Chapter 2 #2
“Then you should be more mindful when you’re watching your children.”
“Son,” he corrects, scowling. “I only have one child.”
“It doesn’t matter.” The protectiveness that came over me in those woods is still humming under my skin. “He wandered three miles in, Grayson. Three miles. He’s four!”
He goes still and then pulls Ethan closer to him, his tone defensive. “I was on the phone for two minutes.”
“Two minutes is all it takes,” I snap.
Seeing Ethan staring at me, I shake my head and reach down, giving his hand a quick squeeze before I straighten. “Now that you have him back, I’m leaving.”
Ethan’s face crumbles immediately. “No!”
We both look at him.
“I’m hungry,” he announces with the gravity of someone delivering a national emergency. He points at me. “I want to eat with her.”
“Buddy—”
“Please.” He reaches for me, both arms out, ice cream still smeared across his fingers. “Please please please. We only had half a cone, and my tummy still hurts.”
“That was your fault for letting your dad grab you mid-bite,” I tell him because apparently I’m now in negotiations with a four-year-old in a public park.
His face wobbles dangerously.
“Ethan.” Grayson’s voice comes out sharp, and he pauses to take a breath before speaking more softly. “Stop it. We’re going home.”
Ethan’s expression collapses completely. He lets out a wail that startles a nearby pigeon into panicked flight.
I round on Grayson before I can think better of it. “Don’t snap at him like that.”
He blinks. “Excuse me?”
“He’s been lost in the woods, his hands are scraped up, and he’s hungry. Don’t bark at him like he’s inconveniencing you.”
“Don’t tell me how to talk to my son.”
“Then handle him without making him feel worse.”
We stare at each other over the sound of Ethan’s crying, which is getting louder and drawing exactly the kind of attention a man trying to keep a low profile does not want.
A woman passing with a stroller gives Grayson a look that could strip paint off a wall. He doesn’t notice because he’s too busy holding my gaze, jaw tight, an unreadable emotion moving behind his eyes.
Then a man about ten feet away stops walking and stares.
“Wait. Are you Grayson Wolfe?”
Everything happens very fast after that.
Grayson’s head snaps toward the voice. His expression cycles through several things in under a second. Then his gaze cuts to me, to Ethan still in my arms from where I’d automatically taken him mid-argument, and he says, very quietly, “Oh shit.”
More heads turn. Someone already has their phone out.
“That’s definitely him. Oh my God, that’s Grayson Wolfe—”
“Run,” Grayson says.
I stare at him. “I’m sorry?”
He grabs my arm. “Run. Right now.”
I run.
I don’t fully process the decision, I just do it, Ethan clutched against my chest with one arm while Grayson’s hand stays locked around the other. We tear through the park, and within seconds, I can hear it behind us. Footsteps. Shouting. People calling out his name.
Ethan has stopped crying entirely. He is gripping my shirt in both fists and making a sound that is definitely excitement.
We cut left, then right, then down a narrow alley between two buildings where Grayson pulls us flat against the brick wall. He peers around the corner, chest heaving.
I try to catch my breath. Fail. Try again.
“What,” I gasp, “was that?”
“My fans.”
“Your fans.” I stare at him. “Your fans just chased us through a public park.”
“They do that.” He sounds completely unapologetic, which is either confidence or delusion, and I genuinely cannot tell which.
“That’s not a normal thing.”
“It is for me.”
My heart is pounding, and I demand, “Why didn’t you just stop and give them an autograph?”
Grayson’s jaw tenses, and when he looks at me, I feel the hair on the back of my neck rise, like a predator is looking at me through his eyes. “Nobody knows about Ethan, and I expect it to remain that way.”
There is a thinly veiled threat behind those words, and it makes me bristle.
“I don’t have time to go around spreading your business everywhere.” I give him a dirty look.
I look at Ethan, who is gazing at me like we’ve just stepped off a roller coaster. I check his hands and arms. Still scraped, nothing new. His cap has gone sideways. He looks thrilled.
When I look up, Grayson is watching his son. The hard lines of his face have shifted into a different emotion, something quiet and complicated, equal parts love and guilt. He reaches over and straightens the cap on Ethan’s head. “Don’t take this off until we’re back home. Understand?”
Ethan nods with great solemnity.
“We’re going home.” He takes Ethan from my arms, and the small, warm weight of him disappears all at once. “I knew bringing you out today was a bad idea.”
Ethan’s face starts to fold.
“But I’m hungry,” he says in the tone of someone announcing a great tragedy. “You said I could have food. My tummy really really hurts.”
