Untouchables Book 4: Honey [COMING SOON]

ISLA

“Jordan, I’m not asking you.”

I trap my phone between my shoulder and my ear, yank open the back door of my car, and immediately have to catch the travel mug Neo knocks sideways with his backpack.

I barely stop the curse before it slips out.

“Sorry,” Neo says, adjusting the strap of his bag.

“Not your fault, baby.” I ruffle his hair. “I’m a little frustrated, but that has nothing to do with you.”

“I know.”

Of course he knows, because the grown man currently shouting in my ear has been doing it loudly enough that half the parking lot probably knows too.

I close my eyes for one second.

One. That’s all I get.

Then I shove my coffee into the cupholder, grab my dance bag before it can slide off my shoulder again, and look pointedly at my son. “Put your coat on.”

Neo looks down at the hoodie he’s wearing.

“Coat,” I repeat, sending him my best serious-mom look.

He rolls his eyes and grabs it from the backseat.

I can’t help but smile at him. It’s difficult to stay furious when your seven-year-old has recently lost his second front tooth and now looks like a goofy cartoon character.

His father, on the other hand, makes it remarkably easy.

“I told you,” Jordan snaps. “Something came up.”

My smile sours. “And I told you I have to work.”

“So get someone to watch him.”

I stop.

Behind me, Neo stops too.

My grip tightens around the strap of my bag. I lower my voice. “Jordan.”

“What?”

I point Neo toward the little playground across the parking lot and wait until he’s out of earshot. “You said you’d take him tonight.”

“And now I can’t.”

“No. Now you don’t want to. Those are two very different things.”

A couple of girls come out of the studio behind me, laughing about something.

I lift my hand automatically. “See you Thursday!”

“Bye, Miss Isla!”

The door swings shut behind them.

I shift my attention back to my phone. “Your son is here. I don’t want to do this in front of him.”

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t have answered, then.”

My jaw drops.

Oh, fuck him.

“You called me,” I hiss. “And maybe you shouldn’t be backing out on your kid thirty minutes before you’re supposed to pick him up.”

Jordan huffs out an annoyed breath. “I’m not backing out. My plans changed.”

“You can’t just change your plans last minute when you have a kid, Jordan.” I start walking toward the playground, mostly because if I stand still, I’m going to throw my phone. “I have a show tonight. I cannot bring a seven-year-old to an adults-only nightclub.”

“Then call your mom.”

“My mom lives in Belgium,” I seethe. “Like she has for the past fifteen years.”

“Your brother?”

“He’s working.”

Jordan’s voice comes through quieter now, like he’s moved away from the phone. “So get a babysitter.”

I shake my head slowly. “At five thirty on a Saturday?”

“Jesus Christ, Isla, I don’t know. Figure it out.”

I laugh—a sharp, humorless sound. “Of course.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means of course that’s what you expect of me.”

Because I always do.

I figured it out when I was nineteen and staring at two pink lines in a university bathroom. I figured it out when Neo had colic and Jordan suddenly discovered he was a really heavy sleeper.

I figured it out when I wanted to dance professionally and daycare cost more than my rent.

I figured it out when that dream changed. When I started teaching.

When I saved enough to rent my first shitty studio with warped floors and one bathroom that flooded every time it rained.

When Jordan left. When he came back.

When he decided he wanted fifty-fifty custody and then somehow translated that to whenever it’s convenient.

I always figure it out.

I’m fucking tired of figuring it out.

“Mom?”

I look up.

Neo is standing by the swings, backpack at his feet, looking somewhere behind me.

I turn, and my breath hitches.

There’s a man there, staring intently at me.

And he’s... a lot.

Tall. Broad shoulders filling out a black T-shirt beneath a dark jacket. His hair is buzzed short, dark stubble shadows a strong jaw, and there’s something about his face that makes my brain offer one immediate, deeply unhelpful assessment.

Handsome.

Fantastic.

He’s leaning against a black car at the curb, keys dangling loose in one hand.

His eyes flick from me to Neo, then to the phone pressed against my ear, then back to me.

I glare at him.

He looks entirely unaffected.

I smile at Neo and point toward the little kids near the slide. “Go play with Elsie and Arlo, baby.”

Neo immediately abandons his backpack and coat where he stands and takes off.

I scoop both up and dump them on the bench beside me, waiting until he’s elbow-deep in a sandcastle before speaking again.

“I’ve been ‘figuring it out’ for the last seven years, Jordan.”

Jordan’s voice drifts closer again. “It’s not my fault you chose a job with ridiculous hours.”

Something hot and ugly twists low in my stomach.

Jordan can bitch about my schedule. He can bitch about the studio. He can make his little comments about the shows at Nocturne that he pretends don’t bother him even though they clearly fucking do.

But he knows better than to use any of it as an excuse for why he shouldn’t have to do his job as a father.

“That’s not fair,” I say quietly.

“Oh, come on. You know what I mean.”

“No. Go ahead. Explain it. Explain to me why my job means you don’t have to take your son on your custody night.”

There’s a beat of silence. Then—

“Well, maybe if you spent less time taking your clothes off for money and more time acting like a fucking mother, you wouldn’t have this problem.”

My vision goes red.

