Page 113 of Offside Devil

“Dying and dropping a surprise kid on my doorstep?”

He winces. “Sorry, man. There’s no good way to ease into that conversation.”

I wave him off. “It’s fine. In my mind, Paige died years ago. I knew it was going to happen sooner or later—no one can keep going the way she was and make it out the other side. But if I’d known about Aiden, then I would have…” I lean forward, elbows on my knees, as my voice falls into a choked rasp. “I would have gotten him out of there. I think half the reason Aiden is doing fine without Paige is because she wasn't much of a mother to begin with. She could barely take care of herself. There’s no way she was taking good care of a kid.”

I hate thinking about what Aiden went through. What he must have seen.

“It probably doesn’t help ease your mind, but he seems fine.” Reeves gestures to where Aiden and Jalen are falling over each other laughing because Aiden slipped off the dirt mound and landed on the “stove.”

“For now,” I agree. “But sometimes, I think about what he’s going to go through being my son, and I’m not sure if he’s any better off.”

“You mean because of the press?”

I nod. “That. And my past. There’s no such thing as buried secrets when all of your sins are laid bare in the tabloids. He’s going to know every nasty detail of what me and his mom were up to. People are going to hold it against him.”

The same way Peter Morris is holding my past against me. I’ve been sober for years, but it doesn’t matter.

My old mistakes will always be the first thing people see when they look at me.

“That part of it sucks, man. There’s no way around it. But kids are resilient.” He chuckles. “I don’t mean that you can fuck them up and traumatize them and they’ll be okay, but when you’re doing your best and loving them, the rest of this stuff comes out in the wash. Aiden will get used to the cameras and you can prepare him for what he’ll find on the internet way before he goes looking. You can handle all of that stuff, and so can Aiden. You guys will figure it out.”

“What are we figuring out?” Daniel asks, rounding the corner with Jace and Davis just behind him. “Taylor kicked me out of the girl’s circle.”

“Probably because she was tired of you drooling all over her,” Davis says. “She wants to make space for a real man to slip in.”

“Touch her and I’ll kill you,” Daniel snarls, his face dangerously serious for a few seconds while the threat sinks in. Then he sighs. “No, she said Mira would never be honest with them while Zane’s best friend was lurking around.”

“She probably won’t be honest with them, either way,” I suggest.

Jace frowns, and I realize all at once what I said.

“Not like that. She’s just… private. She almost didn’t take the job when she found out I play for the Angels. She likes to fly under the radar.”

“Is that why you’re still calling her your nanny instead of your girlfriend?” Jace asks.

“No. It’s because she isn’t my?—”

“You don’t have to admit it, but no more lies.” Jace jabs a warning finger at me. “Carson’s speech the other day fucking sucked, but he’s right: we’re family.”

“That’s right.” Davis raises a beer. “To honesty and to family!”

I raise my water in agreement just as Mira comes around the corner.

Her hair is inky black in the fading light. When she sees me, she beams, and I don’t know how to be honest about the feeling that warms my chest.

Because the truth is, I don’t know how to be with Mira.

Whenever something makes me feel this good, I have a nasty habit of letting it destroy my life.

45

MIRA

“Wow,” Aiden breathes, hands plastered to the window as Evan navigates us up the long, winding drive to Jemma and Reeves’s house. “A castle.”

I thought living in Zane’s condo had acclimated me to luxury. Every morning that I wake up sprawled in my queen-sized bed and drink my coffee from an actual sofa, the version of me that sat on a deflated, misshapen bean bag starts to fade away like Tinkerbell without attention.

But even with my new taste for furniture that has actual structure, I can’t keep my jaw hinged as I gawk up at the mansion in front of us.

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