Chapter 10 Noelle
NOELLE
“IS HE ONE OF OURS?”
For a second, I forget how to breathe.
Every tick of the heater makes my body twitch as three sets of eyes are all focused on me, waiting for me to speak.
All I can hear is my own heartbeat pounding in my ears, loud and uneven, like a drum I can’t quiet.
Eli.
My sweet boy tucked away in the adjoining room, fast asleep under the soft layers of hotel blankets, completely unaware that the world is threatening to detonate if I answer wrong.
My mouth opens, but nothing comes out. My voice catches halfway up my throat, tangling with the panic rising there.
What do I even say to that?
How do I answer that without looking like I’m floundering?
The air feels suffocating under their combined scrutiny, and their silence only makes it worse.
I can feel myself unraveling under it.
My fingers twist together in my lap, cold and clammy. I can’t look at them anymore, not directly, at least.
I open my mouth, my voice tripping over itself as I scramble for some kind of lifeline. “That’s…that’s crazy. Why would he be one of yours? I mean, come on. It was just a weekend. It was all a blur, you know? I was dating back then, other guys. It could’ve been anyone, really, and…”
My words tumble out, a frantic patchwork of half-truths and deflections that don’t even sound plausible to even my own ears.
I’m drowning in it—the lies, the fragments of truth I’ve carefully buried for years that I hoped would never see the light of day.
The way my throat burns trying to keep them down every time the urge to finally spill them rises.
My cheeks flame hot, the heat crawling all the way to my ears. I can feel the cracks showing no matter how hard I try to remain neutral.
Because they know.
I can see it in their faces.
The faint tightening of Cal’s jaw.
The way Dean leans forward just slightly, his eyes sharp.
Grant’s still by the window, his hand flexing at his side like he’s fighting every instinct to step in and grab me by the shoulders to shake the truth out of me.
It’s all too close.
The math, the timing, the truth.
Eli’s five, born in August, conceived that winter.
The winter they were here.
The winter everything went wrong and right all at once.
And sure, his hazel eyes are mine and his dark curls too.
But that stubborn jaw, that grin when he’s being cheeky, there’s something familiar in it.
Something I can’t deny.
Dean’s spark when he laughs.
Cal’s precision when he puts something together.
Grant’s quiet protectiveness.
It’s all there woven into the little boy that I’ve let none of them meet until now.
It’s like fate has a twisted sense of humor forcing them back into my lives like this.
I force myself to look at them, each in turn, and it feels like walking barefoot over glass.
I swallow hard, forcing another shaky laugh. “You guys are seriously overthinking this.”
“When is his birthday, Noelle?” Callum asks next.
My chest aches.
If I tell them the truth, everything I’ve built for Eli shatters to pieces. My father, their friendship with him, our fragile little peace…it all burns to the ground in an instant because there’s no way these guys will let it go.
They’ll never step back and let me raise our son on my own. Not when they know he could be one of theirs.
Before I can spin another excuse, a loud banging erupts at the door, aggressive and unrelenting like someone’s trying to break it down.
My heart lurches and I freeze, the sound jarring me out of my panic.
Dean’s already moving though, striding toward the door. “Hold tight.”
Callum and Grant shift closer to me, their presence a protective wall from whoever the hell is on the other side of that door, banging like a fire’s broken out.
Callum’s hand hovering near my shoulder, nearly touching me. Grant’s massive form acts as my shield.
I’m caught between gratitude and dread, their instinct to guard me clashing with the chaos of this moment.
Dean cracks the door, and a voice I haven’t heard in over a year slices through the air, livid and venomous. “Where the fuck is she?”
My whole body freezes.
Blood drains from my face and the room narrows to a pinprick of sound, hyper focusing on the man standing right outside the doorway.
Oh god.
Oh no.
Jared. My ex.
The man I broke up with a year ago but won’t let it go.
The sight of him is a physical blow to my chest.
His eyes are wild as they search for me over Dean’s shoulder, his blond hair sticking out at odd angles from the wind outside.
He reeks of whiskey and cigarettes even from where I’m sitting, the stench trailing him like a cloud.
How is he here?
How did he know I was at this hotel with Eli?
My mind races in a dozen directions all at once.
Someone must’ve tipped him off, but who?
The front desk?
One of the shop owners who saw us trudging through the snow?
He has to have stopped by my shop and asked around, and maybe somehow put the pieces together?
The questions loop in my head, impossible to pull apart.
There’s no time to figure it out. I have to keep this away from Eli.
Keep Jared away from the adjoining room where my son is curled up and sleeping peacefully.
The memory of the last time he got within reach of my son flashes through my mind viciously as the faint sounds of my son screaming for me while being dragged to Jared’s car still echoes inside my head.
He never had custody back then, or ever, but that’s never mattered to my ex.
He sees Eli as much of an extension of himself as he does me.
Both of us belong to him no matter how many times the police have told him otherwise.
I will not, cannot, let that happen again.
I rise on shaky legs.
Jared barrels forward, words stumbling over one another in a venomous cadence. “You’re dragging Eli around to some random guys’ room, Noelle? What kind of mother are you? Some slut shacking up in a hotel?”
