Page 70 of Forsaken

I wasn’t surprised to see Eli standing worriedly at the door. His gaze flicked to me before going back to Dom. “He’ll do,” Dom murmured before he pulled Eli into his arms for a bear hug. “I love you, my boy,” Dom whispered and I saw Eli nod against his chest.

“I love you too.”

Dom dropped a kiss on his head and left the room. Eli twisted his fingers together as he walked towards me.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

I nodded and then I pulled him into my arms and kissed him. “It’s perfect,” I whispered before kissing him again. “It’s fucking perfect.”

Epilogue

Mav

“Shit, we’re going to be late,” I murmured as I slapped Eli on the ass and said, “Get a move on.”

“Please tell me you’re not actually afraid of Dom,” he said with a laugh as he lagged behind me on the narrow trail.

“Of course not,” I said. “It’s just common courtesy to be on time.”

“Family dinners never start on time,” Eli said.

“Well, we can be late to the next one, not this one.”

“Because it’s your first one,” Eli suggested.

“Why the hell didn’t they just cancel it since Brennan won’t be there, which means Zane and Connor won’t either?” I grumbled. I felt Eli snag my hand to pull me to a stop.

“Look at you learning everyone’s names.”

“What? I’m good with names and faces.”

“So it had nothing to do with Matty quizzing you with the flashcards Seth made for you?” Eli asked, a broad grin on his face.

“Damn kid,” I muttered. “He swore he wouldn’t tell.”

“I think it’s cute that you asked a five-year-old to help you with your homework.”

“Fuck you,” I growled. Eli chuckled and pulled me down for a kiss.

“He may or may not have given me a certain doll to help you with your nervousness. I put it in your saddlebag.”

I smiled at that and resumed the short walk back to my Harley which was parked near the end of the trail. I hadn’t yet had the honor of borrowing the coveted Spiderman doll. Apparently, I couldn’t even hide how nervous I was at the prospect of meeting Eli’s entire family from the little boy who still refused to let me win at Tic Tac Toe. I’d also been more than a little in awe of Matty who’d somehow managed to memorize all the different people from the flashcards Seth had created since the kid wasn’t old enough to read all the names. “Just wait till he has to face all those people when he gets out of the hospital in a week,” I grumbled, though I knew Matty would do just fine with Eli’s family.

Matty’s third round of chemo had come to an end and while he still needed to wait for his white blood cell count to normalize, he was already happily talking to Eli about all the animals the Barretti family members had. If everything went as planned, Hawke, Tate, Seth and Ronan would be bringing Matty to the very next Barretti family dinner. I hadn’t expected Ronan to accept the invite when Eli had extended it, but he hadn’t hesitated for even a second when Eli had brought it up. The idea of my badass, assassin family members meeting what I knew would one day be my massive family of in-laws was daunting to say the least. With my luck, Hawke who had more kills on his list than several of us combined, would end up sitting next to the straight-laced Captain Declan Barretti.

“And by the way, they were going to cancel, but Brennan asked them not to.”

“What?” I asked as I stopped and turned around.

“He thought you might appreciate your first time out to be with a smaller group,” Eli said, the humor in his voice on full display.

“You’re enjoying this just a little too much,” I murmured.

Eli wrapped his arms around my neck. “It’s kind of my first time too,” Eli said before he brushed a kiss over my lips. I didn’t need to ask Eli to explain because I knew what he was talking about. Admitting the truth about what Jack had done to him had finally set Eli free, and while he had a ways to go before he could relinquish the bits of self-doubt that still had him wondering if he hadn’t done something or said something to bring what had happened on himself, he was making great strides in accepting that his family had never seen him as an outsider. It had only been a few days since Jack had been arrested, but Eli had been through the wringer more than once.

His mother, Mariana, had arrived in Seattle the following day and hadn’t had any clue what was going on until Dom had brought her to mine and Eli’s hotel room to break the news to her. It had been brutal. There was just no other word for it. And I’d been there to bear witness to it all. The tears, the guilt, the regret, the anger, the rage, the denial…the emotions had been endless for all three of them. But the best thing that had come from the ordeal, was the decision that Dom, Eli and his mother would seek professional help, both together and individually, to try to deal with the trauma. Mariana had filed for divorce that same day and she’d made arrangements to have hers and Caleb’s things sent up from D.C. rather than traveling back there to collect them. When asked what should be done with the house, she’d told her lawyer to find someone to burn the fucker down.

Caleb had been a different story. He’d met with Declan the day after Declan had met with us and he’d shared the same information with him that he had with me, Jace and Eli. When Eli’s mother had arrived, she’d told Caleb that they would still be a family and that he would be staying with her in Seattle, but the young man had seemed disinterested. And I suspected the reason why.

---