To his credit, Ronan didn't react either to the hold I had on his arm or my barrage of questions. But all that did was scare me even more. I dropped my hand and quickly hurried toward the house. "They aren't home," Ronan said.
"Where are they?" I asked as I turned back to face him.
"So is that how your relationship with him works?" Ronan drawled as he moved farther into the backyard. I felt this strange sense of possessiveness come over me when he leaned some of his weight against the side of Sam's little garden shed. "You get to know where he is every second of every day, but you're allowed to come and go without so much as a by your leave."
I wasn't as surprised as I probably should have been that he knew about my relationship with Sam but that was because I was too busy trying to control my anger. It wasn't so much the fact that Ronan was my boss, because truth be told, the job, while important to me, wasn't the be-all and end-all of my life. No, it was the fact that he was pointing out something that I was already feeling pretty shitty about. I'd tried to justify my silence in the past two weeks by arguing that communication with Sam or Cruz would've put them in danger as I’d pursued the lead I'd gotten on Bishop, but I was tired of lying to myself. I'd fucked up. Plain and simple. I didn't need Ronan to dump his disappointment on top of all that shit.
"Does Cruz know?" I asked.
"That you’re back or that you're sleeping with the man who will likely be his father-in-law someday?"
I automatically fisted my hands but when I shifted my eyes to the picnic table where Sam and I had talked for the first time… really talked, I felt some of the tension in my chest ease and I drew in a deep breath. I could still hear him whispering in my ear.
You don't need this, Matias.
He let me take my anger and fear and frustrations out on him that day in the form of sex, but he’d done so much more too.
"Maybe I'm just taking a move out of the Ronan Grisham playbook. How is it that you ended up marrying your dead fiancé's little brother again?" I asked. I instantly felt like an asshole as soon as the words left my lips. I didn’t know much about Ronan’s relationship with Seth, but I knew Ronan’s young husband was his entire world.
There was no discernible proof that I'd gotten a reaction out of him. In fact, all Ronan did was sigh. "You're a man who likes the facts, right, Matias? You don't like it when people beat around the bush. So let's do it this way. You want to keep looking on your own for the man who betrayed you, that's your business. But protecting my family is my business. And like it or not, the moment you and your brother agreed to join my team, you became a part of that family. Now, I don't give a fuck if you want to be the batshit crazy, black-sheep cousin who lives in a hut in Timbuktu and wears a tin foil hat on his head, but you're still family. Just like your brother is family."
For the first time since his arrival, Ronan seemed to be losing a hint of the iron grip he had on his control. It made me envious of the man. If I'd been him, I would've already kicked my ass for the dig about his relationship with his husband.
"That man in there"—Ronan pointed in the direction of the house—"may just be a casual fuck to you, but are you so certain he feels the same way?"
"Yes," I responded, even though I’d intended to keep quiet. But something about Ronan suggesting that my relationship with Sam meant more than it did made my chest hurt.
After spending every night with Sam for two weeks straight, I'd expected my need for him to wane, but the opposite was true. I couldn't get enough of him. And worse, I was absolutely terrified that it wasn't just the sex that I couldn't get enough of. It had been getting harder and harder every night to leave him all warm and content in his bed. There had been a few nights when he'd fallen asleep before I’d left and I’d found myself actually watching him sleep like we were in some cheesy romantic movie or something.
If that hadn't been bad enough, when Cruz and Elliot had come to my apartment the night I’d abruptly left town and I’d learned they were going to Sam's house for movie night, I'd all but invited myself to go with them.
And I’d loved every moment of that night. The only part that had made that familiar restlessness crawl beneath my skin had been the mere fact that I hadn't been able to touch Sam like I'd wanted. Watching him enjoy his children had left me with a sense of longing I still didn't really understand. I'd been waiting eagerly for the hours to go by so I could get Sam alone and show him how much I hated not being able to put my hands on him whenever I wanted, but then my phone had beeped and the present had ceased to exist. I'd gotten nothing more than a vague location on a possible sighting of Bishop from a random contact and that had been it. My entire brain had shifted and focused in on the hunt. Of extinguishing the threat to my brother and the people who were becoming a real family to him.
"Yes," I repeated firmly. There were a lot of things I wasn't certain about, but I knew one thing for sure. Sam had feelings for only one man and that man wasn't me. Even if I'd wanted to, I wouldn't have known how to compete with Mac’s memory.
"Then explain to me why Sam has been running Internet searches on you."
"What?" I asked in surprise.
"Not just on you, but on how to report a missing person anonymously."
I shook my head in disbelief. Had he really done that? Had he tried to find out more information about me? Why? It made no sense. "How do you know all this?" I asked.
"You and I made a deal when you and your brother came on board. I'm keeping up my end. You may not want my help in finding the man who hurt Cruz, but that doesn't mean I'm not looking. You and I both know that while you’re hunting Bishop, he's hunting you. It's just a matter of who gets the upper hand first. I have Daisy monitoring any searches related to you and Cruz. Your name popped up on a Google search a couple of weeks ago. She traced it back to Sam's computer."
"Fuck," I muttered.
"Yeah," Ronan said, his voice full of irritation. "If she was watching, it's possible Bishop was too. Daisy did her best to remove the evidence, but there's no telling what Bishop might've seen."
"Where is Sam?" I repeated, my fear now a new, living, breathing thing. The idea that while I'd been out hunting Bishop, he could've just as easily been hunting me and finding Sam and Ryan, made me violently ill and it was all I could do not to empty the contents of my belly then and there.
"He’s safe. I have men on him. Him and Ryan."
"And Cruz?"
"Your brother and Elliot used my jet to fly to Miami a couple of days ago. I have men watching them, but Cruz doesn't know about any of this yet. I figured it would be better coming from you. Of course, it's just a matter of time until he realizes I've got guys shadowing him and Elliot. I suspect the only reason he hasn't already figured it out is because he's dealing with some heavier shit."
I nodded. I already knew why he’d gone to Miami. That was where our parents lived. It was information overload and I had no clue where to start. The most important thing was that everyone was safe. At least for now.