He gripped my shoulder. “Hey, I’m sorry. Jess doesn’t deserve this.”
Just that Tucker took my side, took Jess’s side, said so much about him.
“No. She doesn’t.”
* * *
Swinging the door open to the apartment, I called out to her. “Jess!”
I darted through the place and into the bedroom, where I found her lying facedown on the bed, Noah rubbing her back. I grabbed her and folded her into a hug. She was limp from crying.
“Hey, everything’s fine.”
“No, it’s not. He ruined everything. Your family. They’re going to hate me now. They think I’m a bad person.”
“No, they don’t.”
Her face contorted in anger. “Please, Quinn. I’m not stupid. I know how this works.”
Noah was watching and hearing everything, his head turning from side to side as if he were watching a tennis match.
“Hey, kid,” I said, pointing him toward the door. “Why don’t you go watch TV?”
His forehead was wrinkled with worry. “Mom didn’t mean it, Quinn. She’s really sorry. Please don’t leave her. Please don’t leave me.”
I disengaged from Jess to deal with Noah. Grabbing him to me and hugging him tight, I whispered into his ear, “I’m never leaving you or your mom. That’s a promise.”
Noah’s tension unraveled before my eyes. He kissed my cheek. “I love you.”
My heart melted at his words. “I love you too. Now go watch TV. I’ve got to turn your mom’s frown upside down.”
“Okay,” he said heading for the door before turning back and kissing his mom’s cheek. “It’s okay, Mom. Quinn will make it better.”
Once he was gone, she said, “I don’t know how to fix this.”
“I do. We don’t.”
“What do you mean, we don’t?”
“We don’t fix it. Do you really think this is the first time we’ve dealt with stuff like this? I called my parents on the way over here and told them what happened when you were a teenager. They’re one hundred percent behind you. No one is blaming you. This kind of thing happens when you’re famous. People make shit up all the time.”
“But you don’t think I’m trying to scam you or steal from you, do you?”
“Jess, don’t even ask me that. Of course I don’t.”
“What did your mother say—really?”
“She asked about the burglary and about your situation growing up. My mother volunteers with foster kids, Jess. She sympathizes with the plight of at-risk teens.”
“There’s a difference between sympathizing with at-risk teens and being okay with her youngest son dating a former one.”
“Grace dated a foster kid. She met him volunteering at the same place my mom works.”
“And your mom was okay with that?” Jess asked, more than a little surprised.
“I mean, Grace was seventeen when she started dating Rory, so my mom could have stopped it if she’d wanted to. They dated almost a year. My point is, Jess, you came to the right family.”
Her forehead creased. “What does that mean?”