“You can eat at home.”
“But home is far.” His voice climbs. “And I’m hungry now.”
“Ethan—”
“It hurts, Daddy.” He presses a hand to his stomach for emphasis.
I look across the alley. There’s a small pizza place tucked between two shops with checkered curtains and a handwritten specials board in the window. I can smell melted cheese and garlic from here, which means Ethan absolutely can too.
“There’s a pizza place right there,” I say.
Grayson doesn’t even look. “No.”
“Small. Corner table. Nobody’s going to care about you in a pizza place at noon on a Saturday.”
“I said no.”
“Your son is performing a one-man tragedy in an alley and there is food twelve feet away.” I look at Ethan. “Pizza?”
His whole face changes like someone flipped a switch. “Yes please!”
Grayson looks at his son. Then at me. His jaw works through what I can only assume is a short list of reasons this is a terrible idea. None of them win.
“Fine,” he says like the word physically costs him.
“All right then.” I wipe my hands on the back of my shorts. “It was lovely meeting you, Ethan. I have to get going no—”
I’m already two steps away from them when Grayson’s hand comes to rest on my shoulder, his grip tight. “And where do you think you’re going?”
I look over my shoulder at him, eyes narrowed. “Home. Where you’re not.”
He scoffs. “I don’t think so. If we’re going to a pizza joint, it’s better we look like a family. Less chance of getting recognized.”
“I hardly think—” I begin, but he’s already dragging me across the street.
Damn it.
The restaurant is quiet. A teenager takes our order without looking up from his notepad, and Grayson’s shoulders drop half an inch when it becomes clear nobody in here is going to recognize him.
Once our order is placed, he looks at me, his eye running over my attire, or at least what is visible above the table across from him. “So this is how you go running?”
“Excuse me?”
He shrugs. “You seemed like a such a stick in the mud in that nurse uniform, I kind of expected you to be wearing it all the time.”
My eyes turn into narrow slits. “Are you picking a fight with me? Because I don’t want to be here anyway. I’ve got places to be and—”
“Don’t go!” Ethan grabs my arm with both hands, his expression scrunching. “I don’t want you to go!”
I glance at him, telling myself not to be done in by how freaking adorable he is even while throwing a tantrum. Grayson just raises a mocking brow at me as if silently saying ‘Go ahead. Disappoint him.’
Gritting my teeth, I sink into my seat, annoyed.
Once the food arrives, I watch Grayson cut his son’s pizza without being asked. He makes sure to take off the olives and put them on his plate. It’s obvious he’s a good father.
“You’re staring,” Grayson says without looking up.
“You’re in my eyeline.”
“There’s a wall behind me.”
“Move and I’ll stare at the wall instead,” I respond snarkily. Something about this man just rubs me the wrong way.
He glances up and flashes a smirk at me. “Careful there, Nurse Carver. I’m getting the feeling you like looking at me.”
I pick up my slice and meet his gaze. “You should seek therapy for your delusions of grandeur.”
He just grins. After a moment, he says, “You’re not going to take off your sunglasses?”
“Nope.”
He gives me a strange look but shrugs.
We eat in silence for a while before Ethan looks between us with sauce on his chin and says with great confidence, “Will you come home with us?”
“Ethan.” Grayson’s voice is immediate.
“She wants to come with us, don’t you, Miranda?” Ethan’s eyes are wide. “I’ll share my toys with you, and we’ll go on runs—”
“Ethan!” Grayson’s voice is a growl that vibrates through my bones.
Ethan’s lower lips quivers, and I immediately hug him, glowering at his father.
“What is wrong with you?! He’s a baby!”
“He’s a young boy, and he’s getting very disobedient.” Grayson pins him down with a stare.
“I just want to play with her,” Ethan mumbles against my chest, his voice watery.
“You should really play with children your own age, Ethan,” I say gently. “I’m very boring to play with. I don’t even know any games.”
“I can teach you!” Ethan says fiercely, his grip on me tightening. I don’t understand his sudden obsession with me, but it’s obvious his father doesn’t want to encourage it, and I really don’t want to run into Grayson Wolfe again.
“I’m also very busy,” I tell him. “I never get time to play. I work a lot.”
The boy’s expressions falls.
He reaches out with his hand and accidentally bumps my sunglasses. They slide off my face before I can catch them and clatter onto the table between us.
The change in Grayson is abrupt.
He goes still, and his gaze fixes on my left eye, on the yellow-green bruising that’s been spreading there for four days, impossible to miss in flat restaurant light.
“What the hell is that?” he asks slowly, his voice dangerously quiet.