Chapter Thirty-Two
Ethan woke to an empty stretch of bed and a cold dent in the pillow where Carter should’ve been. For a second, panic set in but then movement across the room broke the silence. Boots on wood. A drawer shutting.
Carter turned, his expression easing the instant he caught Ethan awake. He sat beside the bed and kissed him, like he’d been waiting for Ethan to open his eyes.
“I had a phone call,” Carter said. “There’s a situation on the ranch I need to deal with. We need breakfast, then we hit the road.”
Ethan pushed himself up on his elbows, the sheets twisting around his waist. “Okay… what happened?”
Carter hesitated, just long enough for a sharp, needling buzz to crawl up Ethan’s arms, like his nerves were waking up too fast.
“Someone broke into your bedroom at your parents’ home.”
The words didn’t hit like a temperature drop this time—they hit like static under his skin, a warning signal his body didn’t know how to process.
Ethan stared at him. “How? It’s on the second floor.”
“I don’t know,” Carter said. “But your father is furious.”
“At me?” The words came out thin. A tight pull settled across his chest, the same uneven pressure when a saddle slid off-center mid-ride.
“No.” Carter brushed his thumb along Ethan’s jaw. “Not at you.”
“I need a cigarette first.” He swung his legs over the side of the mattress. He didn’t wait for Carter to comment. He cracked open the door and lit a cigarette. Carter stood behind him until he finished.
Ethan’s mind spun through everything in that room—his laptop, his clothes, the shoebox under the bed.
“Before we go anywhere,” he said, “I want to see it. My room. I need to know what’s actually gone.”
Carter nodded. “Alright. We’ll stop there first.”
It wasn’t much—just a small decision, a single direction in a morning already spiraling—but it steadied Ethan more than breakfast ever could.
Ethan tried to breathe around the rising nausea. His room. His things. His laptop, his TV, the clothes he’d saved for years. All of it flashed through his mind like a list of losses waiting to be confirmed.
“So what did they do to my room?” His voice came out thin.
“I don’t know what you had in there,” Carter said. “Your father hired security. He’s got a crew building fences around the cabin and your home.”
Ethan’s heart lurched. “What if they hurt Storm?”
“He didn’t say they went near the horses.”
That helped, but only a little, and the fear left him feeling chilled.
Carter pulled him into his arms, kissing him slow, trying to anchor him. “Let’s get you some food after your shower.”
Ethan nodded and headed to the bathroom.
The hot water helped, but not enough. When he came out and pulled on one of Carter’s shirts, the sleeves swallowed his hands.
He rolled them up, but they kept sliding back down.
He stepped into a pair of Carter’s jeans, zipped them, and they dropped straight to his ankles.
He sat on the edge of the bed, throat tight, eyes burning. Everything he owned might be ruined, and he couldn’t even keep a pair of pants up.
“What am I going to do?” he whispered.
Carter crouched in front of him. “Put on the ones you came in. I’ll stop and we’ll pick up some jeans. Don’t worry.”
Ethan nodded, but the fear didn’t let go. It clung to him all the way out the door. They drove to the nearest diner for breakfast, the silence between them thick but not cold—just full of everything Ethan was afraid to say out loud.
The diner sat wedged between a gas station and a hardware store, the kind of place with sun-bleached menus and a bell on the door that rang too loud. Ethan slid into the booth across from Carter, hands tucked under his thighs so Carter wouldn’t see them shaking.
“I want to order for myself, Boss Carter.”
Carter grinned. “Then order.”
The server poured coffee for both of them. Ethan wrapped his fingers around the mug, letting the heat sink into his palms. His stomach churned uncomfortably, a knot of unease tightening in his chest.
When the server asked what they wanted. Carter said he wanted bacon and eggs with hash browns. Ethan told the server he wanted pancakes and bacon.
Carter’s eyes focused on Ethan for a long second, then nudged the syrup bottle toward him. “You always eat pancakes when you’re stressed.”
Ethan blinked. “I do?”
“Yeah,” Carter said, cracking a smile. “You inhale them as if they’re gonna run away.”
A tiny laugh slipped out of Ethan before he could stop it. It wasn’t much, but it loosened something tight in his ribs.
Carter leaned back, stretching his arm across the back of the booth. “Look, we’ll figure everything out. Clothes, electronics, whatever else got messed up. You’re not dealing with it alone.”
Ethan stared at the sugar packets lined up in their little holder. “I keep thinking about my pictures. The ones in the shoebox. And the books my grandma gave me. What if they—”
“Hey,” Carter’s voice softened. “Don’t go there yet. We don’t know what’s gone. And your dad’s already on it.”
Ethan nodded. “It feels like everything keeps getting taken from me.”
Carter reached across the table and tapped Ethan’s knuckles. Not a grab, not a squeeze—just a steady touch that grounded him. “Not everything.”
The server dropped off their plates—pancakes stacked high for Ethan, eggs and bacon for Carter. The smell of butter and maple syrup filled the booth. Ethan’s stomach flipped again, but this time it wasn’t all fear.
Carter cut into his eggs and talked as if he were determined to keep Ethan’s mind busy. “So, I was thinking… after we deal with the ranch stuff, maybe we take a ride out to Butte Lake. Haven’t been there together.”
Ethan blinked. “The lake?”
“Yeah. You like water. And it’ll be quiet. No fences going up, no phone calls, no drama.”
Ethan took a bite of a pancake. It tasted like nothing, but the warmth helped. “You’re trying hard to distract me.”
“Yep,” Carter said, not even pretending otherwise. “And I’m damn good at it.”
Ethan’s mouth twitched. “You kind of are.”
Carter’s eyes softened. “Eat, sweetheart. You’ll feel better with something in you.”
Ethan did. Slowly. Bite by bite. And with every bite, the panic eased just a little—not gone, not even close, but manageable with Carter sitting across from him, keeping the world from closing in.
Every bump in the road sent a faint ringing through his ears, like someone had struck a tuning fork inside his skull.
He tried to breathe slowly, but his thoughts kept spiraling back to his room.
His laptop. His clothes. The pictures he kept hidden.
The books he’d collected since he was a kid.
He imagined the door being kicked in. Drawers dumped.
Pages torn. The sound of it—the crash, the ripping—echoed in his head even though he hadn’t heard it happen.
His fingers twitched against his thigh, restless and cold.
Carter glanced over at him once, worry tightening the corner of his mouth, but he didn’t push. He just kept driving, one hand on the wheel, the other close enough that Ethan could reach for it if he needed to.
Ethan wanted to. He just didn’t trust his hands not to shake.
Carter reached over and brushed his fingers against Ethan’s thigh. “We’ll handle it.”
Ethan nodded, but the knot in his chest didn’t loosen.
When the Evans’ home came into view, a heavy, hollow weight settled low in Ethan’s chest. Trucks crowded the yard. Men hauled lumber. New fence posts dotted the ground like fresh markers on a training course. Cameras watched from their stands, silent and unblinking.
It didn’t look like home anymore.
Carter parked the truck in front of the house, the gravel crunching under the tires with a sharp, uneven grind that made Ethan think of something brittle being crushed under a boot. The sound tightened something low in his gut.
Ethan climbed out, palms damp, stomach knotted. He hadn’t been back since everything blew up, and the house looked exactly the same—perfect lawn, perfect porch, perfect lie. The kind of stillness that made his skin itch, like the place was pretending nothing had happened.
This is because of me. Because someone wanted to get to me.
“They’re doing this to protect you,” Carter said.
Ethan wasn’t sure he believed that, but he nodded anyway.