Page 347 of Branded
Tiny hands clenched into tiny fists again. “Why didn’t he want to meet me?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered, and I wanted to pummel Nate fucking Miller all over again. “I really wanted him to. Because I knew that he’d love you. But sometimes people can’t be what we need them to be, and we have to stop asking them to.” A beat. “Otherwise, we’re the ones who get hurt.”
One of Ethan’s hands relaxed. “Like how Finn isn’t good at four square?”
Jules’s tension flowed out of her, her relief palpable in the air. “Yeah, bud. Exactly like that.”
“Okay,” Ethan said, curling into her.
“Do you have more questions about your dad?” she asked, hugging him close. “Or other things you need to talk about?”
“Nope.” He was back to popping his p’s, which meant that I found the tension flowing out of me, and it flowed faster when Jules ruffled Ethan’s hair, sprawled out onto the sleeping bag and made it clear she didn’t care I’d corrupted her son with tarantulas and paint cans.
“Now,” she said, “should we watch Kevin get those robbers?”
Thirty-Four
Jules
“How are you here so early?” Cas asked once Ethan had lost his battle with sleep and passed out on the sleeping bag, curled around Sparky, his fingers in the dozing pup’s fur.
“Power went out at CeCe’s, so Matt sent me home.” Good. That sounded casual.
When, truthfully, I was falling apart inside.
Because of the conversation I’d walked into.
Because of what I’d heard Cas say.
Because of my son going to Cas for help and Cas handling him so gently, so carefully—like the care and gentle he’d shown me.
Because of how that had finished. Before I’d gotten his shock at seeing me out of the way and joined the conversation, anyway.
“Ah.” His fingers smoothed over my cheek, and he got right to the crux of the issue. “How much did you hear?
Right.
Um. I should probably lie, or at the very least, prevaricate.
Instead…I just gave him the truth.
How could I lie? Prevaricate?
When he’d given Ethan—me—so fucking much.
Cas might not know it, but listening to him talk to my son, hearing him treat Ethan so sweetly, explaining things in a way I never would have, but also with a gentleness and honesty that I felt in my soul was exactly right had reinforced everything.
This was right.
This was special.
This was…something I was never letting go.
A hand on my cheek. Cas’s brows lifting in query when I didn’t immediately answer.
So, how could I not give Cas the same gentle and honest he’d given my son?
“All of it,” I whispered.
