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“Brooks, honey, could you come here for a minute?” she asked.
“Sure.” He lifted his chin at Grady and Steele as he walked into the living room. He swung his bag down before striding to the sofa to sit facing her. Grady backed off as well. They were letting her do this but staying to support her.
God, she loved them both.
“Brooks, I need to tell you something.” She went through all of it. The phone call from the lawyer. The letter. As well as the second phone call. Then, everything that Grady and Steele had done.
“My uncle wants custody of me?” Brooks asked.
“Yes, and I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you earlier. I just . . . I wanted to protect you from your mom. Then the accident happened straight after the letter, and I honestly forgot. But this man is your uncle, and you have the right to make your own decision about whether or not you see him.”
Brooks stood and started pacing. “No!”
“What?”
“Fuck that!” He scowled.
“Brooks.” Lord, her heart was breaking for him.
“They think after all these years, I’d want anything to do with them? Mom or him? Fuck no, Aunt Effie. And this was a bullshit way to play things if they did. They come to me. They don’t go getting a lawyer, investigating you, stressing you out. Just, fuck no.” He grabbed his bag and she realized he was going to leave.
“Brooks, wait!”
He didn’t stop, all she knew was that her boy was hurting and she needed to make it stop.
So, moving on pure instinct, she got to her feet and she ran after him. “Brooks!”
As he turned, her legs gave way on her. “Auntie!” He leaped toward her, catching her. “You . . . you were walking. Running.”
She let out a surprised bark of laughter. “I was.”
She wrapped her arms around him and he let her. “You’re going to be okay, Aunt Effie. I know it.”
“So are you, honey. Don’t let them upset you. We don’t need them. Not when we have each other. And now we have Steele and Grady as well.”
He leaned back and nodded down at her, his eyes suspiciously bright. Then he straightened his shoulders. “You shouldn’t be running like that, Aunt Effie. You could hurt yourself.”
Alpha male in the making.
“Baby, you okay?” Steele leaned down to pick her up. She was surprised it took him as long as it did. But she guessed he was giving them a moment.
Grady ran his hands over her as she stood with Steele supporting her. She was smiling as she stared down at her feet. Thank God.
“You get my uncle’s details and you give them to me.”
She glanced up as Brooks said that to Grady.
“I’ll call him and make things crystal clear. The woman who birthed me doesn’t get to try and kill Aunt Effie, then think she can start calling me. And he doesn’t get to be absent my entire life and then try to take me from Effie. No!”
“Wait. What?” Steele roared.
Oh shit.
Yeah, she’d forgotten about that part.
52
“Icannot believe that bitch tried to smack your head in with a steel pipe and you didn’t think to tell us,” Steele grumbled three nights later.
