Page 29 of My Girl to Use

I won’t let that happen to him. I won’t.

“Two days,” she says again, her voice quieter now but still firm. “Do the right thing.”

She turns without waiting for a response. And just like that, she’s gone. I don’t move right away.

I just stand there, my arms wrapped tightly around Levi. My heart is still racing, my thoughts spinning too fast to catch.The street feels too loud. Too bright, like everything kept moving while my world just…shifted.

“Okay,” I whisper to myself, my voice barely steady. “Okay…think.”

My hands are shaking as I reach into my bag and pull out my phone, my fingers hovering over the screen for a second before I type his name in the search bar. Jax Corbin.

The results load almost instantly. Articles. Interviews. Photos of him. Not the man who cooks in my kitchen and holds Levi like he belongs to him. A different version. Sharper. Polished. Untouchable. I click on one link.

Jaxon Corbin, heir to Corbin Industries…

My stomach drops. Another.

Race car prodigy and billionaire son…

My blood runs cold. It’s all there. Everything she said. My hand lowers slowly, the phone slipping slightly in my grip as I stare at the screen, my reflection faintly visible over his picture.

“He didn’t tell me,” I whisper, the words cracking in the middle.

And suddenly, everything feels different. Every moment. Every look. Every word. Was it real? Or was I just…something easy? Something temporary? Levi lets out a soft sound, and I pull him closer immediately, pressing my cheek to his head as my eyes close tightly.

“It’s okay,” I murmur, even though I don’t know if I’m talking to him or myself. “I’ve got you. I’m not letting anything happen to you.”

Because that’s the only thing I know for sure. I won’t lose Levi. I can’t. A shaky breath leaves me as I force myself to move,walking the rest of the way back to the apartment on autopilot. My mind is already starting to make the decision I don’t want to make.

I can’t risk Levi. Not for love. Not for anything.

Except. I could tell him.

The thought arrives fully formed, like it’s been waiting. I could walk in there tonight and say your mother came to see me, and he’d handle it. He’d make a call of his own. He has lawyers. He has money. He has a last name I didn’t know came with money and power until eleven minutes ago.

And then what?

Then he chooses. And I have to stand there while he does it. Because she’s right about one thing—I don’t know his world, I don’t know what it costs him. I don’t know what I’m worth measured against a multibillion-dollar company and a mother who’s had thirty years of practice at getting what she wants. Maybe he picks us. Maybe he doesn’t.

But if he doesn’t, I still risk losing Levi. And I lose him, likely in the same afternoon. At least this way, I only lose one.

That’s the part I can admit to myself. The other part, I don’t touch. That some small cowardly piece of me would rather leave first than watch him consider me and then reject me.

???

Standing in front of Jax’s door, I don’t let myself think too much. If I do, I won’t go through with it.

Jax is already there when I walk in, like always. Levi’s things are neatly set up, the space feeling more like ours than his. He looks up the second I step in, his expression shifting immediately when he sees me.

“Hey,” he says, softer now. “You okay?”

I nod too quickly. “Yeah. Just a long day.”

He crosses to the stroller before he even finishes looking at me, crouching to unbuckle Levi with the ease of someone who’s done it a hundred times. “There he is.” He lifts him out and settles him against his chest, one big hand spread across his back the way he always does. “Hey, little man. You give your sister a hard day?”

Levi grabs a fistful of his shirt. Jax lets him.

And I have to look away, because this is the image I came here to lose, and he’s handing it to me on my way out the door.