll spout more lies about my father.

And I don’t want to hear any of it. I don’t want to deal with any of it. Whatever issues she has with my father are between the two of them.

“So tell me about this woman your father proposed to,” she says flippantly as I walk in.

I blow out a breath, and I collapse onto my desk chair since I don’t want to share the bed with her. “I don’t really think it’s any of your business.”

“Of course it is!” She sits up and stares at me in horror. “You’re my daughter! She’s going to be your stepmother! I deserve to know these things.”

She doesn’t deserve anything, but I tell her anyway. “She’s a lovely woman who I’ve grown very close to over the last couple months. She’s the head of marketing for the Vegas Heat, and she—”

“She’s the head of marketing ?” she practically screeches. She shakes her head, and she mutters something under her breath that sounds like, “That should’ve been me.”

“From what I know, she achieved the job on her own without Troy’s assistance.”

She purses her lips and rolls her eyes. “Right. Just like how you got the internship on your own merit. You know, when I was your age, I was taking classes toward a marketing degree myself. I had to give it all up when I got pregnant.”

I clench my jaw as tightly as I can before an inappropriate retort comes flying out of my mouth, and then my mouth opens anyway. “I’m so sorry I ruined your life.” I spit the words out as I stand. “Why are you here? Did you just come to make everyone miserable? Go back to Denver. Go home, and leave us the hell alone.” I grab my purse and storm out of the room.

I seethe with anger as I get into the truck, and less than two minutes later, I’m pulling into Cooper’s driveway.

Because of course I run to Cooper when I’m upset. I run to him when I’m happy, or when I’m sad, or when I’m angry. I run to him first because he’s become the most important person in my life.

He’s wearing nothing but basketball shorts when he opens the door, confusion on his handsome face. “What are you doing—”

He doesn’t get the chance to finish his sentence because I burst into tears as I plow into him. He wraps his arms around me for a beat, and then he sweeps my feet out from under me as he lifts me up. He kicks the front door shut as he carries me through the house and into the family room, where he sits on the couch with me still wrapped in his arms.

“Shh,” he soothes, and he presses a kiss to my temple. “It’s okay. You’re okay. You’re here now, and I’ve got you.”

“I know you do,” I sob, and his arms tighten around me.

“Do you want to talk about what happened?”

I shake my head. No, I don’t want to revisit the conversation where my mother told me yet again how she had to give up her entire life when she got knocked up, how I ruined her life, and what a disappointment I am.

It’s as Cooper holds me in his arms comforting me that I realize this is why I’ve never been totally sure whether I want kids of my own.

I don’t want to make another human feel like they’re nothing but a burden to me. I realize I’m not my mother, and likewise I realize I would not be the same type of mother she is. But I was raised thinking my father didn’t want me only to learn later in life that it was really my mother who never did.

Is it any wonder I’ve spent so much of this relationship questioning whether I’m good enough for Cooper?

“Why are you with me?” I ask, my voice demanding and completely out of left field.

He looks surprised for a beat at my question, but he recovers quickly...and his answer tells me he’s already thought an awful lot about it. “The night at the blackjack table, I’d made a vow to get back into the dating game literally five minutes before we met. You intrigued me the moment you sat down. I didn’t care about how old you were or whose daughter you were. I was wrestling with whether to take the job offer from Troy, and you simplified it down to what would bring me joy.”

He draws in a fortifying breath before resuming. “I realized the more I talked with you that it was you who would bring me joy. Wherever you were, even though I hardly knew you. And then the next morning in my hotel room, you were standing in this stream of light that surrounded you like a halo, and I knew you were an angel sent to this earth to save me. My Sunshine. The center of this new world I found myself in. That was the moment I fell in love with you.”

He presses his lips to my forehead for a beat, and I brush away a tear.

“Every second I’ve had the privilege of spending with you since, I’ve fallen deeper and deeper into you,” he continues. “You’re smart, and you’re funny, and you’re not afraid to tell me my breath smells like pepperoni even though you secretly love it. You’re brave, and you’re fierce, and you’re creative. You’re passionate, and you’re gorgeous, and you challenge me. Plus you really know your way around my cock.”

I giggle at the last part.

“Why am I with you?” he asks, and the way he says the question makes me wonder why I even had the audacity to ask it. “For all those reasons, Gabriella Rose Grant, but most especially because you make me a better man. You make me want to sacrifice everything to be with you. You make me see what’s important in life in a way I’ve never seen it before. I’ve never been with someone who made me feel like I can conquer the world the way you do. But I don’t want to conquer the world. I just want to conquer this life with your hand in mine.”

By the time he finishes talking, I’m a sobbing mess again, but this time it’s for completely different reasons.

He holds me in his arms, and then he takes me upstairs and holds me while I fall asleep in his bed.

It’s not a night of raunchy sex or hot naked time. Instead, it’s the kind of intimacy that strengthens the bond we’ve started to grow.

I think he might be right. My mother may try her hardest to break me, to break us …but her being here is only going to drive us even closer together.