Because Jordan knows.

He knows how hard I worked to finish school with a baby on my hip. He knows how many nights I spent pacing our shitty apartment because Neo wouldn’t sleep unless he was against my chest.

He knows that every decision I’ve made since I was nineteen has had Neo threaded through the middle of it.

And he still knows exactly where to stick the knife.

My grip tightens around the phone. “You measly little—”

A hand closes around it.

I startle.

The stranger is suddenly beside me. Before I can react, he calmly pulls the phone from my grip.

My mouth falls open. “Excuse—”

He puts it to his ear. “Jordan.”

Jordan’s muffled voice comes through. “Who the fuck is this?”

“Matteo.”

“Well, Matteo, how about you give my ex her fucking phone back and mind your own—”

“You’re going to pick up your son.”

Jordan laughs. “I don’t know who the fuck you think you are, but—”

“You were supposed to be here at six?” Matteo’s eyes find mine.

I stare at him, dumbfounded.

Jordan says something.

“Good.” Matteo glances at his watch. “Then you have twenty-five minutes.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Twenty-four now.”

Jordan’s voice rises loudly enough that I hear it from where I’m standing. “What, is this some new guy you’re fucking now? Jesus Christ, maybe that’s why—”

Matteo’s entire face changes.

His jaw tightens, his eyes go flat, and somehow, the air around him turns fucking glacial. “Watch it.”

Jordan goes silent, and so do I.

Matteo looks away from me as he talks to Jordan. “Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to get in your car, and you’re going to come pick up your son like you promised him you would.”

“Or what?”

Matteo smiles, but there’s nothing kind in it. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want answered.”

“You threatening me, asshole?”

“No.” Matteo’s gaze moves casually across the parking lot. He almost looks bored. “I’m telling you what you’re going to do.”

Jordan says something I can’t make out.

Matteo listens. Then his eyes meet mine again. “And if I ever hear you speak to her like that again, Jordan, you and I are going to have a different conversation.”

My stomach flips.

Jordan scoffs. “You don’t even fucking know me.”

“No.” He grins. “But I can find you.”

Oh. Okay. That’s—that’s definitely a threat.

The line goes quiet.

“I’ll be there in twenty,” Jordan mutters finally.

“Good.”

Matteo hangs up, then holds my phone out to me.

I stare at it. Then at him.

He raises an eyebrow.

I snatch it out of his hand. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

His eyebrows lift.

“What the hell made you think you had any right to involve yourself?”

He considers that. “I didn’t like the way he was talking to you.”

“I don’t care what you liked.” I shove my phone into my bag. “You don’t get to take my phone out of my hand and start threatening my son’s father.”

“I didn’t threaten him.”

I scoff. “You told him you could find him.”

“I can.”

“That is not the point!”

Something shifts in his eyes. The asshole is amused.

“I don’t need a man to fix things for me,” I snap. “I have been handling my own shit for a very long time, and I am perfectly capable of dealing with Jordan without some six-foot-two stranger deciding I need rescuing.”

“Six-four.”

My eyes betray me by flitting down his enormous frame. They come straight back up. “My point is, I don’t need rescuing.”

The amusement disappears from Matteo’s eyes. “I wasn’t helping you.”

I frown. “What?”

He glances toward Neo, who’s crouched in the sandbox with Elsie and Arlo, apparently attempting to bury one of his own shoes.

“Your boy just listened to his parents argue over who has to take him tonight.”

Everything inside me stills.

Ouch.

Matteo’s eyes meet mine. “He shouldn’t have to.”

My spine stiffens. “I tried to—”

“I know. For what it’s worth,” he continues, “if you arranged your night around your son being with his father because that’s what you agreed...” His eyes flick briefly toward Neo. “… Then your ex is the one being a shitty parent. Not you.”

Something in my chest pulls tight.

Matteo takes a step backward. “He shouldn’t get to make you feel like a bad mother because he doesn’t want to be a father tonight.”

I swallow.

For the first time in what feels like my entire fucking life, I genuinely don’t have anything to say.

Matteo’s eyes move over my face, and then that infuriating hint of a grin returns. “Nice meeting you, Isla.”

My spine straightens. “I didn’t tell you my name.”

His gaze flicks toward the building behind me.

I follow it.

‘ISLA HOLMES SCHOOL OF DANCE’ is plastered across the front in letters roughly the size of my head.

Right.

When I turn back, Matteo is already walking toward his car.

“Wait.”

He glances over his shoulder.

“Thank you,” I mutter.

Matteo cups a hand around his ear, eyes twinkling with mischief.

I narrow my eyes. “Don’t push it.”

His grin flashes.

God, it’s unfair. A man who looks like that should not also have dimples.

Then he opens the driver’s door. “See you around, Honey.”

My heart stops, and the entire world stops with it.

Matteo gets into the car.

The door slams, and I stand there staring after him as he pulls out of the parking lot.

Because my name is on the building.

But ‘Honey’ sure as fuck isn’t.

Hooked? Good 😏

I’m still writing this story, but it’ll come your way ASAP. Keep an eye on my wall—I’ll update you guys about the timeline as soon as I have enough to share!

Love, Viv ♥️

P.S. Recognize anyone? 👀