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“… you, Ryder, Luca, working directly with my tech team?”
“Sorry?”
He wasn’t pissed that I hadn’t been listening, and he patiently repeated the question, “I suggest you work informally with Sanctuary in the gray areas you found? Find out what the fuck is going on with Rouxier, and make sure that Josh and Ben never have to look over their shoulders again?”
Jake was so intense that I read many things in his words. The wordinformallymade me trust Jake was putting his organization first—that he would have his own kind of deniability if something went wrong. There was nothing wrong in protecting his own—we were the unknown, and he would look out for Sanctuary and the people who worked for it. I didn’t know enough about the foundation to fully understand them. Still, access to the tech, somewhere safe to work things out? That was the most straightforward question anyone had ever asked me and the easiest to answer. I knew Ryder and Luca. I knew myself.
“When do we start?”
ChapterThirteen
Josh
The day ended muchlike the one before. The Sanctuary guys, plus Ethan, holed up in the small office, only coming out for coffee and snacks. I’d passed the room twice, caught snippets of conversation, watched Jake, Kayden, and Nik leave the cabin, come back, then leave again. Which left me and Ben with Ethan for tonight. I didn’t know where the others had gone, or what they were doing, but it seemed as if for a short while it was the three of us.
“What’s for dinner?” Ben asked a little past six, as I opened the fifth cupboard filled with groceries. There were fresh things as well, and a freezer full of stuff, but inspiration wasn’t hitting me like it should be when I was supposed to be feeding my son. He needed vegetables, fruit, protein, and… all I could do was stare.
“Dad?” Ben did his pleading thing which I always found cute at first, but when pleading turned to whining I knew it was all over.
Ethan walked in, and I glanced at him. “Dinner?” he asked.
“I don’t know what to do and I need to—”
“Fajitas it is then,” Ethan interrupted, and reached around me for the container of spices, rooting around until he pulled some out and lined them up on the counter. “Who wants to cut the peppers?” he asked.
“Me!” Ben beat me to it, clambering onto the stool and steadying himself, eyeing the sharp knives in the block.
I bustled around him, making sure he was steady, helping him with the knife, and by the time the two of us had cut three peppers, and cried our way through slicing an onion, the scent of spices and sauteed chicken filled the air. Every so often I glanced over at Ethan, who was comfortable in the kitchen, humming under his breath, and not doing much in the way of measuring. Not that I could criticize given that my cooking skills for fancy meals were pretty minimal, and fajitas seemed hella fancy.
“Can you find wraps for this Josh? And Ben, can you get some grated cheese out of the fridge, and see if there is a can of black beans?”
We did as we were told, making the game of hunting the black beans into a joking, giggling mess of me pretending to not be able to reach the top shelf and Ben climbing me like a kitten to get the can down. By the time we’d found everything, we were laughing and breathless, and it was then I turned and met Ethan’s gaze.
He was watching me with confusion creasing his brow, and I looked away before he could call me out on why I was so damn happy when I’d beenliterallyfucked over and was now locked in a cabin in the middle of nowhere. What would I say anyway? That everything I wanted or needed was right here? That my son was everything to me? Or that somehow Ethan and I had a strange connection that made my chest tighten? I couldn’t forget what had happened in the hotel room, I couldn’t forget the sounds, or the way he’d asked me to call him by his name, or the way he pushed inside me, and made me feel like my skin was too tight. He'd forced me to chase an orgasm that had ripped me apart, and I’d wanted that… I’dneededthat. But what would he say if I told him that maybe I wanted it again? That even though he’d fucked me over, somehow it had meant something to me.
Why would he want a timid closeted accountant who couldn’t keep control long enough to stay celibate until the legal proceedings on parental rights were over? I’d nearly lost Ben because I couldn’t keep it in my pants and now—
“Earth to Josh, come in Josh?” Ethan was waving a wooden spoon in front of me.
“Dad! Wake up!”
“I think the onions got him,” Ethan joked with Ben, who shoved me in the side.
“Dad, did the onions get ya?” Ben giggled.
I played right into the joke, pretending to faint, but grabbed him at the last minute and fell back onto the counter as if I was going to drop him. He yelled and wriggled and laughed so hard when I tickled him, and I could feel Ethan watching me.
Knowing me? Judging me?
Maybe he was psychic and understood the parts of me I hadn’t come to terms with yet.
Like the inner desire to be held down, like wanting to forget and have someone tell me what to do, or maybe that it was okay for me to feel.
Ethan stared at me for a moment, a frown being replaced by curiosity, then with a soft smile as both Ben and I clambered up to stand and were still giggling. This time I would not get sidetracked into a daydream, and when we sat down to eat I kept up a conversation about anything that wasn’t about my ex, or Rouxier, or how we ended up here. We talked sports—I liked hockey, which surprised him; he was more of a football fan—the weather, which was kind of lame, and finally, we got onto the subject of food.
“So that is why I think carrots are a super food,” Ethan finished his monologue on the importance of carrots, all the time side-eying me as Ben listened to him enraptured. I’d never won the vegetable war with Ben, but when Ethan listed all the things a lowly carrot could do, I could see Ben’s brain working overtime. I got the feeling that Ethan was a bright hero in Ben’s life, but then Ben didn’t know the whole story about how we’d ended up here.
Was Ethan a hero?
