The front desk?
One of the shop owners who saw us trudging through the snow?
He has to have stopped by my shop and asked around, and maybe somehow put the pieces together?
The questions loop in my head, impossible to pull apart.
There’s no time to figure it out. I have to keep this away from Eli.
Keep Jared away from the adjoining room where my son is curled up and sleeping peacefully.
The memory of the last time he got within reach of my son flashes through my mind viciously as the faint sounds of my son screaming for me while being dragged to Jared’s car still echoes inside my head.
He never had custody back then, or ever, but that’s never mattered to my ex.
He sees Eli as much of an extension of himself as he does me.
Both of us belong to him no matter how many times the police have told him otherwise.
I will not,cannot, let that happen again.
I rise on shaky legs.
Jared barrels forward, words stumbling over one another in a venomous cadence. “You’re dragging Eli around to some random guys’ room, Noelle? What kind of mother are you? Some slut shacking up in a hotel?”
Dean moves before I can.
He’s a solid wall of muscle, face hot with righteous anger.
He pushes Jared back into the corridor with a shove that has been practiced a hundred times throughout his career, a shoulder check that nearly sends my ex crashing against the opposite wall.
I quickly push past Callum and Grant, heading for the door.
“Who the fuck areyou?” Dean snaps, pinning my ex with a look that says this isn’t his battle to pick, but he will not stand by and watch me be harassed. “You don’t get to come around and start demanding things or talking to her like that.”
Jared’s face twists into a sneer, words slurred with a dangerous grin. “You one of the dude’s she’s fucking, then? Guess she couldn’t keep those legs of hers closed after I left her sorry ass. She needed three guys to fill my shoes, huh.”
Each word is designed to wound, to humiliate me and drag me back into everything I have spent an entire year stitching myself together from.
Grant moves next; he’s a force I can feel before I hear him.
He storms up to the door and pulls me back just enough to throw it open.
At the last second, he manages to catch it before it bashes against the wall.
His voice drops low in a warning that doesn’t need to be loud to be heard. “You better get the fuck out of here right now if you know what’s good for you.”
Jared barks out a laugh that doesn’t sound at all human.
It’s too sharp and too cruel, bouncing down the hallway loud enough to echo. “You think you can threaten me? That’s my boy in there.”
For a split second, the world stops.
My stomach drops so hard I feel sick.
Then Dean’s head snaps toward me like a whip crack.
His eyes are wide with disbelief, locked on mine.
