Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Marc
The first-aid kit lives in the bottom drawer, buried under spare whistles and a deflated ball I keep meaning to toss. I dig it out and set it on the desk while Jessa stands by the window with her arms crossed, jaw set, her whole body braced for a fight she’s already decided we’re having.
She won’t give me one, not with Mia perched on the edge of the leather chair, swinging her legs, her eyes on the both of us.
“Mia.” I thumb the latch on the kit. “Tell your mom about your day.”
The girl doesn’t need asking twice. She launches into all of it at once: the classroom, Miss Harlow, a boy named Theo who eats glue, the field, the goal she nearly scored, the lunch where Bella saved her a seat.
Words tumble out of her without a breath between them.
I half listen and half watch her mother because her reaction is the one that matters.
Jessa’s holding her scowl together by will alone. Then Mia says she’s never had a best friend before, not a real one, and Jessa’s stiff expression falters. The fight drains out of her shoulders. When she catches me catching it, the scowl snaps back into place, sharper than before.
I keep my expression innocent, which takes a lot of effort.
“And Bella said we’re best friends now,” Mia finishes, breathless. “Forever. We pinky promised.”
“Did you?” Jessa’s voice softens before she can stop it.
“I really want to stay here, Mom.” Mia looks up at her, her lower lip wobbling. “Please.”
Jessa exhales through her nose. For a long moment, she stares at her daughter, and I watch the whole war play out behind her eyes before she loses it.
“Fine,” she breathes. “You can stay. I won’t pull you out.”
Even I didn’t expect it that fast. Mia whoops, throws her arms around her mother’s waist, then bolts for the door before anyone can take it back. “I’m gonna go find Bella!”
The door bangs shut behind her. The office goes quiet.
“Well.” I lean a hip against the desk. “I figured you’d put up more of a fight than that.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” Jessa rounds on me. “This has nothing to do with you. I already signed the firm’s contract. My probation ended two weeks ago, since I’d been working from home, so I’m locked in. Notice period’s six months. We’ll be gone the second it’s up.”
The gone part bothers me more than it should, but I keep my face even. “Six months is a long time. People change their minds.”
“I won’t.” Her voice is hard.
I study her. Something about this woman doesn’t add up, and I’ve never been able to leave a puzzle alone. “Is your problem with the town,” I mutter, “or with me?”
She stiffens, looking off to the bookshelf, the window, anywhere but my face, and that tells me more than an answer would.
“It’s me,” I murmur, half to myself. “What did I do to you?”
“Nothing.” It comes out clipped, too quick to trust.
I tilt my head, turning it over. None of it adds up. A woman lands in a town with a golden ticket for her kid, then claws to get out the moment she lays eyes on me. “What if I apologized?”
Her head comes up. “Do you even know what you’d be apologizing for?”
“No.” I shrug. “But if it secures your daughter’s future, I’ll apologize for whatever you like.”
Her anger drains again, slower this time. She looks away, and when she speaks, her voice has dropped low enough that I almost miss it.
“You’re a good father.”
The wolf stills inside me. I have no idea what to do with the words or where she dug them up from, and my brows pull together. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
She doesn’t answer, so I drop it and reach for an easier thread. “The girls are thick as thieves already. They were begging for a playdate at the house.”
“No.”
The speed of it stops me. “Just like that?”
“I don’t know you.” She crosses her arms tighter.
“If that’s the problem, we’ll do it at yours instead.” I keep my tone mild. “They only want to watch a few videos.”
Her eyes narrow. “What videos?”
“My old matches.”
“I see.” Whatever crossed her face closes off before I can read it.
“If my house is the problem, I’ll just drop Bella at yours.” I let a beat pass. “I know where you live.”
She’s quiet, and I can see her hunting for an out, turning over excuses one by one to see which one her daughter might buy.
“Don’t let your problems with me ruin their friendship, Jessa,” I say quietly.
She looks up at me, and her shoulders slump.
“Fine. This weekend,” she allows.
“What about me?”
“What about you?” She frowns, her brows puckering together.
“Can I come too?”
She blinks at me, baffled. “Why would you want to come?”
“Because I don’t know you either.” I push off the desk and step in, easy about it. “Fair’s fair, Ms. Vasquez.”
“It’s Mrs.” The correction is faint, automatic.
“Really?” I drawl. “You do realize I’ve got your paperwork.”
She catches up to it fast, understanding that I’ve seen the enrollment papers with no husband listed and a single name on every line. Color rises up her throat.
