“Stevens!”
I jerked back from him, startled as I looked to the left to see Kevin coming through the front door. He was dressed like Collin; they must've just come from practice. A low rumble resonated from my man—
My man?
Jesus, Kay, get it together. I looked up to Collin to find a scowl on his face as our friend approached us.
“Kay, my girl!” Kevin beamed before throwing me over his shoulder and darting around my empty section.
“Kev! Put me down before I get fired! I can’t afford to lose this job,” I giggled.
“Alright, alright,” he laughed as he set me back on my feet next to Collin.
“What are you doing here?” Collin snapped.
I watched as Kevin’s playfulness practically melted off his face as he turned to look at his teammate. “Team meeting.”
Something flashed across those ice blue eyes that I adored so much as his sharp jawline tightened, his body tensing as he squared his shoulders. “I’ll meet you at the car,” he said just before he turned to walk away. Didn't they just get through with practice? Why are they having another team meeting?
“Col,” I called.
He turned his head to the side.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t ever thank me, Karina.”
I shook my head, rejecting her secret. There was no way. “No. It can’t—”
“I've seen the DNA results, Kay. Collin ishis son.”
Tears threatened to form in my eyes, but I held them back. No. This wasn’t worth my tears because it wasn’t true. There had to be a mistake. The man who stood up for me, who was always gentle with me…my Col couldn’t share blood withhim.
“I-it’s wrong!” I stammered.
She began to tell me about where Collin was born and all the information Casey Gomez, a hacker for the FBI, dug up. She told me about the hospital. She told me about his mother and how he was left to die in a Chicago winter at the bottom of trash can. She told me about the foster homes he was in and out of until about the age of eight.
By the end of it all, I was crying. That was a horrible story. No one deserved that kind of treatment. Babies needed to beloved. Children needed to be protected and cherished. Collin wasn’t. I could only begin to imagine the horrors he had to face.
A dark-haired, blue-eyed baby boy left in the cold, dead of night.
In atrash can.
“We think—Dean and I—think that Romano knows who he is, but now, the question is, does Collin know?”
“Does Collin know what?”
I jumped at the sound of his voice, and Haley’s green eyes bounced up to the doorway. I twisted my neck to see him standing in a black suit, hands in his pockets. He took in the scene before him for a moment before his ice eyes landed on me.
I looked out the window to find it was near dusk. Haley and I had been here for hours.
“Karina, back to your room,” he ordered.
Haley squeezed my hand. Something about the tone of his voice must’ve struck a nerve, because I was on my feet within the next second. “You don’t get to talk to me that way.”
He smiled and, you guessed it, it wasn’t kind. Far from it. “Feisty today, aren’t we?”
“Fuck you,” I spat.
