“Yeah, well, you take that face and get it out of my sight. Let me know if you see that guy I showed you, right?”
“I will,” Jai said. “If he shows up in your nightmares, you should let me know too.”
“Get out of here!” It was a shout, and Jai stomped on the accelerator, probably spraying gravel all over the guy.
Brady said loud enough to carry, “I hope you got him in the eyes with that shit. He likes to swagger into the fast-food places and demand free food.”
“Nice people you work with,” Jai said with disgust. “I’m sure it breaks your heart to quit this job.”
“Well, if I knew the bad guys served pizza with cookies for dessert, I might have quit sooner,” Brady retorted, and the last sound they heard until the SUV slowed down for the turn was Jai’s hearty laughter.
Ernie had sat still in the middle seat next to Cotton the entire time. He’d been so quiet, Eric had forgotten about him until the SUV was parked in Jai and George’s garage and they were unloading.
“Eric,” he said, almost as though awakening from a sleep.
“Yes?”
“Can your camper run without hookups for a while?”
Eric frowned. “It’s full up on water and power, and I cleared the sewage tanks yesterday.” There was a hookup for the entire neighborhood—Burton had shown him how to use it so they didn’t contaminate their groundwater, and Eric didn’t have to take his giant flashy RV out on the highway. “It can go for several days.”
“Good. Maybe… maybe unhook it tonight?”
It was a sign of how much Eric had come to trust the goofy-looking kid with the wild black hair that he said, “Sure, Ernie. Anything you ask.”
Ernie didn’t glance at him so much then as peerthroughhim. “Don’t be careless with your life,” he said. “It’s enough that you know what it’s worth.”
And with that, he almost fell, but Jai caught him up in his arms. “You will sleep in the guest room, little one,” he said kindly. “George—”
“I’llgo feed the cats,” Cotton said cheerfully. “George, you go set up the guest room—I’ll hang with you guys until Jason and Burton get home. Jason asked if I could.”
“Of course,” George said. “And thanks for doing the cats.”
Eric thought ofallthe cats in Burton and Ernie’s house, including his, and although he missed his little fuzzy guys, he realized that his team hadtheirbacks as well.
And for now Ernie curled up in Jai’s arms, like a kitten might curl up on a couch. Eric thought again about how this odd group of people seemed to care for each other. No questions, really. No being put upon. Jai needed extra leg room. George needed to go home to go to sleep. Ernie needed help when his gift got too heavy. Sonny needed them not to pressure him to conform when he was upset.
And the others… did that. Like it was breathing.
God, he wished he’d known people could live like that earlier.
Still, when he took Brady’s elbow, an innate possessiveness fueled him, guided him across the street, and he wanted nothing more than for the two of them to be alone.
Brady glanced at him as they crossed the street. “Something on your mind, soldier?” he asked, and the tartness made Eric smile, some of his intensity lessening. He wanted to answer tartly back, but his mood, not just of the evening but all day, wouldn’t let him.
“I’m worried about tomorrow,” he said, the honesty raw and revealing. “These last two days have been important to me—I want you to be okay.”
“Oh,” Brady murmured, accepting Eric’s invitation to enter the RV as he followed close behind.
“Oh what?” Eric demanded. He wanted… not sex so much as contact. He took Ernie’s warning seriously—he was going to go out and unhook the RV, knowing he had enough water, sewage space, and power to last for a couple of days—but first this.
He gathered Brady into his arms, relieved when there were no questions, when he felt no resistance, just the soft pressure of a hard-muscled body setting down its burdens with Eric’s own, at their feet.
“Oh,” he said, feeling this moment deep in his bones.
“Yeah,” Brady answered. “Oh.”
They had to separate eventually, and he went outside to do the hookup thing. He was fiddling with the pressure knob near the sewage hookup when he got a sudden twitching at his shoulders. He couldn’t…. He would have glanced around, but he was sandwiched between the RV and the house. He was, in effect, hidden from sight, but he felt naked. Exposed.
