Chapter 7: Fight

Claire's POV

The noise from the play area wasn't kids playing. It was a sharp, animal sound. The kind that slices through coffee shop jazz and polite conversation like a knife.

My heart tried to crawl out of my throat. *Leo.*

I pushed through the wall of adults—gawking, whispering, clutching their own precious children. All I could see was his dark hair, his small back tense as a bowstring. He was on top of another kid, pinning him down.

"Leo! I'm here!" The words were out before my brain processed the rest of the scene.

The kid underneath him was kicking, his face red and twisted. A face I knew in my sleep. In my bones.

Ben.

My world cracked right down the middle. My blood son and my heart's choice, rolling on a foam mat like street fighters.

Ben's eyes, swimming with furious tears, locked onto mine. For one stupid, hopeful second, I saw it—the little boy who needed his mom. *Fix it, Mommy.*

Then he saw my frozen horror, my inability to instantly take his side. The hope died, murdered by betrayal. He snarled, bucking harder.

"Thief! Give it back!" His voice was a raw, childish shriek.

Leo, sensing a shift, raised a fist. A threat, not a blow. I could see the control trembling in his small arm. He was holding back.

"Liar!" Leo shot back, his voice tight.

That's when I saw it. Their hands, locked together in a white-knuckled tug-of-war over a sleek, black smartwatch.

A cold splash of memory hit me. The watches. I'd bought the matching pair last Christmas, top-of-the-line, with GPS and a proximity alert. A mother's paranoid gift. *‘If we get separated by more than ten yards, it'll beep, buddy. So I'll always find you.'*

Ben had thrown his on the penthouse marble a week later, calling it "lame." Isabella gave him some flashy, game-covered plastic thing. My watch had sat in a drawer, a monument to rejected safety.

Now, it was strapped around Leo's thin wrist.

I moved on numb autopilot. My hand reached into the tangle of their small limbs and closed around the familiar silicone band.

The sudden anchor made Ben shove with all his might, throwing Leo off balance. Ben scrambled up, chest heaving.

"See!" he yelled, pointing a shaking finger at Leo. His eyes burned into me, triumphant, hurt, demanding. "She took it! He's nothing! A stupid orphan! Dad's gonna have him arrested!"

He looked at me then. Really looked. And I saw it all in his face—the absolute expectation that I would hand him the watch, scold the stranger, fix his world. That I would choose him. Like I always had.

Every cell in my body screamed to do it. To fall back into the old pattern, to smooth his hurt, to be his mommy.

Instead, my fingers, cold and steady, took Leo's hand. I fastened the watch back onto his wrist. The *click* of the buckle sounded final in the quiet that had fallen.

I turned to Ben. My voice came out colder than I meant it to, forged in the fire of the last two days. "That's not your watch. You broke yours. You took something that wasn't yours. Apologize to Leo. Now."

The shock on his face was absolute. It crumpled, then hardened into something ugly and new. Leo, beside me, stared at the watch, then up at me, his eyes wide with a stunned, dawning awe. He shoved his arm behind his back, shielding it.

Ben's mouth trembled. "You… you're picking *him*?" It was a wounded whisper, then a scream that ripped through the café. "He's just some stray! I'm your *real* son!"

The words were shards of glass in my throat. "That doesn't give you the right to steal. Or to hit." I forced the words out. "You made your choice clear yesterday."

Leo, emboldened, stepped forward, tiny fists on his hips. "I'm not a stray! She's *my* mom! Where's *your* mom, huh? The one who can't make pizza?" He stuck out his tongue.

Ben's face flushed a deep, mottled red. The humiliation, the betrayal—it was too much. I saw the storm gather in his eyes. The one that meant a toy was about to be thrown.

"Ben, don't—" I started, my voice shifting to warning.

But it was too late.

With a wordless cry of pure rage, he grabbed a small, solid wooden stool from the craft table and hurled it. Not directly at Leo, but *past* him, toward the space between us.

His aim was terrible.

Or maybe, in his furious, broken little heart, it was perfect.

The stool spun through the air. I had half a second. I yanked Leo toward me, twisting my body to shield him.

The wooden leg caught me square on the outside of my left arm, just above the elbow.