Page 15 of How Much for the Whole Night?

I glanced at Ethan. Extracted? What? “Ben?”

“Ryder and Luca have him.”

“How do you know?”

“I can show you. Can I let go?”

I glanced down at our joined hands and couldn’t understand how our fingers were laced. It wasn’t so much that Ethan was restraining me—if anything, it was desperation that made me cling to him.

I relaxed my hold, and he handed me an open bottle of water, which I gripped instead.

“Breathe, okay?” he was asking me, over and over, but when I concentrated on the process of breathing, I realized I couldn’t make my body work; I was all over the fucking place, and every small thing I took for granted was going wrong.

I glanced down at the bottle and took a long swallow of cold water, choking and swallowing, then trying to breathe and pretending I had any control over what I was doing.

“Show me,” I demanded and waited with impatience for Ethan to remove a cell phone from his jacket and hold the screen up to me. A man I recognized, the one from the van who stopped me from falling, was filming and turned the camera to reveal Ben sat on the van’s bench seat, Oreo curled in his lap. Every cell in my body ached with love and fear, and I didn’t know what to say or do.

“Ben.”

“He’s safe. You’ll see him soon.”

A strange lethargy washed over me, a blurriness in my vision, and I sipped more water. “When. How?”

“We’re taking you somewhere we can regroup. Okay?”

“And Ben will be there?”

“Yes.”

“What about Ruth?”

“Ruth?”

“Ben’s mom, my… uhm… my wife… ex.” Why were words so hard to say? My lips were numb, and my head felt weird. “The one … she’s marrying Charles Rouxier.”

Ethan paused. “I have no intel on Ruth, but Ben has been extracted.”

“She wanted Rouxier’s money; he was rich and … he was clever… and all she’d had was me. I want to feel sorry for her, but she won’t agree to me having Ben and it’s not like she even wants him.” Everything came out dripping with emotion.

“I don’t have anything I can tell you about her right now,” Ethan said.

I think he frowned, then he pressed his ear and murmured something. It was so odd, and I stared at him, attempting to make sense of him tapping his ear and talking to no one.

“She didn’t want me. I didn’t want her,” I slurred. What mark was I leaving on life? I was nothing. A nobody. No wonder she fell for the guy with the money, politics, and acclaim. Acclaim? Wasn’t that people clapping? No, that was applause. Was that the right word? She wanted the big house. She wanted the money.

“She never wanted Ben for herself. But Rouxier wants him to be some kind of political mascot, a way to make him look like a family man. She can’t have him because he’s part of her life. She can’t see what he’s like—-”

“Okay,” Ethan interrupted, no longer tapping his ear. “It will be okay. We’ll join Ben now.”

“Ben,” I whispered, but maybe it was in my head because Ethan wasn’t reacting to me talking. If anything, he looked weird, and his features were all blurry. I wriggled in my seat, still feeling what I’d done last night, knowing what he’d done, what I’d done, and how everything had changed in my life.

“Change of plan,” the driver announced, but I didn’t have the energy to move and scan past him to the road ahead.

“What?” Ethan’s blurry expression hardened and came into focus as I stared.

“We’re leaving the highway. Comms can’t clear all the cameras.”

“Shit. Okay, I’m staying back here.”

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