Page 8 of Red Zone

He slid his backpack from his shoulder, opened his laptop, and pulled up his last dismal assignments and test results, not looking me in the eye the entire time.

Could his bad grades affect him more than I’d ever thought possible?I brushed the speculation aside. It was doubtful.

I knew what his endgame was—the NFL. And he probably couldn’t get the jersey chasers to take his chemistry tests because Professor White was inordinately strict and didn’t give athletes an ounce of leeway.

My phone pinged with an incoming text. Mav’s name flashed across the screen, and I snatched it from the coffee table, where we were working. A glance out of the corner of my eye to see if Liam had noticed told me all I needed to know by the muscle jumping in his clenched jaw—he had. But he kept his head down, working on the chemistry discussion question I had given him.

I shot off a quick message:I’m tutoring Liam for chem—fuck my life.

Mav:(laughing emoji, devil emoji) You can’t hide from this forever. He’s going to figure it out.

Me:(tongue sticking out emoji)

We’d had that discussion more times than I could count. The thing was, Mav worried about Liam stepping up for Lily too. I wasn’t alone in my concerns. He knew all about how my parents had been in a custody battle until their lives had tragically ended and how my dad had been in the NFL with an endless supplyof money to make things impossible for my mom. That made Liam’s dreams an issue for me. When I finished the conversation with Mav, I set my phone back on the table, screen-side down.

“What’s this?” Liam picked up a notebook with a crayon drawing Lily had done that morning peeking out. “Did your niece draw it?” He glanced at the pictures on the wall across from us.

My stomach dropped as his fingers brushed Lily’s drawing. I snatched the notebook away in a flash, my pulse hammering as I set it face down on the end table.Too close. Way too close.“Something like that.”

I launched into work, not giving him an inch to ask any more personal questions or to peer too closely at the pictures all around us. I went over his last test, expanding on the things he’d gotten wrong, coaxing him to come to the correct answers for a half hour until I thought he had a basic handle on it, but we clearly had a lot of work to do.

More than once, his leg grazed mine. When his hand touched the back of mine, I almost jumped out of my skin. Emotions and feelings running rampant, I tried desperately to keep us focused and my mind where it needed to be—on tutoring, and maintaining distance.

When his gaze kept returning to the pictures on the mantel above the fireplace, I lost it. All the pent-up resentment for how things had ended and what I’d heard of him moving on exploding in verbal warfare. “Pay attention. You can’t coast on your looks or godlike football status to pass this class. You have to be present and put in the time instead of partying and working your way through jersey chasers.”

His head slowly turned from the framed pictures of my family to face me, meeting my gaze with chilling precision. “I work goddamned hard, Skye. You, of all people, should know that. Football takes forty fucking hours every week betweenpractice, watching film, the weight room, meetings, and games. Add in another twenty hours of homework, classes, and sleep if there’s time. What the hell do you think I do every day?”

Before I could tell him all the explicit things I’d had to listen to from his adoring female fans, the garage door opened, and Aunt Eileen walked in with my daughter in tow. Fear shot through me, and my chest tightened as Lily’s chatter filled the room. Every detail screamed Liam—her green eyes, her dark hair, even the defiant tilt of her chin. I wrung my hands, praying he wouldn’t connect the dots.

Please, God, not now.

“Mama, I gots butterflies! And hearts. Pink!” She skidded to a halt in front of us and stomped her cute little foot. Pink hearts lit up on her shoes, and she clapped, excitedly squealing.

I must’ve responded because Lily grinned then raced to the kitchen when Aunt Eileen called her for a snack, apologizing for interrupting our study session. Liam’s gaze lingered on Lily, his brow furrowing like he was trying to place a memory just out of reach.

My heart pounded.Say something. Distract him.I gathered his book and computer, shoved it into his backpack, and slammed it into his rock-hard stomach. Suppressing a shiver at what I knew was underneath his navy henley, I jumped to my feet, threw his letterman jacket at him, and ushered him out. Slack-jawed, Liam glanced between me and over my shoulder, where I knew he could see Lily sitting at the kitchen table, swinging her legs like she always did.

“We’ll meet at the library on Thursday. Same time. Don’t be late.” I practically shoved him out then slammed the door and twisted the lock for good measure. My hand trembled against my mouth as I leaned my forehead against the solid wood.

No matter how much my heart wanted to believe in fairy tales again, I couldn’t let Liam close enough to destroy thelife I’d built for Lily and me. Not again. I’d shielded Lily from everything he could take away. I couldn’t let him break it all down. Not again.

CHAPTER FIVE

LIAM

The door slammed behind me, the sound echoing along the empty street as I made my way to my truck. The cold bit at my skin, but I barely felt it. My head spun, and no amount of freezing air could clear it.

Lily.

Her name was on repeat in my mind, her little voice echoing alongside it.“Mama, I gots butterflies!”She’d been so proud of those pink shoes, stomping her feet to make the hearts light up. And those eyes—bright, piercing green.My green.Or maybe not.

I shoved my hands into my pockets, my breath puffing out in uneven bursts as I tried to make sense of it all. Skye had a kid. That much was obvious.But everything else?None of it made sense. Three years—that was how long it had been since she’d walked away without a word.If Lily were mine, wouldn’t she have told me? But what if she didn’t? What if she couldn’t?

I climbed into the truck, gripping the steering wheel like it was the only thing keeping me grounded. My thoughts were a mess, spiraling in a hundred different directions at once. I thought about Lily again, the way she’d burst into the roomwithout a care in the world, chattering to Skye like they were the only two people who mattered.And Skye…

The way she froze when Lily appeared, the panic in her eyes when she looked at me—it was like she was bracing for something. Like she would be caught.

But if Lily were mine, why would Skye hide it?

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