I’d never lied to Ethan and I wasn’t about to start. “It scares me,” I admitted. “This,” – I motioned to the baby – “I kind of like,” I said. “But it’s different when it’s your kid. I don’t want to mess that up.”
Ethan reached up to stroke my face. He did that a lot these days. And of course, I loved it when he did.
“I know you’ll make an amazing father, Cain. I’ve seen the proof. But we can wait as long as you need for you to see that too. And if all you ever want to be is the favorite uncle who’s the only one who can get the babies to sleep, then I’m good with that too.”
I leaned over to kiss him softly and said, “I’ll get there, Ethan.”
“I know you will,” he whispered against my lips.
I smiled and pulled back. “You nervous about tomorrow?”
He nodded. “But ready, too.”
That didn’t surprise me. Ethan wasn’t the kind of guy who should be sitting around doing nothing. He needed to work…he needed to save lives and heal people.
Things hadn’t been easy after we’d left Eric on the floor of that farmhouse. Not that night and not in the weeks and months that had followed. To say Ethan had been mad at me for going after Eric like I had, was an understatement. He hadn’t spoken to me at all on the drive back to the hotel, nor as we’d packed up our stuff and headed to the airport so we could fly back to Seattle. He’d let loose on the plane though, and I’d let him because I’d realized his anger had stemmed more from fear than anything else.
I’d also loved the fact that he hadn’t been afraid to stand up to me and say what was on his mind.
I couldn’t regret going after Eric that night, despite what I’d put Ethan through. My fear of losing him had just been too great to ignore. After I’d called Vincent to ask him to stay with Ethan, I’dused the time to scope out where I wanted to bring Eric and the cronies I knew he’d be bringing with him for our little get together. It had been easy to search for properties nearby that had been foreclosed on and the farmhouse in Helenville had fit the bill. Once I’d gotten there, I’d turned Lucy’s phone on, called her piece of shit stepfather and told him that if he ever came near Ethan again, I’d rip his fucking throat out. Then I’d just waited for the man to track the phone and predictably, within a couple of hours, Eric and his flunkies had pulled up, not even trying to hide their arrival.
I’d waited outside until the men had gone inside. After that, it had just been a matter of taking them out one by one, the silencer on my gun making it easy to get the drop on them. I hadn’t killed any of them since I couldn’t have been sure why they were there. Eric was a master manipulator. He could have just as easily convinced some of his cop buddies that he was going to rescue his abducted stepdaughter and needed help.
So I’d hobbled each man instead of eliminating them and then I’d gone in search of Eric. I’d found him in the room where I’d left Lucy’s phone. He’d been armed, of course, but it had taken next to nothing to disarm him. Then I’d tossed my gun on the single piece of furniture in the room, a worn out looking bed, and I’d shown him the same exact amount of mercy he’d shown Ethan.
None.
Eric had gotten a few punches in, but my guess that his bulk had been the result of weights at the gym and nothing more had been right because the guy hadn’t been able to fight for shit. Sure, he’d been able to throw a punch at someone like Ethan who hadn’t known how to block it or fight back, but the first time I’d slammed my fist into his nose, breaking it, he’d screamed and covered his face, forgetting to block his body from the next punch. I’d let him experience the pain for the amount of time it had taken him to take another swing at me, then I’d slammed my fist into his gut, knocking the wind from him. I’d played with him for a lot longer than I should have, but it hadn’t been until he’d stayed down and started spewing filth about how I’d just made things worse for Ethan that I’d grabbed my gun off the bed and pointed it at his head.
I’d struggled to give Ethan what he wanted when he’d asked me not to end Eric’s life. But his need to get justice had outweighed my need to eliminate the threat against him all together. I’d already made the decision to have someone else take Eric out if there was even a hint that he was going to follow through on his threat not to let Ethan go, but that wasn’t something I’d shared with Ethan.
But surprisingly, Vincent’s threat seemed to have done the trick. No, Eric hadn’t gone completely silent, but he had been careful about what he’d said about Ethan when things went public a few days after the encounter in the farmhouse. Once we’d reached Seattle, Ronan had worked with a team of lawyers to determine how Ethan and I would turn ourselves in. There’d been no way either of us were going to let Ethan be taken back to D.C. since that would have put him in contact with the cops who worked with Eric. We’d been talking about going to the Feds when they’d ended up coming to us after Vincent had called Ronan to tell him he’d sent them our way.
But there’d been no arrests.
There had been some questions, but very few about the night I’d gone after Eric. Most had been about Ethan and his relationship with Eric. Ethan had told them everything…every ugly detail. He’d shared what he’d known about the death of Eric’s partner in the home invasion as well. The PI Patricia Palmer had hired hadn’t panned out in terms of connecting Eric to Ethan, but we’d caught a break when Daisy had found the original files Ethan had transferred from the digital recorder to CDs using the computers at his work. While he’d deleted the files from the computers after transferring them each time, he hadn’t realized the files went into a different folder to await final deletion. Daisy had made copies for us and then left the files there so the Feds could find them for themselves. Between the video of Patricia Palmer’s death and the evidence of the torture Ethan had endured, the Feds had promised that Eric wouldn’t be walking away from any of it. He’d been arrested while in the hospital recovering from Vincent’s gunshot to the groin, an injury that had resulted in permanent damage that meant the man would have a close relationship with a catheter for the rest of his life. I’d fully expected Vincent to be arrested at some point, but we’d heard neither hide nor hair from the man since that night and the Feds had been tight-lipped about his whereabouts and had only shared that “Mr. St. James isn’t currently a suspect or person of interest in any crime.”
