Page 65 of Reformation
“But the design was sound.”
“Obviously, or the two of you wouldn’t be here, and Ten?” Jonah took a deep breath and looked at his son’s significant other. “I need you to either be quiet right now or go take a walk. What happens next is between me and Cody, and he needs the space to speak for himself.”
Ten frowned. “You should be nice to him. We came here to rescueyou, after all.”
Jonah made himself nod. “I get that. I know both of your hearts were in the right place. But that doesn’t mean that what you did was okay, and again—this part of the discussion doesn’t concern you, so actually?” He stood up and held his hand out to Cody. “We’ll take the walk. You stay and keep an ear out about Lacey.”
“It’s fine,” Cody said softly, and only then did Ten finally relax. On any other day, it would have made Jonah smile to see them looking out for each other like that.
Today was not any other day, though.
Jonah spread his fingers, and after a moment, Cody reached out and took his hand. He led the way down to the hospitalgreenhouse, its plants wan after days without light or water, and manually locked the automatic door behind them. Then—
“I know I shouldn’t have struck out on my own, but I was worried about you, and Garrett wanted to ship me off to someplacesafeinstead of letting me help look for you, and I knew I’d never get a place with the other cadets in the fleet,” Cody started before Jonah could get a word in edgewise. “And Jack was there, and he was willing to help, and so was Ten, and so I did it. And we made it safe, and you’re all right, and I’m all right, so everything is fine!” He sounded a little desperate. “Isn’t it?”
Jonah sighed. “Let’s unpack that a little. You were upset because Garrett wouldn’t let you come to Pandora. Did he tell you why?”
Cody’s jaw tightened. “He said it was political.”
“Right. Because like it or not, we married into a family of politicians, people tryin’ to make the ’verse and the Alliance a better place for people on the Fringe. So he told you that, and you got upset. What did you do next?”
“I found Jack and—”
“No, bucko. What did you do next with your father?” Jonah was pushing a little hard, he knew it, but a push was what his kid needed right now. Cody was young and clever, and he’d gotten so incredibly, amazingly lucky this time around, but he was also a natural and a political target. He could be the breaking of their family if Jonah let him get away without thinking about consequences.
“I told him … I wanted to come and find you. Be part of the fleet, and he said no. Even though Darrel and Grennson—”
“Who are MIA for now,” Jonah interrupted. “As is your grandfather, Miles. But yeah, keep going. Even though your friends got to come.”
“And he said … I was too important.” Cody’s voice had gone quiet.
“Uh-huh. And you said?”
“I said that … that you should be his first priority, and that you’d want to know we cared enough to look for him.”
Oh, Cody, really?“And he said?”
“That you’d want me to be safe, and that he was sending a shuttle for me.”
“And?” Because Jonah knew his husband, he knew how his comms usually went.
There were definitely tears in Cody’s eyes now. “And he said that he loved me.”
“And what did you say?”
“Goodbye.” Cody bit his bottom lip. “I didn’t tell him I loved him back. I should—I should have done that.”
“Yeah, bucko.” Jonah felt like his heart was splitting in half, just listening to it secondhand. How much had it affected Garrett? And then sending a ship only to learn that his son had run away … “Probably.”
“But I wanted to be with you! I had to make sure you were safe!”
“And you know I always want you around, and I’m so happy to see you it hurts. But what hurts worse is knowin’ that your daddy—the one who helped raise you, not the one who abandoned us when you were a baby and didn’t give a shit about either of us for years—knowin’ that he looked for you, and he couldn’t find you. And he was lookin’ forme, and he couldn’t find me.
“And then Miles was sent away, and so were the boys, and there was nothin’ he could do but keep working, all alone, and hope that all of us were still alive.” Jonah shook his head. “You think that felt good to him?”
Cody had a hand pressed to his eyes now. “No.”
“You think that maybe he’s the one who felt abandoned? You had Ten, you’ll probably always have Ten. I had Lacey to distract me, even when she wasn’t wakin’ up, and I had other people to handle after a while. Miles had Darrel and Grennson, but Claudia and the girls weren’t with Garrett. Wyl and Robbie weren’t with Garrett. Nobody was with him. Nobody’s with him now.
