“You don’t need it, but you have it anyway. Good luck. You’re going to do great.” Garrick gave her one final thumbs-up and made sure to keep a smile on his face as she drove away.
Then, he couldn’t help it, he took one last look around the neighborhood, where the only thing he did was wave back at a guy across the street working on his lawn. Seeing nothing suspicious didn’t ease the buzzing wreaking havoc inside him one bit, though.
Garrick went inside to check on the kids and start looking for something to make them for breakfast. All the while, he could still feel the sensation of a target sitting smack center on his back.
* * * *
“Okay, Chloe.” Garrick squatted down and cupped his hands in the shape of a baseball mitt. “Let him have it.”
In front of him, Chloe nodded and wound her arm to make her pitch. A dozen feet in front of her, Shawn couldn’t keep his wrists and arms still, and the Wiffle bat he held waved all about as he stood not-quite-poised to make his swing. Just as Chloe released the ball, all the hairs on Garrick’s arms rose straight up on end.
He swirled to face the street, looking for that damned spy again ... and found Devlin watching him from his car parked on the side of the street. Pale gray eyes somehow pierced into Garrick’s soul through the distance between them and arrested his heart.
“Devl--” he started.
At the same time, Chloe’s voice penetrated Garrick’s stunned brain with, “Garrick, catch it!”
He half spun, just in time to catch a streak of white coming straight at him with laser precision but without a second extra for him to move. The ball cracked into the side of Garrick’s head with singular speed, stinging the hell out of his scalp with shocking pain, and took his knees right out from under him. Garrick grabbed the side of his head and muffled a string of foul curses under his breath.
Various voices in differing tones shouted “Garrick!” and seconds later bodies swarmed him and dropped to their knees around him. He could fucking feel Devlin kneeling, so-very-close, but Shawn’s squeaking, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” and the boy’s little fingers pulling on his shirt sleeve penetrated Garrick’s brain with the quickest sense of urgency.
He grabbed Shawn’s hand and stilled the kid’s frantic jumping with another hand to the child’s shoulder. “Look at me, kiddo.” The boy’s eyes brimmed with wetness, and it tore at Garrick’s heart. “It’s okay, Shawn. I know it was just an accident. It’s my fault for looking away in the first place while we had a game going on, not yours for hitting the ball. All right?”
Shawn’s chin still wobbled. “Do you promise?”
Chloe looked at Garrick too, her eyes wide. “Yeah, are you sure? Cuz the ball made like a cartoon noise when it hit your head. I heard it.”
Devlin touched his fingers to Garrick’s forearm and drew Garrick to the concern in his pale gaze. “Do you need me to drive you to the hospital?” He circled his arm around Garrick’s waist. “It’s smart to err on the side of caution with head injuries.”
“It’s not an injury.” Garrick shook off the lingering throb on the side of his head and rose to his feet with help from all three of his nurses. “The ball is plastic. It barely left a lump,” he probed at his scalp and came away with clean fingers, “let alone broke skin. I’ll live.”
With his arm still secure around Garrick, Devlin’s face was only inches from Garrick’s. “If you’re sure?”
Holding eye contact with Devlin, Garrick went a little light-headed for an entirely different reason than head trauma. “I’m sure, beau--,” shit, “Dev, I swear.” He tore his focus off the black drowning out the silver in Devlin’s eyes and put his full attention on the kids. Where it should be. “But holy momma, Shawnee,” Garrick mussed up the kid’s hair, “you pack quite a wallop with that swing.”
Shawn went from pale to beaming with one blink of his eyes. “Mom’s been teaching me.”
“She’s doing a good job,” Garrick told the boy. Meanwhile, Garrick still couldn’t shake the disturbing sensation swirling against his neck and down his spine, even though he had Devlin standing right next to him and knew whose eyes watched him.
I need two minutes alone to get a few things said.
Shit shit shit. This was not how Garrick wanted to talk to Devlin. “Listen, Shawn, can you run up to my place and get me a bottle of water?” He handed the kid his keys. “Chloe, will you go with him and bring me the bottle of Ibuprofen that is in the first drawer to the left of the fridge. Don’t open it,” warning laced his tone, “just bring the bottle to me. Can you do that?”
“’Kay,” and “All right,” came out of Shawn and Chloe respectively. Shawn tore up the stairs to the garage apartment as fast as his little legs would carry him, but Chloe moved with a more deliberate pace, and she kept glancing back at him as she ascended the steps.
Questions. Garrick could see them flashing in her eyes. He could sense them in Devlin too.
As soon as Chloe disappeared into the apartment, Devlin murmured, “Cute kids.”
Garrick whipped around and found Devlin studying him. Uncomfortably so. “I’m keeping an eye on them today,” he said, determinedly holding Devlin’s gaze with a steady one of his own. “They live in the house with their mother, and I rent the apartment above the garage. They aren’t my children, Devlin.” His tone
