Chapter 11 Auden
AUDEN
“Hey, Jalon,” I answer my cell while leaning back in my chair. I rotate so I can look out the big window overlooking the city.
“Hello,” he greets. I roll my eyes, grinning, because he’s always so proper. Does he even know how to say ‘hey’? “How are you?”
I nod. “Fine. You?”
“Fine, as in you’re doing well, or you don’t want to answer the question?”
Chuckling, I answer, “I’m good, Jalon.” I think about Mark and smile. “I’m really good.”
“Ah, you’re seeing someone again.”
“How is it being with someone younger than your youngest son?” I counter.
Jalon’s quiet laughter makes me smile. “He’s… chronologically young, yes. I don’t know. He once told me he’s an old soul, and I can see that.”
“That’s a roundabout way of not answering my question.”
“We’re doing well. Thanks for asking.”
“How well? On a scale of one to ten.” I tease.
“I think I’m going to marry him,” Jalon answers, almost wistfully.
I grin so wide I feel it in my jaw. “Yeah?”
“For what feels like maybe the right reasons this time.”
“Explain that.”
Jalon sighs. “My kids pointed out that I don’t marry because my partner makes me happy or because I want them in my life.”
“Your wife?” I ask, a little surprised.
“No. When I approached Martha, I handled it like one might handle a business proposal. My goal was to see if her goals and mine aligned. She wanted to be a stay-at-home mother and take care of a large family. That’s what I was looking for, so I could begin stepping more fully into my role at Van Doren Technologies. I… mistrusted.”
“I see. And this one is for purely selfish reasons, huh?”
He chuckles, and I’m glad he doesn’t sound… not sad, exactly, but down. “Yeah. I enjoy his company. I look forward to seeing him every day. I think about him when we’re not together, and I plan for a future with him by my side, sharing the same experiences. It’s a very strange, new world.”
“I’m sorry to know you haven’t had that before.”
“To be honest, I didn’t know I wanted it. There’s a good chance that I didn’t at the time. I loved planning time with my kids. I never included Martha on my trips with my kids. I tried to do better with Jeannette, but Auden, I literally forgot about her.”
It’s unusual that Jalon is in the mood to share. He’s a very quiet, private man. I’ve learned more about him in the last ten minutes than I have in the last ten years.
“It feels different this time,” I note.
“Very. Both Martha and Jeannette had a purpose, which, yes, I hear how that sounds now. In my head, it was reasonable, but now? I sound very cold. This time, my relationship feels real. It’s for me and me alone.”
“I’m glad to hear that, Jalon. You deserve real happiness.”
He hums.
“I thought you were calling to inform me about the next kid expecting a child.” He called me while Mark was there because Noaz was announcing they were expanding their family with baby number two, to arrive in November.
Jalon laughs quietly. “Not this time.”
“I hope you enjoy being Grandpa. Your kids are going to begin… okay, maybe not popping them out, but the equivalent of that.”
He’s still laughing at me. “Speaking of kids. How’s yours doing? How’s Bennett?”
“Actually, he finally calmed the fuck down. I forced him to take the pack for a hunt, and he returned much more recognizable as my slightly aloof son. I think he needed a reset, and looking at Bennett in bed with a broken arm and staples in his head wasn’t letting him reach it.”
“So he’s doing okay now?”
“He is. There are moments when Bennett’s pain spikes—mostly because of something he’s done, like forgetting his arm is broken and trying to pull himself up with it—terror shines in Rhodes’ eyes again.
The pack winds up, ready to attack an invisible force.
Thankfully, they’re able to calm each other down.
And yes, Bennett is perfectly fine. His head wound has healed over.
His arm is just going to take a while, as bones do. ”
“Good to hear. Do you need anything?”
I grin. “No. We’re good. Now that my kid isn’t driving us all up a wall with his very loud, slightly neurotic paranoia that Bennett is going to suddenly roll over and croak mid-sentence because his arm is broken, we’re doing much better. I’m not tempted to lock him in the basement.”
“Poor kid,” Jalon murmurs. “I can’t imagine being that… actually, yes, I can. Sending all my kids and brothers, and your kid, in after Albrecht six months ago is a fear that I’ll never adequately be able to express and hope to never go through again.”
Chills cover my body. Human hunting game.
Yeah. That was nauseatingly terrifying, knowing that a huge chunk of our family—nearly two entire generations of a single line—was stepping into a remote wild game preserve where some sick fuckers were abducting people and letting other sick fucks hunt them like wild game.
However, not as simple as a shoot-and-kill situation.
They’d be so lucky. We’re talking torture, mutilation, rape, torment—the whole sick profile was found in this operation.
Brek was caught up in that. He’d just started seeing Voss, but he’d been with Jalon and his family for a couple of years because he’s one of Jalon’s youngest son’s husband’s best friends. He was family.
I’ve never truly been scared for Rhodes. He’s just this side of out of his mind to be careful. He also has seven enormous wolf dogs, and seeing them coming after you is a momentary paralysis like nothing else.
But I was scared. They were going in blind against an unclear situation that had been in operation for years.
“Let’s never do that again,” I agree.
He hums. “I agree. Let’s also stop talking about it. It still gives me nightmares.”
