Chapter 2All My Love Went to You

The blood drained from my face, a roar filling my ears.

"Nolan, shut your mouth!" I hissed.

He fell silent. The atmosphere in the room turned thick and suffocating. I clutched the bedsheets, my mind racing, trying to pinpoint where everything had gone so horribly wrong.

Was it because he was abandoned by his parents at twelve, stunting his emotional growth? Or was it my own inexperience? Had I failed to guide him through the turbulent years of his adolescence?

A storm of chaotic thoughts swirled in my head. Before I realized what was happening, Nolan had collapsed onto my lap, burying his face in my stomach.

"Kate," he murmured.

He was back to using my name, refusing to call me his godmother.

"It's just us. It's always been just us. Isn't that enough?"

No. It wasn't.

If I were twenty-two and he were a handsome, predatory twenty-year-old stranger whispering those words to me, I would have fallen head over heels.

But I'm thirty.

And Nolan isn't a stranger. He's my best friend's son. The boy I've raised for the last eight years.

My godson.