“GOOD NEWS,” DETECTIVE Andrews said over the phone about a week later.
Ethan and I had been getting along better than ever, both of us doing everything in our power to make this work. He wasn’t making decisions for me anymore, and I was talking to him openly and honestly whenever anything came up. So far, so good.
But our fledgling relationship wasn’t the only thing on our minds. In fact, there were much more pressing matters weighing on us—namely Hayes and his friends, and what was happening in the case.
Of late, there hadn’t been much, and that had us both on edge.
“Good news?” I pressed the button to put him on speakerphone so Ethan could hear everything the detective had to say, too.
Ethan raised a brow in question, but he kept quiet.
“The prosecutors have offered Barnes and Lipscomb a deal if they cooperate, and they’ve agreed to it.”
I still wasn’t used to anyone referring to Alex and Jason by their surnames, even if I knew exactly who Detective Andrews meant. It took me a moment to shake my brain into action so I could catch up. “Okay,” I murmured.
But Ethan wouldn’t be so easily satisfied. “How the hell is letting those scumbags off easy good news?” he demanded.
“They won’t be getting off easy,” the detective insisted. “Just a lighter sentence in exchange for helping us nail Lennon for his part in all of this. They’ll still serve time, but we’ll be able to charge him finally—and we can make sure we get him on the more serious charges this way.”
“But how…?” My question trailed off, because I couldn’t even put all my warring thoughts into words.
Mainly because Ethan looked livid.
“Barnes and Lipscomb have agreed to tell a grand jury that they were acting on Lennon’s orders. They’ll get a lighter sentence, but they’ll still do time. We’ll get Lennon to show up in court under some pretense or another—we can tell him that they’re going to testify to their guilt, and he’ll want to be there to make certain they don’t rat him out for his part in things—and when he walks in, they can arrest him under a sealed indictment warrant.”
“A sealed warrant?” I repeated.
“They do this all the time when it’s someone well known. Actors, musicians, athletes, politicians… It’s a way to be sure he shows up and doesn’t skip out of town.”
“Does Natalie have to be there?” Ethan asked. “I don’t want her anywhere near that—”
“She doesn’t have to be present,” he cut in before Ethan could really begin to rant about Hayes. “And at that time, we can get the judge to issue a criminal court protective order against all three of them, too. It’ll give Natalie a higher degree of protection than what she’s already got. Police officers are more likely to treat it seriously.”
“So she doesn’t have to testify,” Ethan said.
“Not yet. Whenever the case gets to trial, that’ll be a different matter.”
“But I have time to get ready for that,” I put in.
“And the prosecution will have some people who’ll help you prepare, too. You won’t go into the situation blindly.”
I wasn’t sure I’d ever be ready, no matter how well they tried to prepare me for it. How could I walk into a court, with Hayes sitting across from me, leering at me, trying to stare me down, and tell the world all the things he’d done to me? Just the thought of it made my skin crawl.
“You’ve got time to prepare for that,” the detective agreed.
He went over a few more details with us. The plan was for this to take place on Tuesday—just after Carter’s next weekend visit with Ethan.
That little boy would be a welcome distraction. And a good reason for the two of us to put the brakes on how fast things had been moving between us. Time for me to move back down to my room and stop sleeping in Ethan’s bed for a while.
Kicking Snoopy out of the bedroom and closing the door was one thing; having Carter attempting to sleep in the next room would be something else entirely. I didn’t know how Ethan felt about introducing the idea of our relationship to his son, but I knew I wasn’t ready for him to find me naked in his father’s bed or anything of that sort. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be ready for that.
“Thanks again for keeping us updated,” Ethan said after the detective answered about a dozen more of his questions while my mind drifted, and then we hung up.
“See? It’s going to be all right. Everything’s going to work out,” I said, admittedly trying to convince myself as much as I wanted to convince him. Snoopy shoved his head onto my lap, so I scratched his ears distractedly.
Ethan’s look said he didn’t want to concede the point, but he was choosing not to argue with me. “Let’s not get too excited until the guy’s behind bars with his buddies, all right? Because I don’t know how well I can breathe until then.”
“You’d better figure out how to breathe before Carter’s flight lands. He’ll run you ragged.”
Snoopy’s ears perked up at the mention of Carter’s name, but he didn’t lift his head off my lap, even though his eyes were moving back and forth between me and Ethan.
“Yes, your boy’s coming home soon,” Ethan said, scratching the dog’s back.
Snoopy barked and wagged his tail.
“It’s amazing how much he understands,” I said.
“Carter’s a smart kid.”
I laughed. “I meant Snoopy. But yeah, Carter, too.” Which was exactly the lead-in I needed to guide our conversation.
“You have no idea. I swear, this dog always knows everything that’s going on, sometimes before I do. I’m surprised he didn’t manage to stop you from leaving…”
“He’s not as attached to me as he is to you and Carter.”
