Page 20 of Room 908

My pulse was pounding in my temples, my vision going fuzzy at the edges. “I have to go,” I mumbled, spinning on my heel and heading straight for the door.

“Jasper, wait!” Eric called after me. “Let’s talk about this.”

“No need. I understand perfectly. You haven’t changed a bit, and maybe neither have I.” My eyes burned with tears. “You know what? You’d better give that lawyer a call,” I tossed over my shoulder on my way out the door. I could be an adult about this, but I wasn’t so sure about Eric anymore. I needed to protect my rights—and maybe my heart, too.

Tears were building in my eyes as I ran down the sidewalk and climbed into my car, and I backed down the driveway without a second glance at where Eric was standing in the doorway, watching me leave. I would give Eric shared custody of his son because that was his right, and Cam deserved to know his alpha father.

But I refused to be part of the deal.

12

Eric

Camansweredthefrontdoor wearing a massive grin. “Hi, Eric! I’ve got all the ingredients out on the counter, plus the biggest mixing bowl I could find. You get to wear Dad’s apron, okay?” He grabbed me by the hand and pulled me straight through to the kitchen. I just barely managed to close the door behind me, then hopped as I toed off my shoes in the front hall on the way by.

“What are we making?” I asked, trying to be discreet as I took a surreptitious look around the small house, but there was no sign of Jasper. I found it hard to believe he would’ve left Cam at home by himself, though.

“Banana cake. The recipe says to add walnuts, but I don’t really like them, and Dad says it’s okay to change recipes a bit, as long as the main ingredients are the same. The… radios?”

“I think you mean ratios,” I corrected him. “That means the same amount of wet and dry ingredients, the same amount of oil or butter.” I took another peek around the corner into the living room. “Where is your dad, by the way?”

“I dunno. He went to his room when you knocked on the door. Said he had stuff to do.”

Stuff. In other words, he was avoiding me.

It had been two days since our little misunderstanding. I refused to think of it as a fight because I really just needed a chance to explain, and I was sure Jasper would get where I was coming from. Meanwhile, he’d been restricting our communication to texts, and even then, his answers had been brief, no more than one or two words. He was mostly just passing on Cam’s messages for me, and any time I tried to talk to him about us, he refused to reply. I was desperate to hear Jasper’s voice, to see his smile. That kiss was replaying in my mind in a nonstop loop, and I refused to believe this was the end. I needed to fix this. I hadn’t meant to give him the wrong impression. I was just trying to respect his need for personal space, but it came across all wrong, and now he thought I was trying to use him.

Cam passed me the apron with a beaver on it, that proclaimed “Dam Good Cook,” and I obediently put it on. I’d never been very good in the kitchen, so I hoped my son took more after his omega dad. “All right, put me to work. What do I do first?”

“Here,” he said, sliding a measuring cup over. “You can start scooping the flour into the bowl.” Cam climbed onto a chair beside me. He didn’t really need the extra height, but it brought him even with me so we could stand shoulder to shoulder.

He was really good at this, and I found myself enjoying our time together. Cam was goofy and smart, and he showed how patient he could be while teaching me how to bake. My dad had always been more of the order-in variety, since he worked long hours, and nobody had ever taken the time to show me how to use a kitchen for anything beyond the basics.

Cam, with a smear of flour across his cheek, gave me the next instructions. “Okay, now we’re going to use the mixer to make sure the batter is nice and smooth.” He locked the metal bowl into place under the beaters. “Now, plug your ears.”

“Why?” I asked, thoroughly confused.

“The mixer gets a little loud,” he said, completely straight-faced. Then he grabbed a pair of thick black headphones, the kind that would normally be used for listening to music, from where they’d been sitting next to the fruit bowl, and he pulled them over his ears.

I laughed, thinking he must be joking, but I stuck my fingers in my ears anyway. I’d never heard of someone needing ear protection in the kitchen before. But then he pushed the start button, and my laughter was cut off by a high-pitched whine that only got louder as he turned up the speed.

“What the fuck?” I blurted before I could stop myself, but luckily, Cam couldn’t hear the swear over the offensive sound.

He got to work scraping down the sides of the bowl with a spatula as the mixer ran, and after a minute or two, he turned off the beaters and set his earphones aside.

“Uh, Cam, I don’t think that’s a normal sound for a kitchen appliance.”

“I know, but my dad says it still does the trick, so we should just use it until it doesn’t work anymore. He says electronics shouldn’t be disposable.”

I nodded, trying to keep my face straight. While I could appreciate the sentiment behind the life lesson, this seemed a little ridiculous. I suspected there was more to it than what Cam knew, and maybe money was a little tight for Jasper. If I’d known about Cam sooner, I could’ve been helping out with child support this whole time.

“You know what?” I said, tipping the bowl up so Cam could pour the batter into the lined tins. “Maybe I could buy your dad a new mixer. Do you think he’d like that?”

“Like a present?” he asked, looking up at me with a weird expression on his face.

“Yeah, I guess.” I shrugged like it was no big deal, even as a plan began to take shape in my mind. I’d always wanted to take care of Jasper, and even if he wasn’t willing to let me back into his life entirely, maybe I could still provide for him in some small way.

Cam’s eyes got this faraway look like he was thinking it over, then his smile widened slowly. “Yeah, I think he would like it. And you know what else he needs? A cell phone.”

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