Dream Keeper (Dream Team 4)

Juno danced there.

Pepper strutted there.

Auggie clapped Cisco on the back then walked there.

Cisco joined them there.

And they ate Thanksgiving dinner.

Chapter Twenty-Six

End All, Be All

Auggie

Aug felt Pepper get out of bed, but he was too wiped to do anything about it.

He didn’t even hear the water go on in her bathroom before he’d fallen back to sleep.

He had no idea how long she let him sleep before he was awake again.

Very awake.

Because she’d landed on top of him.

He was on his stomach, but he rolled immediately, rolling her off.

Just as immediately, he pushed an arm under her and pulled her back on top.

He stared up at her hazily.

She beamed down at him brightly.

“Fuck,” he muttered, because his woman was flat-out on top of him and he still felt half-asleep.

“Do I need to talk to Hawk about how hard he works my man?” she asked teasingly.

“No,” he grunted.

Though, he’d be interested to see how that convo went.

But now, having been warned off the dirty-cop thing weeks ago by Lieutenant Stephanie Fortune, street name Dynamite, which had freed a ton of their time (for now), Hawk had been doubling down on jobs that actually paid.

This meant Auggie and Mag had been up all night on a stakeout, which was his least favorite thing to do. He’d even prefer being on night duty watching the monitors than on a stakeout.

This was mostly because, when you were on a stakeout, you couldn’t move. You sat in a vehicle and you stared at your focus and you fought off the urge to get out, drop and pump out forty pushups.

Needless to say, he wasn’t a fan of being sedentary.

He was less of a fan of doing it for eight hours through the dead of night and having to be alert that entire time.

He found that more exhausting than a ten-mile training run carrying a pack on his back.

Making matters worse, now he had somewhere far better to be.

In Pepper’s bed.

So it made it torture.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Ten,” she answered.

Shit.

He’d been asleep for two and a half hours.

No wonder he still felt foggy.

Christ.

“And I need to leave soon so me and Lots can go over some routines. But I needed to go over some things with you first.”

This caught his attention and he asked, “How soon do you have to leave?”

She smirked. “Do you think I woke you up not factoring in time for you to do me?”

He smirked back.

Because the answer to that was a huge-ass no.

She’d had Juno last week, which had been Thanksgiving week, so he hadn’t been spending the nights.

Juno had gone back to her dad yesterday in a return situation Pepper and Corbin had had a conversation about in order to sync up how they’d be paying close attention to how this went for Juno.

Corbin had instigated that call on Sunday afternoon.

And after spending twenty minutes in the office with the door closed while Juno and Auggie broke the seal on the second season of The Mandalorian, Pepper had come out with a look on her face he couldn’t read.

She also couldn’t tell him until Juno went to sleep.

But later that night, snuggling on the couch, as they’d started to make a habit of doing after Juno was upstairs, she said, “He started by apologizing.”

Studying her face, he noted, “You seem shocked by that.”

“He’s not an apologizer.”

“Hmm,” he hummed, not surprised at this information.

“He also told me he had a rough night of it after we left on Thanksgiving. He felt like a jerk.”

“Because he is one?” Auggie suggested.

She’d given him the full skinny Thanksgiving night, including the fact that Corbin was investigating him.

She’d been worried about this.

He had not.

Lee Nightingale and his men could investigate Hawk and his crew, and Lee was the best in the business. He’d still come up with zilch.

So yeah.

Corbin had been a jerk, an ass, and a motherfucker, partly to Pepper, mostly to Juno.

But that part wasn’t a concern.

On the couch, Auggie was in Pepper’s arms, as she was in his, and she gave him a jostle to tell him to shut up.

Then she kept talking.

“On Friday, he called and tried to have a conversation with his mom, who wouldn’t go there with him because she’s been pissed at him for three years. So he talked to his dad, who chewed him out.”

“What you’re saying is, he’s an anomaly because he comes from decent folk, but he’s a dick.”

“Auggie,” she murmured, her tone remonstrating, her eyes bright with humor.

“Go on,” he prompted.

“His dad told him to get his head out of his ass. To move on from me, because he’d fubared that, though I doubt he used the word ‘fubar,’ and instead went gung-ho with the fullness of the F-word. He also told Corbin it was high time he learned how to be a father first, before anything else. Himself. His relationships. Until he found a woman he was serious about, the only serious person in his life was Juno. Corbin took this on board and admitted to me he hadn’t fully taken into account Juno’s feelings.”