I nodded, and as Rigby made his way back across the room, smiling and drawing the eyes of every person in the vicinity, I snuck out the door. I strode through the team offices so fast, no one even thought to stop and talk to me. Once I was in the car, I called Devan.

“What’s up?”

“Can you track Nova’s phone for me?” I wasn’t an idiot. Devan had his issues, and one of those was this insane protectiveness that almost bordered on suffocating. Trauma did that; he needed to be in control the whole time, and he hated unknowns. Which meant I knew he had a tracking device in Nova’s car, and probably on her phone too.

He didn’t ask why. He just went silent for a moment, then came back on the line with a harsh breath. “She’s at the County Farm Park. I’ll be there soon.”

I didn’t try to stop Dev. There was no stopping him. But he had to come from the other side of the city, so I’d make it there first. I broke several traffic laws, but within fifteen minutes of getting the address from Dev, I was pulling up beside Nova’s new car.

There was no one in the driver’s seat, and I began to panic. Maybe she’d stepped out to walk through the gardens? I climbed out and rushed to the car, dragging open the door and then stopping.

Sitting in the passenger seat, feeding Huey, was a tear-stained Nova. “I’m sorry. I’m fine, I promise. You can go back to work.”

She didn’t look fine. Her face was puffy and too pink, and her voice was scratchy like she’d been crying hard.

“What’s wrong? Are you hurt? Is Huey okay?”

She shook her head, muttering, “I’m fine.” Then she looked down at Huey and cried harder. Was the baby okay? He looked all right. He was eating and kicking his legs. Definitely didn’t seem hurt in any way.

“Is there something wrong with the baby, Nova?”

She shook her head. “Only that he’s saddled with an incompetent teenage mother and is going to end up in prison with melanoma because I don’t know how to put sunscreen on him,” she sobbed out.

I blinked several times. I would have laughed if she hadn’t been crying so hard. “What? Nova, quit crying; you aren’t making any sense.”

She just cried harder, and I didn’t know what to do. I rubbed her arm, while Huey seemed oblivious to his caregiver’s emotional trauma, happily sucking down his bottle like he didn’t have a care in the world.

When Dev turned up, I’d never been happier to see his face. Considering he’d once rescued me after I was handcuffed to a puck bunny’s bed for three hours, that was really saying something.