Page 53 of Xavier

I didn’t need to know the details to know how bad they were. Dexter wasn’t the kind of person to crack easily, not like this. So whatever this Father Thomas had done to him was horrific enough to break him apart.

“Breathe with me, Dex,” I said, pulling in a lungful of air.

It took a few tries, but eventually, he was able to suck in enough oxygen to start calming down his nervous system. After a few more deep breathing exercises, he turned to jello in my arms—utterly exhausted from his adrenaline finally crashing.

I hardly felt his weight while throwing one of his arms over my shoulder and hiking him up enough to get one of my arms tucked around his legs, allowing me to stand and get us both up off the floor.

He hardly moved as I readjusted him and carried him out of the bathroom in a half-fireman hold, half-lifted up onto my shoulder. The man from earlier was still nowhere to be found, probably halfway to the parking lot by now.

How long he’d been following my son, I had no clue. We’d been too focused on our conversation to really pay attention to anyone else around us, outside of the occasional need to move out of the way.

It sickened me to think that my son had been targeted, whether abruptly or through a series of carefully planned moves that I hadn’t caught on to at all by the predator lurking right out in broad daylight.

What kind of father was I?

I had the kind of military training that would make more people blanch at, and to have something like this slip past my radar?

Fuck.

I was no better than a random man off the street with no training.

The people passing us by on the trail shot me strange looks when I passed them, though none of them seemed to be reachingfor their phones to call the authorities, thankfully. An attendant called to me on the way off the trail but I ignored them in favor of heading right for the parking lot where our rental car was waiting for us.

I tucked a sleeping Dexter into the backseat and strapped him in, trying my best not to wake him while I shut the door and headed over to the driver’s side. My hands shook taking the wheel and pulling the car out of park, even more so when I glanced back in my mirror to see my sleeping son’s face.

How did I not know?

HowcouldI have known?

Two warring thoughts in my head that wouldn’t leave me alone the entire fifteen minutes it took to get back to Gage’s house. Forcing back my own panic with practiced ease helped me get my kid out of the car and behind the safety of a locked front door.

Dexter stirred slightly when I laid him down in bed and pulled the covers over him, mumbling something in his sleep that I couldn’t quite catch.

I didn’t know how long I stayed with him, sitting on the side of his bed while I stroked his hair as he slept. Not until I heard voices coming from the front of the house that sounded like Gage talking to someone on the phone.

Slipping out of Dexter’s room and shutting the door behind me, I found Gage tossing his work duffle bag onto the floor by the door while he bent at the waist to wrestle his shoes off. He jumped when he turned and spotted me standing there, the person who he was talking to continued to rattle on about something—a party?

Oh, his work party.

“Hey, baby.” He smiled, and then glanced down at his phone. “Ellie, I’ll call you back later.”

He cut her off mid-sentence to drop the call and shove his phone back into his pocket. I watched in real time as his expression fell from the ‘happy to see me’ down to deep concern.

“Hey, what happened? You look white as a ghost.”

He grabbed both of my arms to guide me into the living room, apparently realizing before I had—most likely from his training—that I was about to drop. Right as he hovered me over the couch, my legs collapsed out from under me, sending me catapulting onto the soft cushion.

“Xavier?”

I bent forward to curl my hands over my face, doubling over while the nausea was strong enough to bring stars into my vision. My whole world—the entire axis of it—was now completely off kilter. I’d left this morning living a completely different life to the one I came home with.

My baby boy had been hurt and I wasn’t there to protect him.

God, the way he’d saidyou weren’t there last time,was going to fucking haunt me.

Gage ran a hand down my back a few times, patiently waiting for me to talk.

How in the world was I supposed to get any words out when all I could focus on was the utter terror on my son’s face?

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