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Noa was usually so easy to read.
I kept advancing until I was a few feet away, and that was when he chose to start walking backward.
“Noa…?”
He huffed. “I’m gonna go talk to my mom, okay?”
What the fuck.
I came to an abrupt stop.
“I’ve postponed it long enough,” he continued. “I don’t want KC to worry that I don’t wanna be with him in public—or that I’m putting anyone before him. I have to do this.”
KC, not Daddy. That spoke volumes about his mind-set. But he was so way off. “KC would never think that, sweetheart.” I started following him again, and I noticed him fiddling with a very green car key. In other words, he’d borrowed Corey’s car. “Come on—let’s get back to the cabin and discuss this in a calm manner?—”
“No! You don’t get it, Lucian.” He even stomped his foot, and then he spun around and jogged toward Corey’s car. “I’m doing this right now, before I chicken out again.”
“Noa!” I ran after him and patted my pockets. Thank God—I hadn’t taken out my own car keys from last night when I’d gone out to grab KC’s pain meds. Goddammit, Noa was going to make me use my, in his words, scary Dom voice. He wasn’t fucking stopping; he’d reached Corey’s car. “You stop right now, Noa.”
He stopped dead in his tracks and turned to face me, jaw tense, eyes filled with trepidation and just as much determination.
He was bracing himself for disappointment that I would keep him from doing something he clearly needed to do.
I had no such plans, but he wasn’t going on his own.
I took out my car keys and couldn’t fucking believe I was about to leave the house wearing sweatpants and a hoodie. What would Cam think of me? I’d promised this would never happen.
Pressing the fob to unlock our car, I nodded for Noa to join me. “If you insist on doing this right now, I’m coming with you. Get in.” My tone left no room to argue, but by the look of relief in his expression, he was more concerned about simply going. He’d feared I was going to hold him back. “Do you have your phone with you?”
“Yes, Sir.” He darted around the car and opened up the passenger’s side.
I got in behind the wheel. “I want you to text Cam. Tell him we’ll be back in a couple hours. We’re on an important brat mission. Use those words.”
I didn’t want Cam and KC to worry.
Noa typed away on his phone as I backed out of the carport and began our journey toward…far away. I hardly ever went east of the Anacostia, though I did enjoy when Noa brought food from Mama’s Pizza Kitchen. Best damn wings ever, and the subs were fantastic as well.
It was possible I was hungry.
“I wish it was a brat mission,” Noa mumbled and pocketed his phone.
I reached over and gave his leg a squeeze. “Talk to me. Why do you insist on telling her today? I’m not convinced you don’t need more aftercare. Things got intense last night. You should be resting up on the couch in your PJs and watching your cartoons.”
Tell me to turn around, darling boy.
“I can’t.” He swallowed hard and looked out the window on his side. “KC’s right—it’s been hanging over my head for too long, and I hate lying every time I go see Mom. It piles on.”
I slowed down at the end of the dirt road and looked both ways before the car hit asphalt.
“Last time, she said she could meet Cameron and me in the city for lunch,” he admitted. “Like, in Shaw.”
Ah. Near the apartment where the boys no longer lived—and hadn’t for months.
We were going on the first week we hadn’t visited our condo in town either, and… Okay, that was a problem for another time, but perhaps we should consider renting it out or getting rid of it. Noa didn’t work in the city anymore, I didn’t work at all, and Cam was cutting down on his hours.
Focus, idiot.
“When did she finish her last rehab program?” I asked.
