Chapter 13 #4
“You knew that might happen,” Gideon said, but inside he’d gone cold.
He and Clint had kept their research of Joey’s father superficial because they needed some serious encryption to not trip every alarm the man had, but they had done research and had both given Joey input on how to shut his father down.
Still, they’d known it would be dangerous. Gideon wouldn’t be okay until Joey was home.
“Yeah, I was neither disappointed nor surprised,” Joey said dryly. “But it’s dark, and I won’t be able to get out until dawn.”
“You’re trapped there?” Gideon asked, trying not to panic. He scrambled to a sitting position, mind racing with exfil scenarios. He should call Clint, he should alert the team, he should—
“It’s fine. We’ve done this before,” Joey said calmly. And then his voice dropped, and Gideon could swear he heard the snow falling around him. “It’s just this time I’ve got a real reason to leave.”
“I’d come get you,” Gideon said, and he heard the hardness in his voice and knew that, of all people, it would give Joey comfort. “I know I’m not an army, but you and me—”
“We’d do all right,” Joey said, and he sounded comforted. “Thanks, Gid.” Some of the anger slipped from his voice. “I’ll be okay.”
“My father would love to meet you,” Gideon said simply.
“That’s a nice promise. Merry Christmas, Chadwick.”
“Merry Christmas, Carlyle.”
“I’ll see you on the twenty-sixth.”
“Stay warm. And safe.”
“Stay single.”
Gideon wanted to laugh then. As. If. He opened his mouth to say something else, but Joey ended the call, and Gideon had worked enough missions to know you didn’t call the guy out in the cold.
There was another picture, though, and Gideon stared in fascination at a mountain lion stalking out of the cave. The picture was taken from an elevated perspective, and Gideon realized Joey had cut off the convo so he could climb a tree.
He wanted to laugh, but his chest still ached, a stupid, purposeless thing.
Downstairs, he could hear Trisha and his father talking—simple, easy conversation about pot roast and salad, and the smell of dinner was wafting up the stairs.
Trisha had domestic help, and there was a lively conversation coming from the kitchen as the table was set, and Gideon suddenly wanted Joey here with everything in his heart.
Another picture. This one bloody, because the mountain lion had brought down a hare, and somebody wouldn’t go hungry tonight.
Sleep well, Carlyle. Get warm. Find some food. He texted the words, not wanting to get more sentimental but wanting Joey to have better.
As long as I don’t kill anyone, it will be a good night.
Gideon heard himself telling his father that he and Joey were not nice people.
Predators want full bellies and safe homes too, he thought.
He stood and dressed for dinner, remembering to wet-comb his wild flyaway hair. As he made his way downstairs in his loafers, he found himself missing his wolf, their cozy den in the city, and the feeling of being on the hunt together.
He found himself angry at the mountain lion threatening his wolf. Together, he thought grimly, together, they could make a feast of the lion and cozy up in their own safe cave.
SUCH A strange twin plane of existence. On one plane, Gideon spent the next two days with his chest constricted, in a constant state of panic while he worried about Joey, living for the vibration of his phone against his thigh.
Texts like Out of the compound or Staying at a hotel kept him grounded, gave him peace, allowed him to return to his other plane of existence, where his father and stepmother were trying hard to have a peaceful holiday.
The third time Trish watched him jerk upright at the dinner table and then surreptitiously check his phone, she laughed.
“Gideon,” she said warmly, “you can just put it next to your plate. I get it. You’re worried about somebody. It’s got to be hard being here when you want to be there.”
Gideon did what she asked and then turned a truly apologetic face toward the kind woman who had tried to mother him for nearly thirty years. “I am so grateful to be here,” he said, meaning it. “I appreciate you and my dad, and the decorations and the good food—I didn’t want to be rude.”
Trish had never been beautiful—not by the standards of Gideon’s father’s friends.
She had an unruly mop of curly hair that had once been red, a round face, and a round bosom and plush hips and, as far as Gideon could see, didn’t regret a single morsel to cross her lips, nor should she have.
Her smile was glorious, and her eyes—a little droopier than they had been thirty years ago because she had no time for cosmetic surgery and no shyness about aging—lit up with a joy for life that made the years fall away.
Now she gave Gideon a soft look that made him wish, not for the first time, that he’d been less reserved as a child. He so should have let himself be mothered by this woman.
“It’s okay to be worried about someone,” she said.
