Page 301 of Branded
That it was stabbing in through my eyelids now meant that…
“I’m late!”
Shit.
Pulse pounding in my veins, my stomach immediately in a tight clench, I sat up, tossing the comforter to the side and scrambling out of bed.
My bare feet hit the cold floor and then I was running down the hall toward Ethan’s room, my feet pounding on the floor instead of my kiddo’s for a change. “Eth, buddy! We have to?—”
I skidded to a halt in front of his bedroom, pushed the door open, and?—
It was empty.
“Ethan?” I called. There was no way he’d gotten out of bed without me nagging him fifteen times. To Get. Up!
A clatter from down the hall.
Had miracles happened, and he’d gotten ready?
I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Rushing into my bedroom, I threw my hair up into a ponytail, yanked socks onto my feet, then snagged my phone from the side table. Thirty seconds later, I was hustling down the hall, skidding into the kitchen, and?—
Screeching to a stop.
What.
The.
Fuck?
“Hi, Mom,” Ethan said, his little legs swinging back and forth as he sat on a stool pulled up to the counter. Next to Cas.
What. The. Fuck?
Cas flipped the spatula—and that was a mind fuck right there, Cas standing in my kitchen, next to Ethan, holding a fucking spatula—and a pancake appeared on the plate that was positioned in front of Ethan.
It was already coated with syrup and I immediately saw why when my son picked up the bottle, doused the pancake on his plate with copious amounts of the sweet, sticky liquid and jabbed the soaked pancake with his fork.
It disappeared into the black hole that was Ethan’s stomach.
Hell, I wasn’t even sure my kid chewed.
Cas turned to face me, and the balls on the man to not even have one ounce of guilt on his face when he extended my own plate full of steaming pancakes.
Huge balls.
Huge.
“Eat, gorgeous,” he said quietly.
There were dark circles under his eyes. Hell, there were dark circles beneath the dark circles.
Had he even slept?
I was pissed that he was in my house, with my kid, worried about the exhaustion drawn so deeply into the lines of his face, and—hell—my heart was squeezing over the fact that he was in my kitchen cooking pancakes for my son.
It was a scene…