“That’s changing,” Ethan said. “He’s getting to be as attached to you as I am. Look whose lap he’s got his head on.”
“That’s just because I’m rubbing his ears.”
“Yeah, if he could talk, he’d tell you to stop doing that in about a decade, but no sooner.”
“I don’t know. Once Carter gets here, Snoopy’ll probably want to go chase him around for a while.”
“And when they’re both exhausted, they’ll come back to your lap for ear rubs and story time or something.”
This wasn’t the smoothest segue ever, but I knew I had to get there eventually. “Speaking of Carter,” I said a lot more hesitantly than I’d intended.
Ethan met my eyes. “I’ve already told him.”
“You’ve already…?”
“Told him that we’re together. And that I love you.”
“You’ve already told your son that you love me?” I hadn’t been expecting to cry. To be honest, I wasn’t sure what I’d expected. But there were hot tears trying to spring free, and I had to blink them back.
“I did. And I talked to Kinsey about it, too.”
“You talked to your ex about me?”
“She’s Carter’s mother. She needs to know who’s in my life, because it means you’re in Carter’s life, too. We may not be married anymore, but we’re still a team when it comes to our son. So she needs to know when I want someone else to be part of the team.” He stopped scratching Snoopy and reached for my hand, threading our fingers together right around the same time as my heart stopped beating and lodged itself somewhere in the vicinity of my throat, preventing my stomach from emptying its contents. “She wants to come down at Thanksgiving to meet you,” Ethan continued. “The team’s at home then, so this year I’m supposed to have Carter for Thanksgiving anyway, and she’ll get him at Christmas. But she thought that would be a good time for her make a trip down. We can all have Thanksgiving together as a family. Is that okay? Kinsey coming to meet you?”
“She wants to meet me?” I spluttered, because I couldn’t wrap my head around it.
“I know it’s a lot to take in—”
“It’s not that,” I cut in. “I just— I don’t—” I took a breath, trying to slow my thoughts so I could get a grasp on them before I said something stupid. “It’s just—do you think we’re jumping in too fast?”
“You were the one who said you needed to really be with me or you couldn’t stay.”
“I know. And I meant it. I’m just…”
Scared.
That was the word that refused to come out. It was right on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t set it free.
Ethan stroked the back of my hand, the same way he’d been stroking Snoopy’s back. Soothing. Calming. “Am I moving things too fast for you? I shouldn’t have told you I loved you so soon. I should’ve—”
“No,” I cut in.
“No?” His hand stopped moving, the pad of his thumb just tickling the side of my pinky finger.
“I’m glad you told me,” I forced out, silently cursing myself over the way I was bungling this. “It’s too easy for me to think that no one loves me, even when so many people do everything in their power to show me they do.”
“So many people,” he murmured, sounding hurt.
“I know you love me,” I said. “You’d have to, or you never would have done so much for me. You never would have—” But I was too choked up to continue.
“But you don’t love me? Is that it?”
He sounded so calm. How could he be calm when everything inside me was like a tornado? My thoughts were whirling out of control, and my emotions wouldn’t settle.
“I feel like I’m taking advantage of you,” I said, and I immediately wished I could take the words back, because they weren’t even remotely enough to convey everything I was feeling. But I couldn’t make any more words come out, or else I’d fall apart.
“You’re not taking advantage of me,” Ethan said.
“It’s not just you. It’s everyone! London and Dana and Tallie and Ravyn—”
“They’ve all been helping you out because they care about you. You’re not taking advantage of anyone. You needed help, and they care, so they helped.”
“But with you…”
“I love you,” he repeated. “That’s all that matters to me. You don’t have to tell me you love me. You don’t have to love me. If I get hurt because you can’t love me in return, that’s all on me, but it’s not going to stop me from loving you. It’s too late for that. It’s been too late for that for a long time.”
“But what if I—”
Ethan reached up with his big hand and used the pad of his thumb to brush the tears from my cheeks. “What if you what?” he prompted.
“What if I can’t love you back the way you love me? What if I’m too scared to give someone that kind of power over me?”
For a long time, he stared down at Snoopy, scratching the dog’s belly and ears. But then he looked up again and met my eyes, and he said, “Then my heart will hurt for you, because no one stepped in and got you out in time. It would mean that no one helped before the scars were too deep. That I didn’t get there soon enough.”
That only made me cry harder. “But what about you?”
“What about me?” he asked softly.
I shrugged because I couldn’t find the words.
“You’ve already made a mark on me, Nat. You’re already part of me—as deep as anything. So if I have to let you go…yeah. It’ll gut me. But I can handle my pain a hell of a lot better than I can handle being responsible for causing you any more heartache than you’ve already lived through. I’m not strong enough for that.”
If he wasn’t strong enough, there wasn’t a chance in hell I was.