“How did you—” I start.
“Aria.” She bucks her hips, nearly dislodges me. “Ryan told her he’d been helping me in California. That we’d dated before Charles’s wedding. He told Charles the same thing, didn’t he? And Charles passed that along to you.”
Her knee comes up toward my ribs and I have to shift to avoid it. She uses the movement to slip out from under me, rolling to her feet with a grace that shouldn’t surprise me but does.
“That’s not—it wasn’t like that,” Cal says, and I can hear the guilt bleeding through his voice.
“Then explain it to me.” Parker’s breathing hard now, chest heaving, ponytail slightly disheveled. She looks fuckingmagnificent. “Explain why, if you want me to trustyou, if you want this thing between us to work, you didn’t just come to me andask.”
Cal steps onto the mat slowly, hands raised in a placating gesture that I know won’t work. Parker’s past placating.
“Charles made it sound—” he starts.
“I don’t care what Charles made it sound like.” She moves toward him, her stance shifting. “I care that you chose to believe him over me. That you chose to investigate me instead of trusting me.”
“We didn’t want to believe it,” I say, getting to my feet. “But Parker, you kept the boys secret for years. You’ve dodged every question about their paternity. What were we supposed to think when Charles said Ryan claimed to have been helping you, that maybe he was?—”
“You were supposed to think I wouldn’t lie to you!” Her voice cracks on the last word, anger giving way to hurt for just a moment before she shoves it back down. “You were supposed to remember that night six years ago. You were supposed to trust that if Ryan Matthews had been anywhere near me or my children, I would have told you.”
She’s right. Fuck, she’s right.
Cal reaches for her and she sidesteps, grabbing his wrist and using his own momentum to take him down. He lands hard, the air whooshing out of his lungs, and she’s on him immediately—not trying to hurt him, I realize, but making a point.
“I continued my training in California,” she says, shifting to avoid Cal’s attempt to reverse their positions. “After the boyswere born, I kept it up. Because I knew what family I came from. I knew what dangers might find us. And I knew I couldn’t depend on anyone but myself to keep them safe.”
Cal taps out against the mat—once, twice, three times.
Parker releases him immediately, rolling to her feet and turning to face me.
“Your turn,” she says.
“Parker, we fucked up,” I say, staying where I am. “We know we fucked up. But you have to understand?—”
“Do I?” She advances on me, and I can see tears threatening at the corners of her eyes even as her jaw stays clenched. “Do I have to understand why the three men who claim to love me chose doubt over trust? Why you let Charles manipulate you instead of coming to me?”
“It wasn’t manipulation,” I argue, even though part of me knows it was. “He was concerned about optics, about the boys’ safety?—”
“Bullshit.” She’s close enough now that I can see the gold flecks in her eyes, see the way her pulse jumps in her throat. “He was concerned about control. About knowing everything, about having leverage. And you gave it to him instead of giving me the benefit of the doubt.”
I should defend myself. Should explain about the surveillance files, about how the timeline could have worked, about how Ryan’s story seemed plausible even if we didn’t want to believe it.
But looking at her now—furious and hurt and still fucking beautiful despite the sweat and the tears she’s refusing to let fall—I can’t.
Because she’s right.
“Get on the mat, Jace,” she says quietly. “Or admit you don’t trust me enough to make this work.”
It’s the ultimatum that does it. The clear line she’s drawing between who we say we are and what we’ve actually done.
I step onto the mat.
Parker doesn’t wait for me to be ready. She comes at me hard, using techniques I recognize from our organization’s training regimen but with refinements that speak to years of continued practice. She’s not as strong as me, not as big, but she’s fast and she knows how to use my size against me.
I defend but don’t attack, trying to talk while we move. “Ryan said he’d been in contact with you. That he’d been helping you financially, checking in?—”
“He lied.” She ducks under my arm, tries for a takedown I barely avoid. “I haven’t spoken to Ryan Matthews in years. The last time I saw him was at graduation when he asked me out and you three had him relocated for touching my arm. I only remembered he existed because Charles reminded me on my first day with the office. You were in the fucking car!”
“Then why would he say?—”
