Page 68 of Enemies with Benefits (Finding the Right Brother #1)

"That's what I thought," she said, turning her eyes back to Kayden.

"So when I say my brother was thinking of you, I mean it.

He'll drive you batshit, but he's not going to be cruel.

Mean sometimes, but never cruel. He knew just like I do that this has been hard on you, and that you've been worried about what you're going to do and how you're going to do it.

So if he kept things to himself, then he figured that.

..well, I don't know what he figured. His motivations and reasons aren't always known to me, but I would bet he had been thinking about how hard it was for you, why make it harder by making you feel like you had to hurry up and figure it out before you were ready? "

"I probably should have figured it out sooner," I muttered, having little else to say in the face of what was basically a truth I couldn't fight against, and we both knew it.

"What do you think?" she asked, her eyes looking past me, and I turned, flinching when I saw Micah standing there.

I shot her a dirty look, which she ignored.

Well, she pretended to ignore it. Her eyes might have stayed on her…

our son, but I saw her lips twitch. Shit, how had I forgotten how much of a little shit she could be sometimes?

Sure, Mason was the reigning champ, but she wasn't exactly guiltless.

"About what?" Micah asked, calm as you please.

"Do you think someone should have told you who he was?" Moira asked softly, and I had to wonder if she was avoiding calling me his dad because she didn't think that way about me, or because she wanted to give him the chance to make up his mind as to what I was to him.

Micah shrugged, his eyes darting around, mostly between Kayden and me, unsure of himself. "I don't know. I was okay."

"Okay, when?"

"Before he...came around."

I swallowed hard. I knew he wasn't saying anything about what it was like now I was around, just addressing what it had been like before. "And how are things now?"

His eyes fell on Kayden, and he shrugged.

At that, I smiled a little. “I mean, other than with what's going on with Kayden?"

He stared at me for a moment. “Do you want to be my dad?"

Moira glanced at me, and I knew what she was telling me, which was unnecessary because it wasn't like I was planning on lying to Micah.

I pushed myself up and crossed the room to where Micah stood.

The boy looked so small, but there was no denying the strength he undoubtedly had.

"I want to try to be. But if you don't want me to be your dad, I would like the chance to be in your life. "

He looked up at me for another couple of moments before nodding. “Alright."

"Your enthusiasm is overwhelming," Moira said dryly.

I snorted. “I'd call that a standing ovation coming from him, actually."

"Mmm, I suppose you have a point," she said.

Micah sidled closer, pushing against my side but not touching me otherwise. I took that for the gift that it was and decided I might have to wait a while longer before I could be the one to initiate physical contact with him. "Is Kayden going to be okay?"

Guilt flashed through me as I realized Kayden meant something to him.

Of course, he did. Kayden could charm his way into anyone's life and heart. The problem was that I had focused so much on how I’d been feeling that I had once again forgotten that someone else might be having problems. That was precisely why I kept all my bullshit close to the chest.

I glanced at Moira, who gave me no indication on how to handle it, so I decided I would do what I thought was best when it came to Micah.

"He's not doing great. But everything the doctors told me about his conditions tells me he's going to get better.

He's going to be out of work for a bit, though, so you'll have to deal with him around all the time. "

"That's okay," Micah said with a shrug, some of the tension leaving him as he leaned away from me, clearly relieved. "He makes Mom happy...and he's funny."

"Please don't tell him that when he wakes up," I said with a sigh. "Or he'll never stop talking."

Micah peered up at me, wrinkling his nose. "Why do you talk like that?"

"Like what?"

"Like you don't like him. You like him. You like him a lot."

In that moment, my heart went out to every parent who had ever had to face the daunting prospect of explaining a complicated and contradictory fact of life to a child who still saw the world through the lens of simplicity and straightforwardness. "Well...you know how your mom annoys you a lot?"

"Not...a lot," he said, glancing at his mother, who snorted softly.

"You don't usually lie to save people's feelings, don't start now," Moira told him wryly.

