"I don't flirt with him."

"Could it be the fact that he sent me a history app?"

"Oh, excuse me. Did it say 'I like your mom' on it?"

"No. But get real. What guy does that?" he scoffed.

"A nice guy," she said insistently.

"Exactly. That's my point. He's a good guy. He volunteers. He helps Rex for free. And I've seen the goofy look you get when you're texting."

She was so busted. "Would you prefer that I don't go out with him?" she asked gently, giving him the out that she felt she needed to. Alex was her top priority, and even though she prayed he'd say no, she'd have to honor his wishes if he said yes.

"No," he said with a laugh. "It's fine."

"Do you mind if he comes to the match, and maybe we can all hang out and get a coffee or c.o.ke or something?" she asked, with a c.o.c.ktail of nerves and hope that she hadn't felt since she herself was a teen asking out a boy. Such a strange feeling, to want her son's approval so badly.

He shrugged happily. "Sure."

"Does it bother you that he's a recovered addict?"

He shook his head. "Mom, he's not a thing like Dad. We're cool." His phone rattled, and he grabbed it. "Oh man, James just got a new cheat code."

That was that. He'd moved on. She'd clung to fears of what their life might be like if she ventured down this path, but Alex was resilient. He'd taken his punches and gotten back up.

She was the one who'd been living in fear. He'd been living his life.

Time for her to do the same.

Fully. In every way. Not only as a mom, but as a woman, too. A woman who was falling hard for a man.

"I owe you, man. The Cristal's on me," Rex said, offering his hand to shake as Colin pulled up to the building at the community college where Rex and Marcus were slated to take the math test. "Wait. I meant the Shirley Temple's on me."

Colin waved him off. "Get out of here. Happy to do it."

"What are you doing today? You gonna go find the next Google to buy, or go scale the side of a mountain with your Spidey hands?"

"Both," he said. "Work. Some climbing, a run, then a swim."

"You're nuts."

"You should go with me sometime."

"Now you're really crazy," Rex said, laughing with his mouth wide open. "But I will cheer your bada.s.s a.s.s on when the day comes."

"Excellent," Colin said, then looked into the backseat as Marcus grabbed his backpack. The kid had been quiet the whole ride. Then again, Rex tended to occupy the majority of the conversational s.p.a.ce in any room. "Good luck, Marcus."

"Thanks for the ride. I didn't know 'til Rex told me this morning that you were the one picking us up."

Colin furrowed his brow for a moment, wondering why it mattered that he was the one picking them up. But he figured Marcus had more important matters on his mind. "Happy to help. You guys will do great."

He went to his office, where La.r.s.en greeted him with a coffee and the sheer excitement of having found a kicka.s.s startup.

"Talk to me. Tell me why I want in," Colin said as they walked down the hall. By the time the sun dipped low in the sky, he'd worked on a term sheet for the first round of funding, then headed for an evening trail run with Johnny Cash. The day was made perfect by the photo that landed on his phone that night. An image of Elle's legs from the thighs down in her roller derby socks.

The message said, See you tomorrow.

The whistle blared loudly, and Janine took off around the track, h.e.l.l-bent on scoring more points. Elle and the other blockers joined in, jostling and jockeying against the Resurrection Girls' efforts to score on the Fishnet Brigade. Elle's quads burned, and her heart beat furiously. Her focus narrowed, as it always did during matches, to her mission-protect the jammer and win the game.

On the next lap, Elle held out a hand for Janine, who gripped it for a few seconds, then let go as Elle sent her shooting faster around the curve. As Janine sped past a Resurrection Girl, an image of Colin popped into Elle's head. She shook it off. She couldn't think about him now. Couldn't think about the fact that he wasn't here. Hadn't shown up. The match would be over in two minutes. Her team was ahead. The point Janine just scored from her a.s.sist was more padding on the total.

Maybe by the time they finished he'd be here. He'd show, right? He had to. He'd better f.u.c.king show.

A brief burst of frustration powered her around the track, her muscles cursing at her. She didn't want to believe that the man would fail to show up for her and her kid.

The only thing that would hold him back would be- Her wheels slipped out from under her, and she crashed hard onto the sleek wood.

