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My lawyer had told me that her parents had died in a car crash twelve weeks ago. I could almost see it in the way her body was bowing in on itself in grief. I knew that feeling all too well.
But I didn’t want to feel sorry for her. Not at all.
As if she could tell I was watching her, she turned those big eyes my way. From this distance, I couldn’t tell what color they were, but she looked at me, petrified, and some part of me was satisfied that she was freaking the hell out.
You reap what you sow.That’s what my foster parents had always said. Didn’t matter that neither Nova Stone or I had done any of the sowing in this situation.
Devan slapped my back. “Stop staring at her like you want to eat her. We still need to get on her good side. Otherwise, we’ll never see Huey again.”
His words were gruff and bitter, and I looked over at my brother. Not by blood, but by bond. Me, Devan and Alana had made a pact to look after each other, and the weight of our failure sat heavy on us both.
I’d been out partying it up with puck bunnies and too much vodka, while she’d been seduced and taken advantage of by some old, married fuck. I’d been skating around, making a name for myself, and she’d been giving birth to a baby that the father refused to acknowledge. Devan had been there at the birth, but I should have been there too.
We’d both been too far away when she’d had a stroke and died, Huey beside her on the bed. It was only sheer luck that her next-door neighbor had been bringing her breakfast every morning and had found them.
Because I hadn’t been there.
The doctors had told us it was a postpartum intracranial hemorrhage. They were rare, but they happened—there was nothing anyone could have done. But it happened to my best friend, while she was alone.
I should’ve forced her to move back to Ann Arbor with me and Devan. But she’d argued her whole life was here in Tucson.Hewas here in Tucson. Huey’s father.
She hadn’t known he was dead a month before Huey was born. Would she have come home with me if she had? The endless what-ifs were killing me.
Devan nudged me with his elbow. “Let’s go. I want to catch the girl before she leaves. We need to talk to her.”
I nodded, giving my lawyer a quick thank you as I left. I stopped and signed a few autographs, but finally we made it out into the sweltering Tucson heat. Jesus, I wanted to go home already, but not before we got what we came for.
Devan wanted to buy Huey. I knew that. And I’d pay anything for him. But one look at Nova Stone told me that wasn’t going to be an option. She looked shit scared but determined, and I knew that kind of expression. She was a do-what's-right kind of person. She wouldn’t sell a baby foranyamount of money.
So that was what we had to appeal to, but we had to do it stealthily. I wasn’t known for my even-temperedness, though. I was an enforcer for the team, though I was fast and good at defense too. Gone were the days you could just be an enforcer, skating around and starting fights. So I worked hard and protected my team if they needed it.
Devan, though, was as smooth as he was dark. Rigby often joked that Devan didn’t have an emotional wall around him. He had an abyss. If you stepped into it, you either sank or managed to drift across to find that soft heart he kept hidden away. Most people never made it that far.
He was a product of his upbringing, but we all were. Me with the fighting, Devan with the emotional unavailability, and Alana with her daddy issues that had gotten her knocked up by a man whose daughter was only two years younger than her.
We waited in the parking lot, and eventually, Nova Stone arrived. Her feet stilled as she saw us all, waiting around my Range Rover. I tried to put myself in her shoes as fear crossed her face. Maybe we should’ve waited for her in the courthouse, not out here in the parking lot like we were going to jump her.
The long silence probably didn’t help as my brain scrambled around, trying to decide what to say.
As always, it was Rigby to the rescue.
“Miss Stone? My name is Rigby Engman. We just wanted to formally meet you, if we could. River you’ve met, of course, and this is his brother, Devan Mayson. We’re in town for another day, and we’d really like to set up a meeting with you, just to discuss Huey.” He gave her a soft smile—the disarming one that attracted women to him like flies to honey—before glaring at me over his shoulder. I curled my lips into something I hoped was a pleasant expression.
“If we could, Miss Stone,” I grunted out, so she didn’t think I was mute. Devan didn't even try.
She looked between us all, clearly steeling her spine. Taking a shaky breath, she nodded. “Sure. I know that he means something to you all; otherwise, you wouldn’t be here. I don’t… I would never try and cut him off from his family. I know what it's like to be alone in the world, and I don’t want that for him, ever.”
Something relaxed in my chest at her soft words.
Rigby nodded encouragingly. “Just name a time and place.”
She dragged her eyes from Rigby to me, and swallowed hard. “CPS is dropping off Huey this afternoon, so how about tomorrow morning? At the Cheeky Javelina cafe?”
Rigby nodded, making a note of it in his phone. He pulled out his business card. “This is my number, in case you need anything beforehand. We’ll see you there at about ten?”
She nodded and hopped into a rickety old Mazda. I mean, it had to be twenty years old.
That wasn’t safe for Huey.