She closes the gap between us instead of retreating, which I don’t expect, and lowers her voice to a warning. “For all intents and purposes, I’m married. Remember that.”
“Sure.” I grin down at her.
I take her wrist before she can argue, gentle over the split knuckles, and tip the disinfectant onto a square of gauze. She hisses when it touches the broken skin, sucking air through her teeth.
So I blow on it.
I do it without thinking, an old reflex from years of Bella’s scraped knees, a soft breath across the sting to take the bite out. The second it’s done, I realize where I am, whose hand I’m holding, and I look up to apologize.
Jessa’s gone scarlet.
Her eyes are fixed on mine, her lips parted, her breath uneven. The pain isn’t what’s quickened her breath, and the wolf lifts its head, interested.
“Sorry.” I don’t sound it, and I keep hold of her hand.
“Just stop.” She tugs at her hand. “I can do it myself.”
“You’ll do it badly.” I tighten my grip carefully and reach for the bandage. “Hold still or we’ll be here all day.”
She makes a frustrated sound, and I hide my smile.
I wrap slowly. Her pulse beats hard under my fingers where they rest over her wrist, quick and light, and her breathing stays shallow the whole time. I glance up to find her watching my mouth. She looks away fast, color flaring higher. But I caught it, and so did the animal pacing behind my ribs.
She wants me. Her body’s got no talent for lying, even if she’d sooner walk into traffic than admit it.
I smooth down the last of the tape and don’t release her. “There. You’ll live.”
“Thanks,” she mutters, finally reclaiming her hand and tucking it against her chest.
I let the quiet stretch a moment, then nod toward the front of the building, where the sister-in-law’s car peeled out twenty minutes ago. “You seemed to know that woman, the mother with the two kids.”
“She’s my neighbor.” Jessa flexes her bandaged fingers, testing them. “Rachel.”
“Why’d you wade into a stranger’s family fight?”
Her chin comes up, and there’s iron in it. “Because I meant every word I said out there. If you didn’t give birth to a child, that child doesn’t belong to you.”
I tilt my head. “And if the mother’s unfit?”
She goes pale all at once and turns to me, her spine going rigid. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.” I hold my hands up. “It was a question.”
“Are you calling me an unfit mother?”
I stare at her, lost. “Why would you leap straight to that? Where’s the paranoia coming from?”
She hears herself, flinching at her own pitch, and presses her lips together hard before she answers.
“Sorry.” She rubs at the bridge of her nose. “I take these things personally.”
I should leave it there. The wolf won’t let me. “Mia’s father,” I begin, watching her closely. “Has he ever tried to take her from you?”
Jessa goes silent. When she answers, it’s almost too low to catch.
“He doesn’t know about Mia.”
That stops me. “Why not?”
She gives me a look I can’t read, an accusatory anger behind her eyes. “I tried to tell him. He decided I was after his money. His people turned me away from the door before I got a word out.”
A prickle crawls up the back of my neck, there and then gone before I can place it. The wolf goes very quiet, straining after something just out of range. I rub my nape, and the feeling slips off.
“Why didn’t you go back?” I ask slowly. “Try again later?”
Her eyes snap to mine, bright with a fury that’s been waiting years for somewhere to go.
“Do you have any idea how hard it is to be pregnant for nine months with no help, no family, no one at all?” Her voice climbs and shakes, but she holds it.
“My parents are long gone. There was nobody to get up at three in the morning and rub my swollen ankles, nobody to tie my shoes when I couldn’t reach them anymore.
No one drove me in when I had false labor or when my water actually broke and I sat on a curb calling a cab because there wasn’t a single soul to call instead. ”
I don’t move. There’s not a word in me.
“I did all of it, every hard hour of it, alone.” She takes a step toward me, eyes blazing.
“So if he thinks he gets to stroll in now and take my daughter because they happen to share blood, he’s wrong.
Blood doesn’t make him hers. He wasn’t there for the nights she screamed with fever or the ER trips.
It was me, every single time, all because he decided a baby was a con.
” Her breath saws out of her. “He doesn’t deserve to know she exists. ”
The wolf whines at the pain in her voice, and I agree with her, all the way down.
“Maybe you’re right,” I admit.
She blinks, thrown that I didn’t argue.
“What happens if Mia wants to meet him one day?” I ask. I don’t know why I can’t let this go.
Jessa looks toward the window, her anger cooling. “If she ever asks, I know where he is. I’ll let her find him, but not before she’s eighteen or old enough to see a manipulation coming.” Her jaw firms. “I won’t hand her over to be played.”