As soon as he heard the rumble of Ryan's truck, Johnny Cash whimpered and thumped his tail against Colin's floor. "He's back," Colin said to the dog, who wagged harder. "C'mon, boy. Want to go see Ryan?"

The tail became a propeller, moving so fast it could power a motorboat. Colin opened his front door, and the Border Collie took off like a shot, tearing across the lawn to greet his master. Colin joined the two of them on the sidewalk. "Looks like someone missed you."

Ryan stood up and gave Colin a quick hug. "Thanks for watching him. I appreciate it."

"He's easy. Welcome back. How was it?"

Ryan c.o.c.ked his head and seemed to consider the question for a few seconds as he pet his dog. "I'm going to ask her to marry me next week."

"Holy s.h.i.t. Guess you had a great time." He shook his brother's hand in congratulations and proceeded to pepper him with more questions.

Ryan answered them all then capped it off with a simple truth. "Sophie's the best thing that's ever happened to me."

Colin parked a hand on Ryan's shoulder and looked him square in the eyes. "She is. And don't ever forget it."

"I won't," he said, then opened the door of his truck for the dog. An engine rattled down the street, as Colin patted Johnny Cash good-bye.

"He's back," Ryan said in a hiss. "He knows where we all live. Sophie told me he stopped by more than a week ago."

Colin furrowed his brow and was about to ask "who's back" when he heard a familiar-sounding "hey."

"What's the deal?" Ryan said, and Colin nearly stumbled when he turned and saw who his brother was addressing. "My fiancee told me you stopped by my house the other day. Just man up and tell us what you want."

s.h.i.t. Colin had told Ryan about Marcus and the Protectors, but he'd had no idea that the kid had stopped by Ryan's house before. What the h.e.l.l?

"Marcus?" Colin asked, trying to figure out why he was here, and how he knew where he lived. Was he here to share his math results? But then why had he gone to Ryan's house a week ago?

Ryan turned to Colin. "You know him?"

He simply nodded. He tried to form words, but he wasn't even sure what to say. He was used to a.s.sessing situations, but this one had him perplexed.

Marcus cut in. "I want to talk to both of you," he said, a touch of nervousness in his voice. "We all have something in common."

"Why are you here?" Ryan demanded of Marcus, then to Colin, he said, "Who is he?"

Colin was about to say what he knew-I drove him to his math test, he's friends with Rex, Elle knows him, he's a member of the Protectors-but all those words crumbled to dust when Marcus spoke next.

"My name is Marcus. I was born seventeen years ago at the Stella McLaren Federal Women's Correctional Center. My mother is Dora Prince. I'm your brother."

All the sound in the universe was vacuumed up. His heart stopped, his brain short circuited, and the ground began to sway.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

He was frozen, but he wasn't cold. His breath didn't fit in his chest. His skin was two sizes too small.

"Who-" he started, but got stuck on the question. "Who is your father?" Colin managed to say, the words thin and tentative as he tried to make sense of the way north had become south, and down was now up, and who the h.e.l.l this kid's dad was. Had their mother been knocked up courtesy of Stefano? That thought churned his stomach. Or did they share the same dad? But if Marcus had been born to Thomas Paige, he and his other siblings would surely have known about his existence, because the prison would have turned the baby over to Thomas Paige's parents to raise Colin's grandparents.

Which meant...

"My father is Luke Carlton," Marcus supplied, and Colin blew out a long stream of air. His mother had not only cheated on his dad, she'd gotten pregnant from the affair. Course, that was the least of her crimes.

"So she was pregnant when she went to prison?" he asked, the words tasting like chalk.

"I guess she had to have been," Marcus said from his post on the sidewalk. The three of them stood in their places like actors on their marks.

"Pregnant? She was f.u.c.king pregnant?" he asked again, as if repeating the facts would a.s.semble them into a neat, orderly package.

But before Marcus could respond, Colin turned to his other brother. Ryan's jaw was open. He hadn't moved. He didn't blink. "Can you believe this?" he said to Ryan, holding his hands out wide. He'd barely batted an eye when the detective had told him last week that Dora had been dealing drugs.

But this-this was something else entirely. This was the true bombsh.e.l.l.

He had another brother. One who was fourteen years younger. One he'd never known existed.

