We both look at him.
“I’m hungry,” he announces with the gravity of someone delivering a national emergency. He points at me. “I want to eat with her.”
“Buddy—”
“Please.” He reaches for me, both arms out, ice cream still smeared across his fingers. “Please please please. We only had half a cone, and my tummy still hurts.”
“That was your fault for letting your dad grab you mid-bite,” I tell him because apparently I’m now in negotiations with a four-year-old in a public park.
His face wobbles dangerously.
“Ethan.” Grayson’s voice comes out sharp, and he pauses to take a breath before speaking more softly. “Stop it. We’re going home.”
Ethan’s expression collapses completely. He lets out a wail that startles a nearby pigeon into panicked flight.
I round on Grayson before I can think better of it. “Don’t snap at him like that.”
He blinks. “Excuse me?”
“He’s been lost in the woods, his hands are scraped up, and he’s hungry. Don’t bark at him like he’s inconveniencing you.”
“Don’t tell me how to talk to my son.”
“Then handle him without making him feel worse.”
We stare at each other over the sound of Ethan’s crying, which is getting louder and drawing exactly the kind of attention a man trying to keep a low profile does not want.
A woman passing with a stroller gives Grayson a look that could strip paint off a wall. He doesn’t notice because he’s too busy holding my gaze, jaw tight, an unreadable emotion moving behind his eyes.
Then a man about ten feet away stops walking and stares.
“Wait. Are you Grayson Wolfe?”
Everything happens very fast after that.
Grayson’s head snaps toward the voice. His expression cycles through several things in under a second. Then his gaze cuts to me, to Ethan still in my arms from where I’d automatically taken him mid-argument, and he says, very quietly, “Oh shit.”
More heads turn. Someone already has their phone out.
“That’s definitely him. Oh my God, that’s Grayson Wolfe—”
“Run,” Grayson says.
I stare at him. “I’m sorry?”
He grabs my arm. “Run. Right now.”
I run.
I don’t fully process the decision, I just do it, Ethan clutched against my chest with one arm while Grayson’s hand stays locked around the other. We tear through the park, and within seconds, I can hear it behind us. Footsteps. Shouting. People calling out his name.
Ethan has stopped crying entirely. He is gripping my shirt in both fists and making a sound that is definitely excitement.
We cut left, then right, then down a narrow alley between two buildings where Grayson pulls us flat against the brick wall. He peers around the corner, chest heaving.
I try to catch my breath. Fail. Try again.
“What,” I gasp, “was that?”
