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Did she? I stared at Ethan, and he gave no sign he was lying, but that didn’t sound like something Ruth would do. She had little in the way of love for anything other than money. Oh, and the burning desire to break free of her parents’ grip by finding someone else with money to replace what theirs had bought her. Still, Ben loved her, and he never had a bad word to say about her, probably because when he was at her place, it was more likely he spent time with his nanny than with Ruth.
“And Nora? I wish she was here with me.”
“Who’s Nora?” Ethan asked Ben.
“She’s like my other mom?” Ben said the words in a question and glanced up at me.
“A nanny,” I explained, and Ethan nodded.
Ben sighed, “She’s new, though, and before her I had Lisa, but Lisa wasn’t as kind as Nora. Lisa made me eat carrots.”
Ethan wrinkled his nose. “That’s mean.”
Ben held out a fist to bump at that. Ethan didn’t miss a beat—even added the tiny explosion part after, which made Ben giggle. There was my boy, the one who laughed at the little things, the one who was everything to me, and I hugged him hard.
“Daaaadd,” he whined, and I ruffled his hair. “Daaaaaaad!” His whine increased in volume.
“Carrots help you see in the dark,” I repeated the words my mom used to say to me, and wished so hard she could have met Ben, but she’d been gone a long time now. Ben glanced up at me, his eyes narrowed as if he didn’t believe me at all.
“That’s why we have nightlights, right, Ben?” Ethan joked.
They exchanged another fist bump. I shot Ethan a you’re-not-helping look, but Ben was laughing, and it was a wonderful thing to hear.
I was still smiling when I glanced back at Ethan and at first he seemed confused, and then he returned the smile with one of his own. His stupid joke about the carrots was a new side of him—something real that wasn’t him pretending to be a hooker, or an agent, or anything except a man who took the time to joke with my son.
“You need to finish this chapter,” Ben reminded me.
I glanced back at the book, feeling Ethan leave. I wondered if he was watching us still, waiting to leap in and explain things if he needed to, and my face heated. There was something about Ethan that confused me, and most of it was because I didn’t know him at all. I needed to talk to him about what happened in that hotel room between us, about why he’d even agreed to do what he did in the first place, and what he expected to happen now.
I didn’t know where to start.
“Dad? Are you finishing this?”
Ben’s halfway to irritable question pulled me out of my thought spiral, and I cleared my throat.
“Where did I get to?”
“The alien was under the bed.”
“Oh, yeah.”
And I kept reading.
ChapterTwelve
Ethan
I leftJosh and Ben alone to read, feeling out of sorts, messed up, and this side of pissed off and worried. The kid was so sweet—he smiled; he loved his cat and his dad—and I hated he even had to be here.
“Can we talk?” Jake asked as I tried to get back to my room without having to talk to anyone. All I could do was nod because I knew I’d have to talk to the founder of Sanctuary at some point. I’d caught him staring on a couple of occasions, frowning as if he couldn’t understand who I was.
I’m not sure I understand who I am.
“Yeah, happy to,” I lied.
Jake sighed. “This case, right?” He paused. “It’s not an easy one. It’s not as if I set Sanctuary up for the level of interconnected pinch points my tech team is uncovering. We have some of our best people on it back in Chicago, but this is bigger than Sanctuary, and we probably need to get other agencies involved.”
My back went up, and I tensed, ready to grab Josh and the kid and run. “Not the FBI. Not Danvers.”