"Not a lot," he reaffirmed. "But sometimes."

"Sometimes," I repeated with a smile. "But you still love her, right?"

"Yes."

"You still like her and want to do things with her? Still want her around?"

"Yes."

"Well, it's kind of like that. Kayden annoys me all the time, but I still love him and I still want to spend time with him."

"Kind of like how Mason likes to pick on people, but he's only doing it for fun."

"Right," I said, not really having made the connection, but yeah, I guess in some ways I did growl and bitch at Kayden because it was just...banter.

He peered up at me, and I thought maybe he was making connections and understanding something he’d never really considered.

Maybe I had finally managed to instill an understanding about life that no one else had, and I could mark one good thing about the day.

Of course, I should have remembered that although he was, genetically speaking, mine, he was also a Beckett, and was going to find a way to knock me on my ass.

"Is that why you and Mason act like that?” he asked after a moment, and I felt any chance of good feelings and warm fuzzy parental accomplishment suddenly disappear in a flash.

"What?" I asked, ignoring the odd, choked sound Moira made, and staring down at Micah with wide eyes.

"You guys are always talking mean to each other, but.

..it doesn't sound very mean. Not anymore," he said, wrinkling his nose.

"When I first saw you, you guys were always being mean and angry with each other.

But you don't anymore. You do it like you do it with Kayden.

..and sometimes like Mom does with Kayden. "

"I..." the words were just not coming, and I knew they were never going to come, not anytime soon anyway. He wasn't even nine, and he had gotten right to the heart of something that should have been a secret, and damn it all, he had noticed something I’d missed until he’d said something.

"What…" Moira began, and alarm shot through me, bouncing around my skull, and I turned to see her staring at her son, her expression blank before slowly turning her gaze to my face.

I had seen that face before, the same face she made when she was doing one of her word puzzles.

I could practically hear seemingly innocent or once dismissed information connecting with a hearty crunch, setting her mind aflame with understanding as her eyes slowly widened.

"You take after your uncle too, it seems," I muttered to Micah while still watching as Moira gave a jerk, a sign she was coming to life, and the answer she had come up with was about to make itself known.

Only for all of us to freeze when a creaky but still amused chuckle interrupted the tension. “Kinda sad that the only ones who figured out Mason and Jace were doing it are me and the kid."

Everything, from the realization to Kayden being so crude with Micah standing right there, was completely lost as Moira and I descended on Kayden.

He wasn’t given the chance to speak as Moira quickly shut him up and reminded him he was injured.

I barked at him to quit moving, didn't he know he had a bullet hole in him, and Micah reminded Kayden that he wasn't stupid, he knew what sex was, and.

..wasn't doing it another way of saying having sex?

Briefly telling myself it was the twenty-first century and an almost nine-year-old, especially one as curious and studious as Micah, knowing about, hopefully just the existence of, sex was fine, I turned to leave and find someone to help.

They had been quite clear that if Kayden woke up, I needed to get a nurse, which is precisely what I did.

I wasn't surprised when it turned into a flurry of action.

The three of us could only get out of the way as the nurses came in and a doctor was called, the man holding a half-eaten bagel. It was the place where most injured cops ended up, so they were usually given high priority.

It was over two hours before we could finally sit down with Kayden.

He had been allowed to bring the bed up to an incline so he could sit up and talk.

He was still hooked up, but they had removed the worst of it, keeping the IV and the bandages.

Which was probably just as well because the idiot kept pulling at the one on his chest to try to look at his wound to 'guess what the scar would look like. '

"If you don't stop," I told him with a growl, smacking his hand away. "I'm going to rip it off. It's going to need to be restitched, and whatever hair you have left is going with the bandage, quit!"

"Is this how you treat someone who's recovering?” he asked in his most pitiful voice.

"This is how I treat someone who's supposed to be recovering but is doing the kind of shit that's going to keep him from recovering properly," I said, raising my hand to give him another smack when he tried to pull at the bandage again.