Roan pivoted to face Seg, his eyebrows lifted as though the thought hadn't occurred to him.
"You have legal guardianship, right?"
"Yes, but that won't stop the court from siding with my father and deciding Liam would be better off with them."
"Why?" Seg didn't get it. Roan was a fantastic father. "Why would you even think that?"
Roan glared at him.
Seg continued, "Would he? Would he be better off with your father?"
"Fuck no."
"Then you need to get a lawyer."
"I will," Roan stated, his eyes locking on Seg's face. "But first, I need to get my life in order. And to do that, I need the reporters to go away. Which means … "
Seg needed to go away.
"Roan-"
Roan took a jerky step closer. "No. You don't get it, Seg. Liam is the most important person in my world. Nothing or no one compares to him."
"I do get it," Seg snapped. "Because that's how I feel about the two of you. You and Liam are the most important people in my world."
"Then you understand why I'll give up everyone and everything before I give him up."
"Who said you had to?" Now it was Cam's turn to get pissed. "Why the fuck do you think you have to go about this alone? You took on taking care of Cassie by yourself. You pushed all of us away. We didn't even know about Liam."
Roan spun to face Cam. "I apologized to you for that."
"I don't want your apologies, Roan," Cam hissed. "I want to know why the fuck you think you need to shut us all out."
"I wanted to protect you from Cassie's bullshit." Roan thrust his hand through his hair. "So I did what I had to do. This time I'm protecting Liam."
Seg stepped in. "Are you? By shutting out everyone who could help you?"
"You can't help me," Roan growled, pinning Seg with a disgusted look.
"The hell I can't," Seg snapped, moving closer. "I love you, Roan. Don't you fucking get that? I want to spend the rest of my life with you and Liam. I'll move heaven and earth to keep that boy safe, the same way you will. But you have to stop thinking that you're the only person who can handle this. Your parents can do whatever the hell they want, but do you really think they'll go up against an army to get Liam? Hell, in the months we've been together, I've never even met your parents." He didn't add that he'd never seen the guys standing behind him either. Nothing more than when he'd met them at the arena all those months ago. "I've never even heard you mention that they'd come by to see Liam."
"Because they haven't," Roan noted, his face expressionless.
"But your friends have. They've helped when you needed help-"
"I don't need help," Roan yelled. "I can take care of him on my own. I don't want some judge thinking I'm incompetent."
Seg's mouth fell open as he stared at Roan, but Cam was the one to speak. "Is that what you think? That by relying on the people who care about you, you're incompetent? Damn. That's the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard."
Roan looked at his friend, seemingly speechless. Seg could see the hurt look on Cam's face.
"So what?" Gannon asked, stepping forward and placing his hand on Cam's back, probably to soothe him. His eyes were laser focused on Roan. "There's an invisible bubble that you can wrap around yourself to protect you and your charge? First it was Cassie. Now Liam."
"It doesn't work that way," Dare stated, moving closer to Roan.
Seg watched the dynamics between these men. It was clear they were family. They'd come together in the middle of the night in an effort to show Roan that he wasn't alone.
If that in itself didn't make Roan see he didn't have to do this by himself, Seg figured nothing would.
Meanwhile, back at Roan's house …
MILLY WAS ANTSY.
She wasn't sure if that was because AJ was so close and because he smelled so good or if there was something else at play. She enjoyed being with AJ, and she liked that he'd come over to help her babysit. Although babysit was probably a stretch for what she was doing. Considering Roan had put Liam to bed before he left and Cam and Gannon had agreed to watch him, Milly was pretty much guarding the house and that was it.
"Wanna watch a movie?" AJ asked, glancing over at her.
She wondered if he could feel the tension, too. It was there every time they were together. Ever since she'd told him she was pregnant, they'd become friends.
Not more than friends.
Not friends with benefits even.
Just plain old boring friends.
Sometimes she wished for more.
That was probably her hormones talking though.
"I don't care," she told him.
Before he could flip through the channels to find something to watch, there was a knock on the front door.