“Excellent. A classic.”
Catherine watched them for a second, something soft and sad moving across her face. Then she looked at me.
“Okay,” she said.
I grabbed my keys.
“Okay.”
At the door, I stopped and looked back at Isla. She was already showing Taylor the lip gloss wand, but she glanced up like she sensed me watching her.
“Daddy?”
“Be good,” I said.
“I’m always good.”
Taylor snorted. Isla glared at her. “Mostly good.”
I opened the door and stepped into the hallway with Catherine beside me, both of us walking toward the conversation we had spent weeks avoiding. In the elevator, she reached for my hand for one brief second, and I held on because I knew once those doors opened, everything between us might change.
CHAPTER 26
Catherine Celia
By the time the elevator doors opened on my parents’ floor, my hand was no longer in Hunter’s. It had been for exactly three seconds on the ride up. Three seconds of warmth and pretending that walking into my parents’ apartment with him beside me was something brave instead of something that might ruin everything.
Then the doors opened. We walked down the hall in silence. Every step toward my parents’ apartment made my chest tighter, until breathing felt like something I had to actively remember how to do. Hunter stayed beside me, close but not touching, his jaw set and his shoulders tense in a way I rarely saw from him. He looked like a man walking into a hit he had no intention of avoiding. I unlocked the door because apparently my hands could still function even though the rest of me had gone numb.
The second we stepped inside, Jaden looked up from the couch. He was sprawled sideways with one foot on the coffee table, a bowl of popcorn balanced on his stomach. Mila sat on the floor in front of him, brushing a doll’s hair. Mom was atthe island in leggings and a sweatshirt, going through a stack of patient charts on her laptop. Jaden’s eyes moved from me to Hunter. Then back to me.
“Why are you with Hunter?” he asked.
Mila turned around too, her ponytail swinging. “Where’s Isla?”
My stomach dropped.
Mom looked up. Her gaze went from Hunter to me, then back again. Her expression changed immediately into a quiet, sharp maternal suspicion.
“Mila,” Mom said, closing her laptop slowly, “take your things to your room for a bit.”
Jaden sat up. “What about me?”
“You too,” Mom said, but she was still looking at me like she already knew the bomb I was about to drop on her. Mila followed him down the hall, glancing back twice before Jaden tugged her along and whispered something that made her gasp. My mother waited until their doors closed.
Then she looked at us. “What’s going on?”
Hunter shifted beside me. “It would be better if Cole were here too.”
Mom went very still. The front hallway felt suddenly too small.
“Hunter,” she said carefully.
Before he could answer, Dad walked out from the hall near the bedroom, phone in one hand, reading glasses pushed up on his head.
“What’s better if I’m here for?” he asked.
Then he looked up. His gaze landed on me. Then Hunter, and finally Mom’s face. Something moved through his expression so fast I almost missed it. Confusion. Concern. Recognition. Then panic. His eyes dropped to my stomach.