Jensen clicks his tongue. “Tsk, tsk, tsk. I can’t believe you lied to me. I’m hurt.”
“You should be,” I tease, biting back my smile.
“Dinner!” Alec calls loudly through the house, and chaos ensues.
A group of kids rushes through the kitchen, on a mission, arguing over who gets to plate up first.
“I’m going to use the restroom. I can get our plates when I get back,” I tell Jensen, who’s looking at me like he doesn’t hear a word I say, distracted with a gleam in his eye.
He smiles and nods before following Morgan and Piper in the direction of the kids.
I exhale as I walk back toward the entryway, quickly finding a bathroom. I feel my phone vibrate as I sit down, and I dig it out of my purse.
I should’ve ignored it.
Cole texted me a photo, and I groan, annoyed that he’s still messaging me at all. Setting my phone down without looking at it, I finish using the restroom before my curiosity gets the best of me.
Grabbing my phone before stepping out of the room, I open the message, and my blood runs cold.
That’s not what I think it is, right?
There’s no way.
It’s a photo of a house … ofthishouse, taken in the driveway.
“What the fuck?” I murmur to myself.
Another text comes through, and I suddenly regret not answering his messages and calls from before. If I had known he would show up out of the blue, I would’ve found a way to deal with him sooner.
Cole: I just want to talk, Lainey.
How the hell did he even find me?
It suddenly dawns on me, and I smack myself on the forehead. My AirPods. I never took them off our shared tracking app. He’s been able to see my location this entire fucking time. But now he’s in town for the Venom versus Nighthawks game tomorrow and has a chance to get close to me.
Tonight is my first impression as someone other than staff to most of the people in this house, and I don’t want Cole to tarnish any of their opinions.
I’m done with his shit. But the worst part is that I don’t get to be—at least not yet, while he still has a potential claim to my baby.
Opening the bathroom door, I sneakily walk toward the front door on the balls of my feet, keeping the points of my heels off the floor.
Slowly opening the front door, I hesitate for a second as waves of emotion course through me. Anger. Sadness. Grief. I gave everything I had to that man, and he stepped on it like dirt. He made me feel like I was never enough—something I wouldn’t have realized without how sweet Jensen has been over the last few weeks.
The moment he sees me, he steps toward me, and I hastily close the door behind me as I walk across the patio and down the two steps.
“What thefuckis wrong with you?” My whisper-shout boils with rage.
He holds his hands up, but his tone shows little surrender. “It’s good to see you too, Lainey.”
Something snaps inside of me, unleashing a version of myself I don’t recognize. “Are you being serious right now? You expect me to greet you with, what, a hug and kiss? Say how much I miss you? You’re out of your goddamn mind!”
“Me?” His eyes go crazy, widening uncomfortably. “You’rethe one threatening me, holding secrets above my head.”
I roll my eyes and groan at his audacity. “Ones I’m only going to leak if you pull shit like this again!”And maybe to get you to sign over your custody of our unborn child.
“I told you about that in confidence,” he pleads.
I audibly laugh, unable and unwilling to hold it back. “You did a lot of things in confidence with a lot of people, it sounds like. I don’t owe you shit. You’re the dumb fuck who opened his mouth to the one person he should’ve been fucking good to.”
