“It’s after midnight. Do you think he’ll be up?”
“Do you think any of them will be able to sleep after that?”
Ronan takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “Okay.” He stretches to kiss his massive husband. “Thank you for putting up with me.”
“I’m not putting up with you. This is hard for both of us.” Thane returns the kiss. “I love you.”
“Love you too.” They exchange another sweet kiss. “Okay. Let’s call our son.”
12
OAKLEY
I’m losingpatience with my dad, and it makes me feel like the worst son on the planet.
We went back to Wimberley for hours of debriefing and setting up times for post-op interviews over the next few days. We were all too exhausted to drive back into Austin, so we headed to the guest dorms in the Shed.
I purposefully waited till my cousins had left the locker room so I could jerk off in the shower in peace. Which was a good thing, considering I came so hard I almost lost my footing. Twice.
Seeing Sy in action made me want to find the nearest tree and fuck him against it.
I didn’t want to examine that too closely last night. I still don’t.
Anyway, after my embarrassing display in the showers, I was looking forward to crashing out. Just as my head hit the pillow, though, my fathers called. They probably hadn’t opened an ops report in twenty years. I should have realized they’d make an exception for this one.
Obviously, it was incredibly sweet of them to check on me, and I didn’t mind. Except I’d been hyperaware that bringing up Sy would set Dad off. I’m used to that—or should be at this point—but last night it really pissed me off.
For fuck’s sake, Sysaved my life, yet I dare not tell my fathers how much that meant to me. Worse, I understand the psychology of it all and can’t really get mad at Dad for how he feels.
So, I’m sleep deprived, still kinda horny, andmad. With no one to be mad at.
Doctor, heal thyself.
Despite that frustration, working with Hedy this morning on the back end of an operation gone wrong has been far more instructive than all the footage I’ve studied of operations going exactly to plan. Hedy’s overall strategy is to position the team against the problem and dig into what we could do to avoid it in the future.
When Sy mentioned my concerns with the Hell_AI app, Hedy and Jake took them seriously and asked me several thoughtful follow-up questions. We’ll know more once the Wimberley nerds process the body cams and the evidence we gathered, but for now, Hedy has suspended all operations stemming from the app.
She ended this morning’s debrief by reminding everyone that I would be meeting with each of them individually over the next few days, and the team seemed to appreciate that.
That said, Hedy’s final aside to me about Silas raised my hackles.
“I’m interested to see what intel you’ll gather in the one-on-one with Silas. Our baby psycho can be a tough one to draw out in the team debrief.”
I’ve shared with her that Silas isn’t technically a psychopath, though I’m holding his ASD diagnosis close to thevest for now. That she’s still using the terminology casually annoys me, even though I kept my mouth shut.
Which is…not great. If my motivations were purely ethical, I’d have said something right away.
Amelia would be laughing so hard at me right now.
Fuuuck.
This is deeply inconvenient on so many levels.
I’d always read Silas’s long-simmering crush as sexual curiosity, onhispart.
Not specifically something formeto consider.
This morning, when Hedy asked me how I felt about being involved in that firefight, I used very professional language.
