Page 20 of Tell Me You Love Me

“My mom is Alana Bette Page.”

“Motherf—” I cling to the fury bursting through my veins. To the nausea and rage and the million other entirely unpleasant emotions that singe my blood.

I turn from the kid and stalk an easy twenty feet past the truck, if only so I don’t pick the fucking thing up and throw it. “Alana Page is his mother. Alana Page is your mother?” Maniacal laughter takes me over, thesound entirely unhinged and not at all funny, rolling along my tongue and out to poison the air we breathe. “Alana Page is inside that house right now?” I shoot a pointed finger over his head, only to lower it again because if I don’t, I worry it’ll turn into a fucking fist. And that fist will hit things until I feel something,anything, other than the pain slicing at my heart. “She’s here?”

“You knew she had a kid.” Chris gives the boy his back and pins me with a look that would usually—in other circumstances—pull me up short. But his warning barely penetrates my senses this time. His approach hardly touches my consciousness, not even when he stops in front of me, so close that the tang of his sweat hits my lungs, and his formidable stance becomes an impenetrable wall. “You knew. We already had this fight, so calm the hell down before you scare him.”

Nah, fuck that!I shove past my brother and stalk back toward the Page boy. Good fucking God, he’s Alana’s kid, all grown up and staring into my eyes. “You’re Franklin Page?” I lower into a crouch and sniff so fucking violently I turn it into a huff akin to a charging bull. Which is legions better than the ache intent on turning me into a blubbering mess. “You didn’t tell me your name in class.”

“I didn’t have to.” He broadens his chest and meets my eyes without a single shred of fear in his. He’s got that Page blood coursing in his veins. The bravery. The complete disregard for what’s good for him. “It’s polite to introduce myself. But it’s not the rules.”

“Completely agree.” Chris glances up at the blistering sun and smirks. “Besides, who gives a shit about polite? Not me.”

“You’re Tommy Watkins.” Franklin pushes his glasses along his nose, his little nostrils flaring with the movement. “You told me your name.”

“D-do you recognize it?” I fight every single fucking urge in my body to reach forward and take his glasses off. They slide down anyway, and they’re smudged as hell. They can’t hardly be helping.

It’s not my right. But fuck, I’d give anything to see his eyes without the barrier between us.

“Before you met me at the gym…” I lick my lips and search for her in his features. Her cheekbones. Her nose. Her lashes. Dammit, he’s got her dimples. “Before we trained together, did you know my name?”

Did she speak of me? Did she miss me? Did she wish she hadmybaby and not that asshole’s from New York?

“Franklin?” I rasp. “When I said my name was Tommy Watkins, did that spark recognition in your mind?”

He firms his lips into neutral lines. But he shatters my heart and pieces it back together, all in the space of a single beat when he nods. “Yes.”

“Franky?” Her panicked voice, her shouted demand. It’s like angels on the wind and nails on a chalkboard, all at once. “Franky?”

“Save us all.” Chris presses his hands together in prayer. “Fuck me sideways and protect us all. It’s gonna be messy.”

“Franky!” Alana bounds out of the house and skids to a stop on the porch, her sinful legs on full view in tiny lacy shorts and a full two inches of her stomach exposed by a matching tank top of spaghetti straps and absolutely no shelf support.

She scans the yard with wild searching sweeps of her eyes, her chest pounding and her hands shaking because,oh god, oh no, the big city girl can’t find her kid out in Bumfuck Plainview. But then she wrenches her head this way, and just like she could a decade ago, like doing so is a fuckinggiftshe was born with, she destroys me in an instant.

Because for a mere second, when she locates her son alive and well andnotbeing eaten by the killer cows, relief plays through her features. But that relief morphs into a primal kind of fear. And that look comes only when she looks past him and finds me.

“Brace yourself.” Chris strides around me and grabs Franky’s shirt, yanking him out of the line of fire and dragging him to the truck. He places one hand on the tailgate and holds on like they’re at risk of being swept up in a ferocious storm. “The ground’s about to shake. And if you think your mom is some kind of angel sent from heaven, I suggest you close your eyes and block your ears. Because she’s about to crush that illusion.”

“Shut up.” I push up straight and try—butfail—to wipe the sneer from my crooked lips. Then I open my mouth like a fucking idiot and raise my voice so she can hear all the way over there on the porch, “He’s fine, Momma.” Fuck. There I go, saying it out loud.Mom. “He was just checking out what’s happening in the yard.”

“Franklin!” she snaps out his name, commanding him closer. But he’s in no rush, and she’s not willing to waitalllllthe way over there, so she stomps down the porch steps in bare feet. Long, long legs like they go on for days, stretching from her tiny shorts, and because of her jerky movements, the strap of her tank slips off her shoulder and down to her arm.

Though she’s quick to shove it back in place.

“She hasn’t changed,” Chris mock-whispers, coming to stand on my left. “Still pretty. Still ready to decapitate you on sight. It’s like we’re twelve again.”

“I said shut up.” I stalk forward, dogging the poor kid’s steps, so when mother and child meet up, I’m right there with them, towering over the pair because fuckkkkk, I can’t help but want to be near her. I want to smell her. Touch her.

Strangle her, maybe.

“Your kid is fine.”Your kid. You have a kid!“I wasn’t gonna toss him in the wood chipper, so you can calm your crazy down a few notches.”

“Mycrazy?” Her eyes burn fifty shades of psychotic, just like I knew they would. Shehatesthat word. “I’m crazy because I woke up, and my son wasn’t in bed like he was supposed to be?”

“Your son.”Yes, Tommy. We know. She has a son.“That’s… different.”

She wants so badly to scream and shout and kick something. I know it. She knows it. But motherhood, it seems, has afforded her the ability to bottle her shit up. Which is not a skill she possessed before New York, all the way back when we said stupid things likeI love youandI’ll always choose you.

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