Unexpected (The Protectors 10)

And for once, I didn’t really care either way.

Chapter 12

Gage

“I fucked up.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You’re not even going to argue with me?” I asked.

“Nope,” my father easily responded as he carefully applied a butterfly bandage to the cut beneath my eye.

“Don’t you want to know what I did to deserve this?” I asked as I pointed to my face.

“I know what you did,” my father returned. “You tried to fix something that wasn’t yours to fix.”

That was true enough. I’d stepped so far over the line with Nash, I couldn’t even see the damn thing anymore.

My father finished securing the bandage, then lowered himself back in the chair across from me. He picked up one of Charlie’s boo-boo packs off the table and gently pressed it to my nose. Fortunately, Nash hadn’t broken it, but I’d be sporting a couple of black eyes for a while, among other things.

I glanced at my watch and saw that Nash had been gone for almost twenty minutes now. It had taken nearly that long to calm Charlie down enough that she’d go upstairs with Everett to look for more vegetable recipes on the internet while my father patched me up.

“You’re usually good about knowing when to stop pushing,” my father murmured. “What was different this time?”

I shook my head because I didn’t have an answer for that. At least, not one that I wanted to confess to.

But my father had no such reservations.

“Since you can’t stop looking at your watch, I’m guessing you weren’t trying to drive Nash away because he wants a certain former commander in chief as badly as you do.”

“No, that’s not the problem.”

My father nodded. “You want them both.”

I sighed and took the small ice pack from his hand. “I found out some information about Nash,” I hedged.

My father leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “Found out?” he asked knowingly.

“Fine, I had someone get me some information on him,” I admitted. I was forty-five fucking years old, but I still felt like a little kid who’d been caught shoplifting candy or cheating on a test. “I just wanted to learn more about the guy, since he’s not exactly talkative. I figured I’d get the basics, but what I found out… it wasn’t what I was expecting.”

That was the understatement of the decade. I’d had a preconceived notion that Nash was someone who’d come from a well-to-do family and that his biggest act of rebellion had been pursuing a career in law enforcement instead of following in his daddy’s footsteps and becoming a lawyer or a banker or whatever. I’d pictured him growing up in a swanky Manhattan apartment or a big house in the Hamptons. When I’d asked Ronan’s IT girl, Daisy, to get me information on Nash so I’d at least have some idea of how to draw the distant man out, I hadn’t expected to receive the records from all the years he’d spent in foster care.

“The shit that happened to him when he was a kid… no one fucking deserves that,” I muttered.

“No, they don’t,” my father agreed with a sigh.

“Um, Phillipe,” I heard Everett say. My father and I both turned to see him standing in the doorway leading into the kitchen. From the stricken look on his face, there was no doubt he’d heard what I’d just said about Nash’s childhood.

Fuck, things were going from bad to worse.

“Charlie wants to show you some of the recipes we found,” Everett explained. “She’s printing them off now, but I thought you might want to go up there while Gage finishes getting… cleaned up.”

“Yes, good idea,” my father said as he stood. He leaned over and pressed a kiss to the top of my head. “Keep the ice on for another ten minutes.”

I nodded and watched him go. He dropped his hand to Everett’s shoulder as he walked past the other man, but he didn’t say anything.

“What shit?” Everett asked. He remained by the doorway.

“I can’t tell you that,” I said with a sigh. “I already crossed the line once by invading his privacy.”

“So that’s what all that was about?” Everett asked as he motioned with his head in the direction where the fight had taken place.

I nodded.

“Why?” Everett asked. “Why would you do that to him?”

“You know why.”

“No, I don’t,” Everett said as he stepped farther into the room, clearly frustrated.

I got to my feet and turned so I could see him better. “He saw us last night… on the couch. Or heard us, at least. I’m not really sure.”

I didn’t think it possible, but Everett went even paler. “How… how do you know?”

“Because I saw him after you left. He was standing in the hallway by the living room. He looked…”

“What?” Everett asked when I fell silent. “How did he look?”

“Done,” I whispered.

Everett shook his head as his agitation began to grow. “Done? What does that mean?”