“Good idea.”
“You smoothly shifted the conversation to me, but don’t think I’ve been sidetracked. Back to you, Auden. I haven’t seen you on the cover of any tabloids with today’s flavor.”
“How crude.”
“Have they given up? Thinking the playboy has lost his spark?” he teases.
“I haven’t been in public with him,” I admit. “Not anywhere or for anything where it could be construed as a date or relationship of any kind.” I think about Mark and what we’re doing. “Actually, it’s not a relationship of any kind, so… maybe that’s why it can’t be seen as such.”
“I’m intrigued.”
I stare at the park for a few minutes and debate whether I should say something.
I was honest when I said this isn’t anything like that.
Of course, I wouldn’t consider anyone in my past to have been considered a partner of any kind.
They were, as Jalon suggested, flavors of the week.
I was having fun with as many people as I could.
Is this any different? I suppose I could take into account the nearly two years that I haven’t been in that pattern, and now I’m sleeping with a single person. Repeatedly.
There’s the simple fact that we’re exploring some kink together. That makes this different from the onset. In a way, this is all about proximity, right?
“You went quiet,” Jalon says.
Sighing, I admit, “I’m sleeping with Mark.”
Jalon is silent. So silent, in fact, that I pull the phone from my ear to see if the call is still connected. When I bring it back, Jalon says, “Mark, as in Doc Mark? Doctor George Markanich—that Mark?”
I smirk. “Yes. I’m impressed that I’ve managed to render you dumbfounded.”
He snorts, and I grin further.
“Auden,” he says, and I think maybe I misread his humor. He doesn’t continue, though.
“Yes?” I prompt when a minute goes by.
“I’m trying to make this not sound cold. Even in my head, it sounds like an asshole thing to say.”
“You’re worried I’m going to break his heart, and he’s going to quit?”
“Mmm. I wasn’t going to put it like that.
I was going to point out that if you fuck up and Mark decides he can’t work with our family anymore, we don’t have a backup.
Then I remembered that Mark is a person—my good friend—and I kind of felt like shit for that being my first thought.
Then I was thinking, what the fuck, we need someone else in line! ”
I laugh loudly. “Wow.”
“Yeah. This must be what Voss deals with daily. I can’t handle this kind of chaos.”
I’m still laughing. “First, VDT is your baby as much as your kids are. As much as your brothers are. In a way, it’s your favorite baby.
You’ve poured everything you are into VDT, Jalon.
So I’m not in the least bit surprised that your first thought was the health of the company, considering that the company comprises your entire family and Mark takes care of them all. ”
“That makes me sound like less than a good person,” he deadpans.
“It’s not. Mark takes care of your entire family, Jalon.
You trust him. Everyone trusts him. Rhodes was so terrified of the doctor in the hospital—that you uncovered last year in Arizona—that he refused to take Bennett to a hospital and insisted that Mark was the only person he trusted with Bennett.
I get it. This isn’t truly about VDT. It’s about your family. I misspoke.”
He hums. “Is there a second?”
“There might have been, but I think I rolled it into one. One big, long point to take note of.”
“Is it serious?”
“No. If it were serious, I’d have said I’m in a relationship with Mark but I’d make sure we’re there because that would probably give you a heart attack since I’ve never been in a relationship, unless you count the short-lived dramatic affair I had with Chrissy, Linda, and Sam in first grade—in which we were prevented from running away together to live in the trees with talking bears and snakes—because we were only seven.
I swore off relationships after that since they very obviously ended in disappointment and heartache. ”
I grin when Jalon laughs again. “You’re so dramatic.”
“We’re sleeping together,” I assure him. “It’s good. It’s fun. It’s relieving some stress from dealing with Rhodes obsessing over Bennett. Now that he’s moved beyond that stage, it’s just fun and good. Not a big deal, Jalon.”
“Yet, you felt the need to tell me.”
“You forced the conversation back to me! And even after I expertly turned it on you.”
Jalon’s laughter always makes me smile. It seems to come more easily now.
I’m happy about that. “Listen. The actual reason I called is that I’m going to have a target dropped into your trees soon.
The triplets are scouting. Might be a week or so since this guy knows that he’s a lowly piece of trash, and he’s got cameras covering every inch around him and security making a constant perimeter like Rhodes’ pack. ”
“Only those who know they’ve done something ghastly need to be protected like that,” I agree.
“I’ll keep you posted. I think Ellory is toying with the man at this point.”
I can see Jalon shaking his head, and I grin. “Let the boy have some fun.”
“You ever feel like we’re trying to keep our kids young by always calling them ‘boy’ or ‘kid’? That boy is almost thirty.”
“Yep,” I agree. “I’m proud of my kid, and the man he’s become, but his being thirty-one is unacceptable.”
“Because that means we’re old?”
“Speak for yourself. I’m a very young fifty-three. I can still pull in the very hot twenty-somethings. As can you, Jalon Van Doren.”
He chuckles. “I’ll be in touch, Auden.”
“Alright.”
“Auden?”
“Yes, Jalon?”
“Don’t hurt my friend.”
I sigh. “That’s the last thing I want to do.” At least, in the way he’s speaking of.