Page 45 of Baby, It's Cod Outside
Ben is pressed in Jackson’s arms, head tucked beneath his jaw. Jackson turns them lazily through the last verse of the song, content to stay in this moment as long as the world lets them.
But the world doesn’t.
Out of the corner of his eye, half-obscured by an ice sculpture of a leaping fish, Jackson spots him: mid-laugh, mid-martini, the angry drunk from Salty’s. He’s leaned in close beside Tom McKenna, and whatever he’s saying has Tom nodding along, smug and sweaty, still hovering like a shrimp troll.
Jackson taps two fingers lightly against Ben’s spine, casual as he can manage. “That guy doesn’t like you.”
Ben hums, barely lifting his head. “I’m beginning to think he only likes tiny glass dolphins and reclaimed barnwood.”
“Not McKenna,” Jackson says, tilting his chin. “The guy with him. Grey suit. Reindeer tie.”
Ben shifts, leans slightly to look, and then goes very, very still. So still it feels like all the warmth just dropped out of the room.
“…Kent?”
The music plays on, unaware. But the dance is over.
“Could he have forged the paperwork?”
“No. No, that’s… Kentwouldn’t.” Ben’s voice stutters, skipping like a needle on a record.
Jackson watches Kent throw his head back in too-loud laughter, martini sloshing in one hand, the other clapping Tom on the back. “Are you absolutely sure?”
“He wouldn’t do that,” Ben repeats. But his voice is different now, tight, uncertain. “He wouldn’t set me up.”
Jackson gently steers them off the floor, hand steady at Ben’s waist. “Does he have access to the files?”
“I mean, yeah. Technically. He’s got senior clearance; he has access to everything. But you don’t understand, Jackson, Kent’s known my dad since high school. They practically built this company together. He’s like family. He bulldozes me sometimes, sure, but that’s just how he is. He wants me to succeed. He’s looked out for me here since I was a kid.”
Jackson’s expression doesn’t shift. But his voice does. It drops, sharp and certain. “That man,” he steps in closer, words tight with urgency, “and I cannot stress this enough, has absolutely no interest in helping you succeed.”
Ben looks back across the dance floor.
Jackson doesn’t look away.
“Ben,” he says. “I think we might’ve just found our guy.”
And across the room, as if hearing it through the crowd, Kent lifts his gaze and meets Jackson’s.
He doesn’t flinch.
He smiles.
Chapter 23
Ben
Kent.
The name clatters around inside Ben’s skull like a dropped wrench in an empty corridor.
Dad’s right hand man. The guy who laughs too loudly at all of Dad’s jokes, who calls Ben ‘kiddo’unironically. The man who gave him his first set of keys to the plant and said he’d earned them. Who slipped him a lemon bar from the covered tray at his mother’s funeral because Ben was too overwhelmed, too devastated, too scared, to be the first one to lift the foil.
Kent, who’s been looking him in the eye at every Monday morning meeting and lying. Over and over. Lying that he believed in him. Lying that he had his back. Smiling while carving Ben up behind closed doors.
The betrayal doesn’t just hurt. It rearranges him. Clear-cuts space where trust used to live and fills it with fury and heartbreak and humiliation.
Jackson’s voice finds its way through, low and even, delivering the damage report: what he overheard, what it means, what comes next. Facts, options, a plan. Softly delivered words, steady hands. It’s helping, sort of. But there’s a part of Benthat still feels like he’s just been tased. Muscles locked and ears ringing.