“I don’t know if this is job related or not, Gideon, but it doesn’t matter.
I used to worry about your father when he had a long commute.
I worried about you when you were deployed.
Your father and I spent an entire year jumping at every text, because you had gone dark and we were waiting for any word.
” Her eyes grew bright. “I remember your Christmas text that year. We memorized it. ‘I’m fine. Merry Christmas. Have a drink for me.’” She gave half a laugh.
“We had an entire bottle of pino grigio for you, Gideon. I don’t know if we ever told you that. ”
Gideon gave her a helpless smile. “No,” he said. “I didn’t know that. I hope it was a good one.”
She shrugged. “It paired well with chocolate. My point is, I get it. You’re worried. Keep the phone on the table and tell us about this… colleague that you’re so worried about. Don’t worry—nothing classified, and we’re quite fine with violence. Watch it all the time on TV.”
Gideon felt a laugh bubbling up. “God, Trish, I really love you. In case I don’t say it enough.”
She laughed, and he set his phone on the table as requested.
And then spent dinner telling them about Joey Carlyle.
He skipped the worst parts—he held enough dinner parties to know what made a good story.
The gory details about the dog? Out. Joey’s choice of the dog cup for Crosby?
Definitely in. Joey, doing a backflip off a building onto a giant inflatable fireman’s airbag?
Oh yes, that story got told. Gideon dragging him back to the apartment to fuck him senseless?
No, that would stay private. But his father wasn’t a stupid man—and Dad knew what it was like to love somebody and to worry.
“That must have been a little hard on your heart, though, right, son?”
Gideon took a sip of wine before he answered. “We had a talk,” he underplayed. “I asked him not to scare me like that again.”
They both nodded. “And so he’s texting you when he can tonight,” Trish said perceptively. “Good. Let us know what you hear. I really can’t wait to meet him.”
“I warn you, though,” Gideon said, figuring this woman could take it, “he’s sort of… care resistant.”
Trish snorted wine all over herself, making Gideon and his father jump in surprise, and she was still chuckling as she wiped her face and her blouse with a napkin. “Really, Gideon? You’d choose somebody care resistant as a mate? Because you were a pussycat.”
Gideon, remembering his reserve, his careful attempts not to get attached, not to hug too tightly, not to show this woman too much affection, not to welcome her into his little bubble of existence, right up until he left for deployment and realized she was weeping on his shoulder and holding him too tightly to not hold her back, gave her a sheepish grimace.
“He’s younger than I am,” he said with dignity. “We’re all stupid when we’re young.”
That made her laugh harder, and Gideon glanced at his father to see that baffled, melty expression on Gerald Chadwick’s face, and his eyes grew suddenly bright.
Trish would have Joey Carlyle eating out of her hand.
Bidding them goodbye the morning of the twenty-sixth was both really difficult and a profound relief. He’d come to cherish—truly—the peace of their home, the haven of kindness, of grace that they’d created.
But his last text from Joey had come at 5:00 a.m. It had said, simply, Almost there. And Gideon needed to be where that text came from.
It was dark by the time he got to his apartment, his bones aching from the long train ride so hard on the heels of the one on the twenty-third.
Still he moved carefully, opening the door to his apartment quietly but not silently.
Making sure his keys clattered as he dropped them in the bowl by the door.
Turning on the light in the kitchen as he passed by so nobody who slept with his knife under his pillow would be startled when he woke up.
But the light from the kitchen allowed him to see that Joey was still sleeping, curled on the couch under what looked like a battered, sap-stained fur coat. His boots stood sentinel at the foot of the couch, and his head was pillowed on his duffel, while the throw pillows littered the floor.
With a surprised grunt, Gideon dropped his duffel by the couch and knelt down beside him, murmuring his name softly. He’d love to do the Sleeping Beauty thing and kiss him, but that was a good way to find a knife in his jugular before Joey Carlyle was quite awake.
“Joey, baby, how long you been here?”
Joey grunted. “Are we using endearments now?” he asked. “Did this clear committee?”
“Fuck off, Carlyle,” Gideon told him, but he was relieved. That sort of talk-back couldn’t happen if he was irreparably damaged, either emotionally or physically.
Joey’s eyes opened, and he yawned and sat up, arching his back like a cat. “Endearments are a go,” he said, reaching out to feather a touch along Gideon’s cheek. “God, is it dark already? How late is it?”