“No,” she said with a smile, though I knew she wasn’t on board with the idea. “You’ll go spend time with them and get to know them here on the property.”
“And what happens after that?”
Florrie glanced at me and then back to Reid. “After three months, the judge will decide if you’ll stay with us or go live with them.”
I watched the kid’s reactions, and he didn’t look all that surprised. It was like he was expecting this all along. “Reid, we still want you with us,” I reassured him. “But this is your family and they want to get to know you too.”
He nodded, not saying anything.
“Well, I think the first time that you meet them,” Cap said, smiling to make this seem like a good thing, “should be here. Maybe you could show them around the facility and tell them a little about what you’ve been doing here.”
“Yeah, I could do that.”
He smiled, but it wasn’t a real smile. I felt so fucking terrible, but deep down in my gut, I knew this was right. Whatever happened from here on out, I knew that giving him this opportunity with his family was what he needed. He’d had no one to stand up for him growing up, and if he found a family that still wanted him and loved him, and was willing to go the distance for him, he deserved to have that. No kid deserved to go through life thinking that none of his family wanted him. Now I just had to help Florrie see that.
CHAPTER SEVENTEENFlorrie
I waited until Cap took Reid out of our suite, telling him that Knight was waiting for him to train. I knew he was giving us some time to work this out before Reid came back, but the thing was, there was nothing to work out. Alec had betrayed me today, giving in to the courts and helping the Fullers. I wasn’t sure how to forgive that. He knew what Reid meant to me and he went behind my back and pretty much made that deal without consulting me.
“Florrie-”
“Don’t,” I snapped. “I don’t want to hear your excuses. There’s no good reason for you to do this to me.”
He sighed, running his hand across the scruff of his jaw. I used to love it when he did that, but right now I was filled with so much hate that I couldn’t even see that one thing as anything but irritating.
“I never told you how I grew up,” he said gruffly, not looking at me.
“What do you mean?”
“I uh…” He huffed out a laugh, scratching at his jaw again. “I was Reid.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but I didn’t know what to say. How had I been with Alec for five years, worked with him for even longer and never knew this about him?
“What do you mean you were Reid?”
“My old man…he was a mean son of a bitch. I had more fists to the face from him by the age of five than probably my entire adult life. And when I was old enough to go to school, he started hitting me where no one could see. I had my arm broken twice and more cracked ribs than I could count.”
I didn’t know what to say. Alec had never said anything about his childhood or his parents. When I’d asked, he’d just told me that they were dead. And he never wanted to talk about it, so I never pushed it.
“When I was eight, my dad came home drunk off his ass. One of his coworkers had stopped off for a beer with him after work, and had to drag his ass home after he’d had too many. So, my dad walked in the door, propped on this guy’s shoulder, and he saw me sitting on the couch doing my homework. He lost it, not really for any reason other than I existed and he fucking hated me. He started beating the shit out of me, and I was already pretty bruised up from the night before. When this guy saw my dad attack me, he lost it. He tried to pull my old man off me, but Dad was a mean drunk and he started attacking his coworker.”
He paused, running his hand over his jaw again. He still hadn’t looked at me, and I had a feeling it was because he couldn’t. Alec was always the strong one that had it all put together. I’d never seen Alec even slightly emotional, aside from one time, and that was when he was with me, telling me that he loved me, but he had to let me go. I wanted to go to him and hold him or something, but that wasn’t who we were, and I was shit at being comforting to anyone.
“Anyway,” he said after a moment, “the guy walked out to his truck, grabbed a forty-five, walked back into the house and shot him six times. The cops came and the guy was arrested. He pled self-defense, but since he walked out to his truck and came back in, shooting the guy six times, the prosecution nailed him to the wall. I saw him once after that night, when I turned eighteen. I went to the prison to thank him for what he did. Do you know what he said to me?”
I shook my head, tears filling my eyes. “What did he say?”
“He told me to be better than him. He said that he didn’t regret what he did. He knew he saved my life that night, but he didn’t want me to do something like that and end up in jail. He told me to go out and live the life that he should have had.”
“What was his name?” I asked quietly.
“Tyler Wesley.”
My heart thundered in my chest. Alec’s last name was Wesley. What were the chances they had the same last name? “You took his name.”
“He was more a father
