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“My mom,” he groans. “Can I hug you or will you fall?”

“I’ll crouch down. If I fall, I fall,” she laughs. “Isn’t that the first rule of skating?”

Zayn nods, careful as he hugs her.

“Tell me,” she whispers. “We’ll figure it out.”

“How are these guys my dads?” he asks.

“And why didn’t we know? That’s what we were talking about,” I explain.

“Ah.” She looks like the picture of calm as she crouches in front of him, but I know she can’t possibly be. Her fingers give her away as they twitch, but her face is smooth. “You know how our family calls me Noor, but everyone else calls me Isla?”

“Mmhmm.”

“When I was pregnant with you, I had to make a decision. I was really young and overwhelmed,” she says. “I called Grandma Rachelle and disappeared. The world thinks Noor is dead.”

“But you’re not!” Zayn yells, his eyes wide as if the very idea hurts him as he hugs her.

“Nope, I’m right here. They thought I was, though,” Noor says, inclining her head toward us.

“The best punishment in the world is to no longer have something you can’t take care of,” I say. “That’s what happened. For seven years, we thought Noor was gone.”

“I’m six… That’s a long time.”

“If you’re wondering why they weren’t part of your life before, it’s because they didn’t know you or I were alive,” Noor says, swallowing hard. “I didn’t think they were safe for either of us to be around.”

“And now?” Zayn asks, ignoring any lingering tears that are escaping down his face.

Noor runs her fingers through his hair as she thinks, her eyes closed as she hugs him.

My chest feels heavy as I watch mother and son work through the secrets she’s had to carry. We weren’t equipped to be decent fathers back then, but she’s always been this incredible mother, despite the challenges she’s faced with her health.

“Now they’re showing that they can change,” she says softly. “Seven years without someone is a long time to think on your life and the ways you need to change, Zayn. You deserve a chance to make your own decisions about Alastair, Ciaran, and Draven. The only way you can do that is by getting to know what kind of men they are.”

Noor’s eyes open again, and I take my first full breath since she started speaking.

“Thoughts?” she asks.

“They don’t deserve you,” he grumbles immediately. God, he doesn’t know the half of it. He’s so damn protective, and I think he’s right to be.

“We’re still working on it. It’s not going to happen overnight, and your mom is fully allowed to milk every second of it,” I reply.

Noor snorts just as her skates slide out from underneath her, and Zayn goes with her with a gasp. She manages to catch him, and he finds it in him to laugh.

“I’m not milking it,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Though, the dates have been nice.”

“Cute,” Alastair grins. “Honestly, we’ll probably be spending the rest of our lives showing your mom and you, Zayn, how much you mean to us. Little things like helping when she has a full day or reminding her to pamper herself.”

“How are you going to do that when you live so far away?” Zayn asks, his voice cracking. “You’ll miss things.”

More than you have, is what he doesn’t say.

“Working on that,” I breathe. Alastair, Ciaran, and I need to have a conversation with our agent soon. Ciera Roberts didn’t want to take us because she said we’d be a lot of work, but we’ve kept our noses clean. We were just kids who wanted to play together.

Now that we’re doing that, we’re going to shake shit up again. I hope she doesn’t hate us for this. We can negotiate trades within certain parameters of the season, but finding a team willing to take the three of us together in or near San Diego will be hard.

After all, there aren’t a ton of professional teams in California to work with.