Page 18 of Crossed Up

“Where’s my sweet little future wife, hmm?” Sebastian’s deceptively calm voice reaches my ears where I’m hiding in the hall closet. We attended a charity gala tonight that should have been a fun night out as a newly engaged couple.

That “fun” lasted less than an hour until Sebastian saw one of Dad’s friend’s sons making me laugh with a story of our time together on set as children. Apparently that pissed him off, because he stormed up and gripped me tightly around the bicep before pulling me away mid-sentence.

On the way home, he made his anger known with several cutting remarks, and I knew that if I didn’t hide until he lost interest, I would be in considerable pain for the next week, so the minute we arrived at the opulent home we share, I hid as fast as I could in a hall closet.

My heart feels like it’s seconds from beating out of my chest as I listen to him pace around the sitting room, no doubt with a glass of expensive bourbon in his well-manicured hand. Keeping my movements as silent as possible, I peek out of the mostly closed door only to come face to face with the man who haunts my nightmares.

A muscle in his cosmetically altered jaw tics as his sinister smile widens, and I know I’ve just sealed my fate by hiding rather than facing my punishment head-on.

“Lyly?” A tiny cry startles me out of my nightmare, and it takes me several seconds to process where I am. When my vision finally comes into focus, I see Crew standing in front of me with tears streaming down his ruddy cheeks. My stomach drops, worry overtaking any lingering fear from my dream.

“Little raptor,” I coo. “What’s the matter?”

His tears fall faster, and he throws himself into my arms, knocking me back against the couch in our fort bed. “I had a bad dream,” he whimpers between sobs.

My heart breaks for this innocent kid and all he’s been through in such a short time. “I’m so sorry, Crew-bug. Do you want to tell me what your bad dream was about?” I keep my voice low so I don’t overstimulate him, especially since he’s already upset.

He sniffles and twirls a long strand of my hair around his small fingers, tears slowly drying the longer his gaze stays transfixed on the repetitive motions. “A bad man hurt Daddy,” he whispers. “And then Daddy had to leave, too. Just like my mommy.”

A chasm opens up in the pit of my stomach and I’m pretty sure my heart falls into it. Most six-year-olds aren’t so worried about their parents leaving them that it manifests in nightmares, so to know that this is something that affects Crew this much is heart-wrenching.

I don’t know anything about the situation with his mother, so I need to tread carefully and remember to ask Aidan about it when he gets back to avoid a situation like this again. I understand he might not want to talk about it, especially after he brushed me off in the grocery store yesterday morning, but I can’t properly care for Crew during moments like this unless I have all the facts.

I run one hand over his soft hair in soothing motions while I use the other to hold him to me as tight as I can without hurting him. “Crew, listen to me,” I murmur. “Your daddy is one of the strongest guys I’ve ever met, and I promise that even if a bad guy did try to hurt him, he would still come home to you.”

He still looks distressed, so I scan the fort for my phone and find it sitting on the couch cushion where I left it to charge. Picking it up, I see it’s already well after one in the morning, and I have a missed call and a text from Aidan, that came in around ten, apologizing for missing their bedtime call. “Would it make you feel better if we called your dad so you could see for yourself that he’s okay?”

He hesitates but eventually offers me a tiny nod just as a snot bubble pops on his upper lip. I bite my lip to stifle a laugh and use one of the leftover napkins to wipe his nose before pulling up Aidan’s contact. He told me to call him any time, day or night, but I still find myself worrying he’ll be angry if we wake him up.

The little FaceTime tone only sounds twice before Rhodes picks up, startling me enough that I almost drop the phone. Why is he answering Aidan’s phone? Someone would have notified me if he was hurt, right? With shaking hands, I do my best to steady the screen as Crew starts to panic in my arms.

“Where’s Daddy, Uncle Rho?” he whimpers. Rhodes’ eyes go wide when he sees my own panicked eyes and Crew’s crying form molded to me.

Please tell me I didn’t just screw up.

8

AIDAN

My fingers twitch to pick up my cell phone, and it takes everything in me to leave it where it lays face-up on the bed. The ringer is turned all the way up, and I have Lyla set as an emergency contact, so her calls and texts will come through even when my phone is set on do not disturb during games and media.

Missing my first nightly call with Crew and breaking my promise made me feel like a shit dad, but our post-game debrief went way later than normal, and I knew he would be asleep by the time I got back to the room, which was confirmed by the fact that my text still sits on delivered two hours later.

“Dude,” Rhodes laughs. “It’s after midnight. They’re going to be fine. Lyla is one of the most responsible people I know, and you’ve already told me multiple times how good she is with Crew.”

Rhodes has been my best friend since he was drafted five years ago, and aside from his fiancée Wren and our other friend Copeland, he’s the only person I can be honest with about how I really feel. I glance up and meet his skeptical look with a grimace, shrugging defensively. “What if he needs me? And I still don’t know Lyla very well. I mean, she doesn’t even have a bank account. Doesn’t that seem a little suspicious?”

His eyes widen the tiniest bit, and my stomach sinks. Was I stupid to trust Lyla with Crew after only knowing her for a couple of weeks? Sure, I’ve been hearing about her in passing for months, and my gut tells me she’s the real deal, but Christ’s sake, I didn’t even know her name until the day she showed up on my doorstep a few weeks ago.

Rho’s heavy hand lands on my shoulder, snapping my attention to his. “I can see the wheels turning in your head, man, but I don’t think it’s as weird as you think it is. When Wren first started going to therapy again last year, Doc told her to find a hobby, and that’s when she met Lyla. Wren adopted her right away for obvious reasons, but the non-obvious ones were the tan line on her ring finger and the shadow of bruises under her collar that looked like fingerprints. She tried to hide them, but Wren and I both noticed.”

His sigh is loud in the quiet hotel room. The video game we had been playing is paused and temporarily abandoned as I hang on to every word of insight he has about the gorgeous woman currently occupying my mind, living in my house, and caring for my son.

“I just… she’s been extremely secretive about her life before moving to Charleston, but from what I can guess, it was a really bad situation. I know she’s told Wren as much, but even though they’ve been inseparable the last year, we still don’t know anything about her life before she arrived in South Carolina other than that she came from Maryland. But Aid? We trust her. Whatever is in her past, I don’t think it was something she did. I’d bet my contract she’s running from something. Or someone.”

My heart falls at the thought of someone hurting that sweet angel of a woman, and my earlier suspicion fades away with the reassurance from someone I trust implicitly. I already submitted a background check, so I guess I’ll tone down the panic unless that tells me I have something to worry about.

Scrubbing my hands down my face in exhaustion, I glance at the clock to see it’s nearly one in the morning. “I’m gonna take a shower. Keep an eye on my phone for me?”

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