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His words were slurred, and then he slumped down the wall when his legs gave way. Kayden was beside him in a flash, lifting his eyelids, checking his pulse, but I wasn’t far behind.
“There is no way he should have woken up yet,” I said as I supported his weight and felt him go loose in my arm.
Kayden side-eyed me. “His son in danger? Nothing will keep this man down.” He glanced up at the other Sanctuary people. “Nothing.”
ChapterNine
Josh
Something nudged my face…a softsomethingthat made me open my eyes, coming face-to-face with a blurry, furry unblinking cat.
Oreo? Ben’s Cat? Have I dreamed this whole thing? Was Ben here? Oreo should be tucked up next to Ben until it was feeding time. But he’s standing on my chest—Oreo, not Ben—staring at me and bumping my face until I woke.
A dream. The whole horrible mess of the last day, two days, was a dream. I smiled up at Oreo, but my world was wobbly.
“Hey bud,” I murmured and slipped out a hand to stroke him, catching it in sheets, fighting to make my hand connect to the cat. Maybe Ben’s tuxedo cat being here was a dream. Perhaps I imagined his soft furry head and his bumping nose?
“Dad?” A weight landed on me.
I knew it was Ben, and I gathered my son close, stopping him from rolling off the other side. Since he was a baby, he’d been an escape artist, climbing, jumping, and doing a million things that made my heart stop every time. “Dad,” Ben repeated as Oreo batted my face with one of his murder mittens as Ben and I called them when he fetched us half a mouse only a few weeks ago.
Before everything went to shit.
“I’m awake,” I struggled to sit up. It had all been a dream; there was no Ethan, no walk on the wild side, no guns, no hiding in the middle of nowhere. Only, the light was weird in here; I usually woke to light peeking through blinds on the right side of my face, but the light was on the left, and the bed felt…
… it felt wrong.
And was Ben gripping me too hard? And why was Oreo’s meow so plaintive?
I snapped awake in an instant, and the genuine reason I was here in this weird bed, was that I wasn’t at home. I was in a different room, with my son and his cat, and no sign of Ethan, and…
I gripped Ben tight and pressed a kiss to his head.
“Daaaaad,” he whined and shoved at me to let him go, but I never wanted to let him go. He was my everything, meowing cat included, and I was keeping him with me, safe, whatever the reason.
“Sorry, little man,” I whispered into his tousled curly hair, blond like his mom, and my son’s scent, weight, and warmth were so real I could cry.
“I’m not little,” my nearly ten-year-old protested, and it was such a familiar answer that tears pricked my eyes, and my throat was tight.
“You’re sooo little,” I teased.
He wriggled from my grasp and then jumped on me, my breath rushing out in anoomph. I loved it all, the roughhousing, the love, the damn cat… it was proof of life.
Which meant Ethan was here somewhere.
Whereverherewas.
“You smell bad, Dad,” Ben wrinkled his nose and clambered off the bed, picking up Oreo, who was docile as anything with him, curled into his arms, and stared at me as if he could hypnotize me.
Feed me. Feed me, human. FEED ME!
I sat up with care, glancing around what looked like a hotel room—bland, a bed, a dresser with drawers, a door leading to a bathroom, I assumed, another door with a spy hole must lead to a corridor.
A hotel, then.
A hotel with trees and bushes outside a window with bars? Something wasn’t right when the inside was so neat and new with fresh linens and cream walls, yet the outside screamed no-tell motel. Bars on the windows weren’t a good sign, right?
Someone knocked at the door as it opened a little and a face from my dreams appeared.
