Chapter 62

Ramon POV

Lake was avoiding me.

It wasn’t obvious—not to anyone else, at least. To my family, he probably just looked like someone naturally gravitating toward the one person who understood what he was going through. Troy had claimed him early and hadn’t let go, keeping up a steady stream of conversation that required minimal input from Lake beyond nods and occasional one-word responses.

But I could see it in the way Lake’s eyes would dart toward me and then quickly away, in the rigid set of his shoulders whenever I moved in his general direction, in how he positioned himself so that Troy was always between us like a buffer.

He thought I was angry. Or disgusted. Or planning to take Ollie away now that I knew the truth.

He had no idea that what I actually felt was a rage so cold and focused it scared me. Not at him—never at him. But at whatever circumstances had led to a fourteen-year-old child carrying a pregnancy to term. At Samuel, who had eith