Dean moves before I can.
He’s a solid wall of muscle, face hot with righteous anger.
He pushes Jared back into the corridor with a shove that has been practiced a hundred times throughout his career, a shoulder check that nearly sends my ex crashing against the opposite wall.
I quickly push past Callum and Grant, heading for the door.
“Who the fuck are you?” Dean snaps, pinning my ex with a look that says this isn’t his battle to pick, but he will not stand by and watch me be harassed. “You don’t get to come around and start demanding things or talking to her like that.”
Jared’s face twists into a sneer, words slurred with a dangerous grin. “You one of the dude’s she’s fucking, then? Guess she couldn’t keep those legs of hers closed after I left her sorry ass. She needed three guys to fill my shoes, huh.”
Each word is designed to wound, to humiliate me and drag me back into everything I have spent an entire year stitching myself together from.
Grant moves next; he’s a force I can feel before I hear him.
He storms up to the door and pulls me back just enough to throw it open.
At the last second, he manages to catch it before it bashes against the wall.
His voice drops low in a warning that doesn’t need to be loud to be heard. “You better get the fuck out of here right now if you know what’s good for you.”
Jared barks out a laugh that doesn’t sound at all human.
It’s too sharp and too cruel, bouncing down the hallway loud enough to echo. “You think you can threaten me? That’s my boy in there.”
For a split second, the world stops.
My stomach drops so hard I feel sick.
Then Dean’s head snaps toward me like a whip crack.
His eyes are wide with disbelief, locked on mine.
The look guts me.
It’s not judgment exactly, but confusion, surprise, and hurt all rolled into one.
Like a thousand questions just detonated behind his eyes all at once, all of them saying: his boy?
Embarrassment hits me first, crawling up my neck until my ears burn from it.
Then comes something deeper: shame.
I want to explain, to say He’s lying. He’s not Eli’s dad, he’s not his, please don’t look at me like that.
But the words tangle somewhere between my lungs and my tongue, and nothing comes out.
Jared sees it, of course he does.
He always has.
He feeds on moments like this, on the way I shrink when his voice cuts through the air when insulting me, on the way I freeze under the spotlight he drags me into.
It’s a power play he’s perfected, a predator’s patience, the kind that waits for the smallest weakness before sinking its teeth in.
“Oh, what, didn’t tell your new boyfriends the truth, Noelle?” he sneers, his words thick with venom. “Didn’t tell them you’ve been keeping my kid away from me?”
The accusation lands like a slap.
My body reacts before my brain can catch up—shoulders curling in, arms wrapping around my body like I can hold myself together with sheer force.
I take a step back, then another, the carpet rough beneath my heels. Every inch I put between us feels like survival, but it’s never enough.
He’s still in my head, twisting the truth into something filthy.
Shame seeps in like cold water rising fast. I can feel Dean’s stare burning into the side of my face, the confusion, the disbelief, maybe even betrayal. I can’t look at him.
I can’t look at any of them.
My throat aches with the effort to keep from crying, from screaming, from falling apart in front of the men who were never supposed to see this side of my life.
Then I hit something solid behind me.
For a split second, I flinch, bracing for Jared’s hand again, an old instinct ingrained in me.
But instead, I feel a steady, grounding pressure on my shoulders. Warm and gentle.
“Hey,” a low voice says near my ear.
I tilt my head up and meet Callum’s eyes.
He’s standing right behind me, his jaw tight.
His hands stay firm on my shoulders, anchoring me, silently telling me he’s there and that I’m not alone this time.
Across the hall, Grant moves until his body is blocking most of the doorway.
“Leave. Or we’ll call the cops,” he bites out.
Jared hesitates.
For the first time, his swagger falters, his eyes flicking between him and Dean.
His jaw works, the mask of confidence cracking just slightly as he takes a half-step back.
“I’ll be back,” he spits finally, voice cracking in spite of himself. He jabs a finger toward me, his expression twisting into ugly desperation. “Mark my fucking words.”
Dean doesn’t wait, he slams the door shut hard enough to rattle the frame, the sound echoing through the suite like thunder. “Idiot…”
My knees give out before I can stop them, the adrenaline that kept me upright vanishing all at once.
I sink to the carpet, arms still locked around myself.
The tears come in a rush, hot and humiliating, spilling down my face faster than I can wipe them away.
I cover my face with both hands then, wishing I could disappear, wishing I could rewind the last five minutes and erase them entirely.
The dam’s broken now, every ounce of composure I’ve fought to hold onto these past years gone in an instant.
Jared’s voice still echoes in my ears, his words sharp as glass.
Didn’t tell them the truth. My kid.
The shame of it twists deep, tangled up with Dean’s startled glance.
It’s not even fucking true, but it’s not like I can tell them that or else the real truth will come out.
A soft rustle sounds beside me as someone kneels down. A hand brushes against my arm.
“Noelle,” Callum says quietly.
“Sorry,” I manage to choke out.
He pulls me in, wrapping his arms around me. “It’s going to be okay.”