Page 29 of Baby, It's Cod Outside
Ben looks skeptical, wary, like he doesn’t quite know what to do with the praise. He’s not used to hearing it.
“But you’re already running this whole place,” Jackson goes on. “You shouldn’t be the one trying to chase down every loose thread on top of that. Let me do this. Iamdoing this.”
Ben hesitates.
Jackson knows instantly that this isn’t about doubt, even if he might deserve it; knows it isn’t about him at all. It’s about wiring. Ben doesn’t know how to let go, how to loosen his grip without thinking it’s weakness.
And God help him, that’s what breaks Jackson a little.
So he waits.
Until finally, softly, Ben agrees. “Okay.”
Jackson smiles at the surrender, not of control, but of part of the burden. But there’s still a tension left behind inside of him that he can’t quite smooth out because as much as Jackson wants to help shoulder this, part of him is already dreading the moment it ends.
Not the story.
This.
Ben, right there across the desk, fingers curled gently around a spoon like he’s forgotten he’s holding it. The lock of hair that’s slipped loose across his forehead, begging for Jackson to smooth it back. The way his shoulders stay squared despite how heavy they must feel.
The ridiculous, unshakable goodness of Benjamin Whitaker III.
Watching Ben now, pushing through doubt and responsibility and the bone-deep fear of getting it wrong, just so he can keep doing what’s right, Jackson feels it again. Low and warm and impossibly certain: the same pull he’d felt in the diner.
He wants to kiss Ben.
He wants to reach across the desk and erase the last few inches of space between them. To cup Ben’s jaw in his palm,careful and steady, and tell him,show him, that he doesn’t have to keep holding the whole world up on his own.
That he never should have had to.
That he was never, ever meant to do it alone.
But Jackson doesn’t. He can’t. He knows if he forces Ben to confront something so fundamentally at odds with how he’s been taught to move through the world, then Ben will retreat to whatever quiet, unreachable place keeps him safe and not come back. Jackson’s already seen the edges of it. He nearly sent Ben there this morning.
So, instead, Jackson leans back in his chair. Reaches for the sandwich he’d nearly forgotten about. He takes a bite. Chews. Swallows. A concession to patience, to timing.
Not yet.
But when Ben finally lets it all go, Jackson hopes like hell he’s still close enough to catch him.
Thursday
Chapter 18
Ben
Ben wakes to the sound of his alarm clock feeling... well, not hopeful, exactly. Certainly not optimistic. But definitely steadier.
His own bed smells like clean laundry. He just slept there for a full eight hours. His brain, for once, isn’t spiraling the second his eyes open. There’s still a weight on his chest, but one he thinks he can carry today.
He’s halfway through stretching out the residual sleep stiffness in his spine when his phone rings. He looks at the screen before answering, even though there is only one person it could be.He glances at the clock; it’s 5:03 a.m. Which makes it 4:03 in Chicago.
“Ben,” his father says when he picks up, brisk, like they’re already mid-conversation. “Kent tells me no one saw you on the floor yesterday.”
“Morning, Dad,” Ben mutters, rubbing a hand over the stubble on his jaw. He needs to shave before he heads in. “I had meetings.”
“Everyone has meetings, Ben. That’s not an excuse to disappear.”
