He glanced down and then made eye contact again. “No problem. Glad I could help.”
“Prepare to do more of that same stuff in the near future.”
He chuckled. “Will do.”
I practically skipped up the stairs.
Chapter 10
Jack
As soon as we could hear Rey’s steps reach the top of the stairs, Sierra turned to me.
“What was that?”
I shrugged. “We went outside today.”
She gave me the patented “I’ve known you for years so don’t even try that” sigh and stare.
I looked at her, trying to convey how honest I was being while totally not being honest. “No, seriously.”
“Look, Jack,” she said, emphasizing my name. Not even she called me Jack. “Just spit it out.”
“There might be some infatuation going on.” I quickly raised my hands to stop her from speaking. “But it’ll pass. He’s seventeen, for God’s sake.”
Her gaze turned shrewd in a way that made my skin crawl. “Right. And it’s completely one-sided, right?”
“Sierra!” My jaw dropped. “Of course, it is! He’s a fucking kid!”
Her expression gentled and she even put her mug down to come stand right in front of me. She put her hand on my crossed arms.
“Jack, you do know that it’s okay tohavethe feelings, just notacton them while he’s underage, right?”
I blinked like an owl. In theory, of course I knew that. And I didn’t have a fucking crush on a minor!
“I don’t have a crush on a minor.”
She smiled in a way that suggested I was maybe a bit dim, then reached up to pat my cheek. “Okay. Let’s go with that phrasing.” She turned to grab her mug, rounded the island, and sat on a stool.
I grabbed a few things from the fridge and turned my back to her.
The thing with accountability buddies was that they were there through thick and thin. I kept her from calling her exes when she’d had a glass too many of good Scotch. She kept me from walking until I dropped when I had a bad, bad day. I was also supposed to call her whenever I was back in the area after a job so that she could make sure I got home okay. Which…I hadn’t done.
“So, why didn’t you call me?” And there it was. The hurt in her tone I’d been waiting.
But hey, at least she wasn’t talking about Rey anymore.
“I just…I don’t know.” I sighed. “I needed more time to think.”
She hummed. “Okay. But even a text would be better than knowing that you’re likely coming home sometime in a forty-eight-hour window but then I don’t hear anything at all until I come back to work the next day.”
I grimaced. “I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
I washed my hands again and started the dinner prep. We chatted about the rescue and how things were going in her life and how my family was and so on and so forth, until I got to a point where I had nothing else to prep.
“Naptime?” she asked when I wiped everything down after filling the dishwasher.
