Page 104 of Sexting My Ex’s Dad

Maya walks me to the door then catches my wrist before I step out. “You did good,” she says, quiet now. “Don’t make that weird.”

I smile despite myself. “I wasn’t going to.”

“You were absolutely going to.”

“Fair.”

She squeezes my wrist once then lets go.

The drive to Beacon Harbor is quieter than the ride back from the warehouse. The city feels wrung out. So do I. By the time I park and walk through the sliding doors, my pulse has settled into something steady again, though the sight of a hospital still reaches into me too easily.

Nathan is awake when I get there.

The room is dim except for the monitors and the low amber light near the sink. He’s propped up slightly, one hand resting on the blanket, the other tucked close to his side like moving it costs more than he wants to admit. His eyes lift the second I step through the doorway, and something in his whole body changes when he sees me.

“Athena,” he says, voice rough with sleep and pain and relief.

I close the door quietly behind me and move to the bed without speaking at first. I need to see him up close. I need to touch him. My hand slides into his hair, then down the side of his face, careful around the bruising, and his eyes close for half a second under the contact.

“I’m okay,” he murmurs.

I let out a breath that sounds more broken than I intended. “That’s a stretch.”

The corner of his mouth lifts faintly. “You look tired.”

“I had a busy evening.”

That gets his attention immediately. His eyes sharpen and stay on mine while I sit on the edge of the chair beside his bed and lace my fingers through his.

“What happened?” he asks.

So I tell him.

I start at the Airbnb, with soup and fries and Ivy under a blanket and me deciding I was done letting everyone else write the script. I tell him about the message to Nate, about David, about Meredith’s degree and Cindy’s money and the folder full of rot she slid across the table.

Nathan goes very still at that part. The kind of stillness that never means calm.

I keep going anyway.

I tell him about the warehouse, about Nate arriving alone, about the police in place, about Cindy waiting nearby, convinced she could still manage things from behind glass and steel and hired men. I tell him how fast Nate cracked, how ugly his confession sounded once it was out in the open, how little loyalty remained in either of them once the handcuffs appeared.

By the time I finish, the room has gone completely silent.

Nathan is staring at me in a way that makes my skin feel hot all over again, though not from embarrassment this time. There’s fury in him, yes. A deep one. Cold and serious and dangerous in all the ways he naturally is. But there’s something else too, something brighter and more surprising.

He squeezes my hand once. Hard. “You went after all three of them.”

I tilt my head slightly. “That was the idea.”

His eyes don’t leave mine. “Alone.”

“Not alone,” I correct. “I had law enforcement. Maya. David. My daughter’s wanted poster. The full machine.”

That earns me the smallest flicker of a smile, then it’s gone again under the weight of everything else. He looks at me for another long second, then lifts my hand to his mouth and presses his lips against my knuckles.

“I’m furious,” he says quietly. “I’m furious you were in that warehouse, and I’m furious he ever got close enough to touch any part of this. I’m furious you had to do what you did.”

I swallow. “I know.”