This was a meteor crashing into his backyard, slamming a crater in the earth. This was him standing over it, trying to figure out what to do with that gaping maw in the ground.

"No. This is insane, even for her," Ryan said, the look in his eyes mirroring Colin's.

He snapped his gaze back to Marcus, who rubbed a hand over his chin, a gesture that Colin did often, too. He flinched at that one small, shared trait. "I can't believe she was pregnant that whole time, as all the s.h.i.t went down. And she hid the pregnancy through all of that?"

"My dad told me she didn't want anyone to know. She was scared of it getting out," Marcus said. His early nerves seemed to have evaporated, replaced by something that sounded like relief. He straightened his spine, standing taller. He still wasn't as tall as Colin or Ryan, though. Perhaps, the height genes among the Sloan men had come from their father. Somehow, this small detail mattered to Colin-mattered because he'd loved his dad. Because he missed his dad.

"When did Luke tell you that?" Colin asked, using Marcus's dad's first name.

"When I was older. I think ten or eleven."

"When were you born?"

Marcus gave them his birthday. Three months after their mom went to prison. Which meant she would have been six months pregnant when she was locked up. Colin tried to remember how she'd looked then, during the trial and her arrest. She wore baggy clothes, if his memory served. A seamstress, she'd have known how to make the right outfits to hide a growing belly. The thought of her planning a whole deception hit him like a sledgehammer.

"Holy s.h.i.t."

There were no other words for this situation. Just none. He backed up, reaching for a railing, a tree, something to hold on to.

Nothing was behind him-only sidewalk, yard, and the utter surprise of the foursome becoming a fivesome. He grabbed Ryan's shoulder, and his older brother steadied him, as the news started to register as real.

His own mother had methodically hid her fifth child, keeping him secret as the tsunami rocked their family.

Five.

He was one of five, not one of four.

And none of them had a clue.

He started traveling back in time, trying to add up the facts and make some sense of this latest machination of their mother's. "So she was pregnant when she was arrested," he said, thinking out loud, taking a minute to process the absolute f.u.c.king weirdness of that detail. "And she was clearly pregnant when she was sentenced and went to prison." His brain kicked back into gear and started reconnecting the parts to the whole. And as he lined up the pieces, his jaw nearly dropped with one cold, stark realization. He brought his hand to his mouth, started to speak, but his voice was vacant. Then he found words again, managing a bare whisper as he turned to Ryan.

"She was pregnant when Stefano pulled the trigger." And the corollary to that hit him like a harsh smack in the back of the head. Motivation. "Was that why she did it? Was that her motive?" He shifted his gaze to Marcus. "Did it have something to do with you?"

Marcus held up both hands as if he were surrendering. "I have no idea. I wasn't even born."

He didn't mean to imply that Marcus was the motivation for the murder, but even so, it had to have played a role in their mother's thinking. She probably wanted the life insurance money so she could run away with her lover and her unborn child.

Colin spun to face Ryan, who looked like a mad man still-like this new wrinkle was rattling him to the core.

"Do you think this had anything to do with it?"

"I think what the f.u.c.king f.u.c.k. That's what I think," Ryan said, clenching and unclenching his fists. "I seriously cannot believe that she hid a pregnancy. But then, this is the woman who buried names of her accomplices, along with a G.o.dd.a.m.n drug-dealing route, in a dog jacket. That woman could hide anything. She's like a squirrel hiding nuts."

"She must have killed it in hide and seek," Marcus said softly, and a sliver of a smile formed on his lips. Colin glanced at Ryan, their eyes locking, sharing the realization that Marcus had just made a joke about their mother. Their mother.

Theirs.

One and the same. The green-eyed, husband murdering, drug dealing, cheater of a woman who had slept with this kid's father while she'd been married to Colin's dad.

Such a twisted, sordid tale. Dateline would have a field day with this new development.

There was a rustling sound as Marcus took a sheet of paper from his jeans pocket and unfolded it. "I brought this. I wasn't sure if you guys would believe me. But here it is," he said, then handed over a birth certificate. With steady hands, Colin held the paper and read every detail, Ryan by his side, peering at the doc.u.ment, too. From the state of Nevada. Marcus Carlton's birth certificate. The mother's name was Dora Prince. The father's was Luke Carlton. The date was three months after their mother became inmate #347-921.