Page 365 of Branded
Lake was standing outside the door. But he wasn’t the nightmare.
Cas was standing next to him, looking pissed. But he wasn’t the nightmare either.
Nope.
That bad dream of all bad dreams was…Nate standing behind them both.
I knew I shouldn’t have come down here.
I knew it.
But Smitty had made plans and then Lake had sent the passes and Ethan had been excited and they’d come with a note promising to be discreet (something that I was realizing now was too little too late, considering the fact that he’d singled me out with that tap on the glass before the game and had smiled at me several times throughout—despite the fact that his team was losing).
Ethan had wanted to go.
And I’d done my best over the years.
But for so long, it had been difficult to give my son what he wanted.
I knew that he wouldn’t have thrown a fit if I’d told him that we couldn’t go down, that we needed to go home.
But the light in his eyes would dim…and my heart didn’t have that in me.
Not right then.
Not when things had been so fucking great over the last couple of weeks.
So…we’d gone down.
And now I’d stepped off the elevator and walked straight into my worst nightmare.
“Hey, Cas, I haven’t—” Smitty's voice preceded him as he came around the corner and cut off when he finished walking into the lobby area. Or maybe when he processed the shit show that was taking place in front of him.
“Smitty!” Ethan cried out, running toward him.
The big man recovered impressively quickly, moving forward and scooping up my son and then putting plenty of distance between them and Nate. Thank God he wasn’t frozen like I was. That he seemed to know what to do, unlike me. “Hey, bud!” he said, settling Ethan on his shoulders. “I have something cool to show you.” Smitty’s remorseful eyes hit mine and he mouthed, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I mouthed back.
But we both knew it wasn’t okay. Not in the fucking least.
But Smitty was getting my son away, making it so that he wasn’t going to be exposed to this scene, and however shitty it turned out.
Because every part of me knew that it wasn’t going to go well.
The sneer on Nate’s face and the glimmer of mean in his eyes told me that much.
He’d had that mean the last time I’d seen him. I’d felt that mean in every interaction we’d had since—and those interactions had been limited to some texts, a handful of phone calls (and nasty voicemails left on my phone, for his part), and later, through our own attorneys (on the advice of my attorney) with terse emails and letters and faxes.
“Wait,” Nate said, grabbing for Ethan’s arm. “What’s your name, kiddo?”
“Don’t—” I began, but then Cas was there, his body between Smitty and Ethan and Nate. Who didn’t like Cas’s interference, not in the freaking least.
Which he showed by shoving Cas hard enough to send him back a pace.
“That’s my—” Nate hissed.
“Shut it,” Cas said, the tone fierce enough to cut Nate off, though my ex took a step closer, got even more in Cas’s face.
