Page 124 of A Sweet Destruction

A kid who had been drafted alongside us said, “When the fuck did this happen?”

Ford slowly pulled away from me, a far too mischievous look in his eyes for my comfort. “I don’t appreciate your tone, Young.”

“Oh, come on,” Young cried, with much the same voice he used when he complained when we didn’t get leftovers at dinner. “You two have been acting like you barely tolerated each other for years and now this?” He ended with a dramatic wave down at our joined hands.

Purely as a reflex, I tried to pull my hand away from Ford’s. It made me uncomfortable, and a fair bit embarrassed, to be confronted with the fact that we’d be so obvious in our separation. I’d always pushed that thought away as something I accepted, but never paid any mind to.

I had to get over that embarrassment very quickly, though, when Ford whipped his head around to me with a notch of hurt between his eyebrows. I couldn’t stand the thought that any of my own discomfort would make him think I was ashamed of him.

Fix this. Quickly. The Bond was clearly not pleased with me either.

“Young, let’s not assume you know what’s been going on behind closed doors, yeah?” I said, taking a step into Ford’s side.

“Oh, ew,” Young said, covering his hands with his eyes. “Please don’t tell me that’s some type of foreplay shit.”

“Alright,” Peter said, cutting off the conversation and looking over at me and Ford pointedly. I couldn’t meet his eye. Peter was the closest thing I’d had to a father and I had no interested in him knowing the intimate details of my life. “Let’s allow everyone to settle back in. Everyone is alive and healthy—that’s a win. I might even turn a blind eye to some celebrations later tonight.”

That sent everyone scurrying away, motivated to finish their tasks for the day as early as possible. Hell, even I wanted to cut loose a little bit.

“Not you all, obviously,” Peter said, his mouth turning up in his tell-tale sign that he thought he was being funny. His dry humor never quite landed with the punch he thought it did. “My office. Now.”

Before any one of us—or all of us—could protest, Peter sighed and ran his hands down his face. “Yes, I mean after you tend to your horses. Fifteen minutes, not a second more.”

Even that was pushing it, seeing as in our home stables, our horses tended to act like preening babies. Sky had a particular appetite for treats that had ended with my ponytail in his mouth, refusing to let me leave, more times than I could count.

I’d always had a sneaking suspicion someone had been feeding him treats behind my back, something I quickly confirmed when I saw Ford slip him one.

“Hey!” Ford caught my hand in a warm grasp right before it connected with his shoulder with a light smack. “You know that’s spoiling him.”

Even now, Sky was looking at me with huge, pleased eyes, thinking he’d gotten away with something sneaky.

Ford dragged my other wrist into his grasp, holding both of them firmly—and in a way that made my stomach clench—before moving to feed Sky another treat, keeping eye contact the entire time. “Yeah, well he wasn’t my biggest fan for a long time. I had to bribe him somehow.”

Ford had said something about Sky pushing him over. At the time, I’d thought damn right, but now—you know what, damn right. Sky was half of my heart and he thought he was protecting me the way he knew how. At least he was smart enough to accept a bribe when it was given to him.

“He likes you fine now,” I said, nodding at the way Sky was subtly notching his nose down to invite some pets on his muzzle.

Ford smiled wide. “Progress. He probably knows you like me now.”

It was on the edge of my tongue to correct him. Well, not correct him, but add to it. Tell him I didn’t just like him, but loved him. Was in love with him.

It was right, right there, but I didn’t get the chance because Ford pulled me behind him with a muttered curse under his breath that we didn’t need Peter coming down here after us.

My entire body felt tight, with the sort of anticipatory pain of knowing something that someone else didn’t. It wasn’t a good time to have that kind of conversation with Ford, to just drop that bomb on him.

Sure, I didn’t think he would proceed down this road with me if he didn’t at least think something permanent would come from it. But that was hope for a future. It didn’t mean that he was actively in love with me.

My mind was momentarily caught in a battle of wills, the darker parts of myself launching horrible, intrusive thoughts at me that Ford felt nothing more for me than Bond-powered lust and it was silly of me to hope that he would want anything more, especially with someone like me. The part of me that I’d trained to combat those thoughts did a pretty good job of swatting them away, getting a solid bout of help from the Bond itself.

Even if the latter camp won that fight, it still wasn’t a good time to say anything. And a sinking feeling in my stomach—something deeper than just an intrusive thought—was worried that there would never been a good time.

Right as I was considering throwing caution to the wind and just blurting it out, Peter’s voice stole my chance.

See, the Bond grumbled, just say it.

“In, in,” Peter beckoned, shuffling all of us into his office. Freya was already sitting there, looking a touch too sad for my liking. I needed to check in on her.

“Where’s Arthur?” I asked her quietly as I moved to take the chair next to hers, hoping that was a sly way of getting the truth out of her without outright asking.