Jayden shook his head and he stepped back several paces. "No she isn't," he hissed at his brother. There was no way his mother had abandoned him. Not the woman he barely remembered, but had put up on some kind of pedestal of perfection. "You're wrong," he insisted quietly, and then he left Jesse standing there in the hall.
Adrian, who had walked in on the very end of the exchange, gritted his teeth. "Seems that didn't go so well," he said gently. "You okay?"