Page 97 of Sliding Into Love
“Breakfast!” she screeched, throwing off the blankets.
“What?”
“Breakfast! We were going to make you breakfast!”
Sleep left her eyes bleary, but she jumped out of bed and raced into the kitchen. Ethan chuckled at her enthusiasm, and at the banging sounds and cursing he heard from the kitchen. He also heard a chorus of “swear jar!” and pulled himself out of bed to join them.
Jase set up the Keurig and took out mugs, and Ethan nodded gratefully and ruffled Janna’s hair as he pressed the switch to brew coffee. The nightmare and lost sleep had left him with something akin to a hangover, and Ethan would prefer to be coherent before he left for the press conference. Ivy ushered him to a seat, refusing to let him see what she was cooking, though the smells and number of things cooking on the stove gave him a good idea. Jase and Janna helped her cook, and Ethan smiled into his coffee mug while they did more singing and dancing than actual cooking.
Ethan was not surprised when Ivy plunked an enormous bowl of breakfast spaghetti in front of him and mouthed “sorry” and gestured at the kids. Having pasta combined with breakfast foods was still weird, but he enjoyed it because they’d made it for him, and he said so. Janna grinned through her noodles, and Jase tried to pretend he wasn’t proud of himself. As usual, Ivy tucked into her food with gusto, praising the kids and asking Ethan questions about the upcoming games.
Once again, Ethan was struck, as he had often been over the past few months, at the simple domesticity they had settled into. Shared smiles with Ivy over morning coffee, conversations with Janna that he never quite followed about princesses and dragons, discussing stats with Jase. Sometimes he and Ivy cooked together. Sometimes the kids helped them. And every time he had to leave, his heart constricted and wouldn’t loosen until they were back together.
When they’d finished, he dragged himself out of his seat to help do the dishes. Ivy had a distant look in her eyes Ethan knew meant she was trying to hide her sadness at him leaving.
“It’s only for a few days, sweetheart,” Ethan said into her hair.
“It could be a whole week!”
Ethan prayed to the gods of baseball, if there were any, that it would not be a week. Facing Lawrence again in his nightmares had been unpleasant enough, and he’d rather not have to do it again for a week straight.
“Can we at least see you? Before or after games?” Ivy’s hazel eyes peered up at him hopefully.
“I don’t think Harkness minds,” he said, “but it’ll probably be limited. We’ll have press conferences and meetings and shit.”
Her nose scrunched up at him before she rose on her toes to kiss him.
“Swear jar,” Ivy whispered against his lips, and Ethan barked a laugh against her mouth.
Once he’d loaded his bags into his car, Ethan came back into the house for final goodbyes.
“Bye, Daddy!” Janna screamed, kissing him on the cheek when he leaned down.
Ethan kissed her back and stood before her words hit him. He looked up into Ivy’s widened eyes and watched the tendon in Jase’s jaw tighten in a painfully familiar way.
Well, shit.
“Jase, can we talk?”
Leading Jase to the stairs outside Ivy’s apartment, Ethan settled down on the bottom step and let Jase sit beside him.
“You okay, buddy?”
The tendon in Jase’s jaw ticked again as the boy clenched his teeth.
“Did Ivy tell you anything about before? Before we came to live with her?”
“Just that it was rough for you.”
“Yeah. It was….”
Letting the boy work out whatever was bothering him, Ethan sat in silence, listening to the whir of the building’s air conditioning units.
“My mom was sick for a long time. She got sick when Janna was a baby, and it was hard for my dad. Mom was in the hospital a lot, and it got to be expensive, so my dad sold our house, and we moved closer to the hospital. Before we moved, I took Janna to our neighbors’ house, but after, there was nowhere to go. And then my mom.” Jase swallowed hard, blinking. “My mom died, but we still stayed there. Sometimes, my dad would stay gone for days. I didn’t know when he would be back, and sometimes…we ran out of food. I had to steal stuff a couple of times. I didn’t like it, but Janna was so little. She didn’t understand.”
The roiling, burning anger he’d felt when Ivy had told him about her childhood burned through Ethan again, his heart breaking for the boy who’d had to grow up too quickly.
“Sometimes,” Jase continued, staring down to where his shoes scuffed the concrete stairs, “when my dad did come home, he was okay. He didn’t want to see me, and said I looked too much like my mom, but he took care of Janna when he could. But then he stayed gone longer. Didn’t pay bills, didn’t pay for Janna’s daycare. She was too little for school, so I had to stay home with her. Someone from the school came looking for me after a while, and when my dad didn’t show up at all that night, they took us away. After a few weeks, we went to live with Ivy, and we got to stay together.”