Eric had ended up pleading no contest to his wife’s murder after the video had surfaced. He’d agreed to the plea after the prosecutor had offered him a reduced sentence. While neither Ethan nor I had been thrilled at the lighter sentence, it had gone a long way in re-establishing Ethan’s reputation. More importantly, it had meant Lucy hadn’t had to testify. But it had also spurred Ethan on to pursue justice for the crimes he’d suffered. Eric hadn’t agreed to a plea deal in the multiple counts of assault and rape that had been brought against him, but he hadn’t testified in court either. Not after Ethan had held his ground when he’d been cross-examined and most definitely not after the damning recordings had been played in court.
It hadn’t been easy for Ethan to have parts of his past go public like that, but he’d stayed strong as he’d fought for justice for himself. Eric had been found guilty less than a month ago and just in the past week he’d been sentenced to another thirty years in prison, which was on top of the twenty he’d gotten for his wife’s death. With parole, there was a chance he’d get out early, but that was a ways off. And the likelihood was high that he’d be brought up on charges for his partner’s death soon since the Feds had found proof Eric’s car had been in the neighborhood the night of the murders.
All in all, it would be a long time before Eric saw the outside of prison walls. And that was assuming he even survived prison long enough to convince a parole board that he was a changed man.
While Ethan had been completely vindicated, it had been a rough journey as he’d had to relive the past and have every part of his private life exposed for the entire world to see, but luckily, he’d recognized early on that both he and Lucy would need to seek psychological help to deal with the trauma they’d both faced. I was still on the fence about talking to a professional about my own past,but I hadn’t completely dismissed the idea and Ethan hadn’t pressed me one way or the other.
With the multiple trips to D.C. for the trials and sentencings, we hadn’t had much time to settle into a life together. I myself had struggled with letting Ethan out of my sight for something even as simple as him running to the grocery store because I’d been convinced Eric would send someone after him. Ethan had accommodated my need to be with him at all times in the beginning, but it had just been this past week that he’d finally put his foot down. He’d reminded me as he’d headed out the door to go fill out his paperwork at the hospital he’d gotten a job at, that he might not know for sure if I’d followed him, but that he’d be asking me if I had when he got home and since I refused to lie to him, he’d know the truth either in my answer or in my silence.
It had been the longest hour of my life and I’d spent all of it checking the app on my phone that would show me the location of Ethan’s phone. It was a concession he’d been more than happy to grant me.
As we’d navigated our way through the process of getting justice for Ethan, we’d had to make some decisions about our future together. Lucy had been a glaring sticking point because Ethan had been certain I’d object to the girl living with us permanently. And while I’d quickly divested him of that notion, it had taken a little more effort to smooth things over with Lucy. While she’d been relieved to learn that Ethan had started the process of becoming her foster parent with the goal of adopting her eventually, she’d been less sure about me. Although I’d managed to make amends with her just before leaving with Ethan for D.C., she hadn’t completely trusted me. I’d had no doubt some of that had been because of the struggles I’d still faced being around her once we’d returned to Seattle. I’d finally taken her aside and explained what had happened to me as a child and promised her that I’d get to a point where I trusted her just as much as I trusted Ethan. My honesty had gone a long way with Lucy and while she and I occasionally butted heads, mostly due to my overprotectiveness, we’d somehow managed to make our little group of three into a family.
Once things had been ironed out with Lucy, Ethan and I had needed to make some other decisions, namely where we would make our home. He’d been more than willing to stay in Seattle, but it had never even been a question in my mind. Ethan had needed to go home and home was San Francisco. He’d cried when I’d told him that, as had several members of his family when we’d video chatted with them later that night. It hadn’t taken more than a few days for me to get my stuff together since I’d pretty much been living out of hotels in the four years since I’d left Indiana. It had been Ethan who’d suggested I donate my grandmother’s house in Indiana to a charity for victims of domestic abuse since it was completely paid for and we didn’t need the money, so I’d done just that. Ethan had gone with me to Indiana long enough to get the only things I’d really wanted…the pictures of my brothers and sisters that my grandmother had put into frames and hung in our kitchen so it would feel like they were with us every time we’d eaten a meal in there.
I hadn’t done anything with my parents’ house after the police had contacted me to notify me of their deaths. Nor had I claimed their bodies. I’d simply told the police to treat them as they would any unidentified persons because that was what they’d become to me. A lawyer had contacted me a couple of months later, but I’d refused to accept the meager inheritance I’d been left as the only next of kin. I’d told him to give everything away, including the fifty thousand dollars my mother had taken from my trust to fund her escape with my father.
I was about to tell Ethan he’d do great at his first day on the job the following day when his sister, Eden, came into the living room. She did a little happy dance when she saw that her daughter was asleep.
“You’re a miracle worker,” she whispered to me as she reached down and took the baby so she could put her down in her crib.
