Page 264 of Branded
“Yes, Mr. Philips?” I asked, rising away from the bookshelf, standing to face him.
“Randall,” he said. “Please.”
I inhaled slowly, forced my exhale to be just as slow, and nodded, but didn’t commit to calling him by his first name.
He was just…
A bit too…something.
He smiled, eyes drifting to the open door for a moment, presumably checking with a glance on his class, all of whom were currently running their wiggles out on the kinder playground. Then they came back to mine and his volume lowered, his body shifting closer.
Too close for casual conversation at my son’s school.
That. That was the something.
And it set off the churning in my gut.
Set my inner radar pinging. No, alarming.
I slid a foot back, but he’d boxed me in at the bookshelves, and I didn’t have a lot of room to make space between us.
“I happened to notice that Ethan doesn’t mention his dad”—his gaze slid down, stopping at my hands, which were clenched tight around the pile of books—“is…are you two okay?”
A seemingly innocuous question.
But I’d been down this road before.
I knew what a Ring Glance felt like, knew that this conversation was heading, imminently, toward disaster.
I was young.
I was decent looking.
There was something vulnerable about me, no matter how hard I fought to weld steel to my bones, to make myself appear capable and competent and having my shit together, that meant men always…did this.
Smothering an internal sigh, I slid the books a little higher.
And look at that, his gaze came back to mine.
Almost like I had eyes.
Or magical powers.
“Ethan’s dad has never been involved in his life,” I said matter-of-factly. “He wasn’t interested, and I decided it was better for Ethan to only have people in his circle who truly want to be there.”
It had been an easy decision, even though it had shredded through my insides.
I’d been stupid—young and certain our relationship had been something different.
Or, well, something different for me. Because I’d been all in. I’d loved Nate with all my heart. He just…hadn’t felt the same, and he’d made that fact brutally clear.
See? Young. Stupid.
In love.
And Ethan had suffered because of it.
The guilt that always existed beneath the surface, bubbling up, waiting to boil over, water flowing over the rim of a hot pan, sizzling as it made its way to the stovetop.
