My Bestie's Dad Likes Me Wet Chapter 134 I Did Not Look Back

IVIN POV

Ethan always did have terrible timing.

So things apparently did not change.

I heard the commotion from two corridors away and I already knew before I turned the corner, sothing in the specific frequency of my n’s voices telling whatever was at the entrance was not a threat they could categorize cleanly and uncategorized threats were the only kind that made them sound like that.

I had been awake anyway, I had not slept properly since we moved everyone into this location and I was not going to pretend the reasons were entirely operational.

I turned the corner and took in the scene in one pass in a way I had trained myself to do a long ti ago.

Three of my n with weapons drawn but lowered and Firecracker Nala standing between them and the door like she had appointed herself the wall.

Then Ethan.

Ethan with hands loose at his sides now, looking like the last few weeks had treated him exactly the way he deserved to be treated.

Ethan who shouldn’t be anywhere near my territory seeing as he’s yet to raise a cent of his debt.

He saw the sa mont I cleared the corner.

I watched him try to arrange his face into sothing neutral and I watched him fail.

Perfect.

I walked the length of the corridor without hurrying because there was no version of this that required to hurry but I stopped at a distance that was close enough to be deliberate.

"Ivin." He said my na first. Of course he did.

Ethan had always led with his mouth, always put words in the space before he had figured out what the situation actually was, always bet on charm arriving in ti to cover whatever the words had already broken.

I looked at him and said nothing.

His jaw moved. "It’s been a while."

I looked at him.

"I ca for my sister." He said it with more steadiness than I expected and I gave him that, a small internal credit, because three guns and my silence in a corridor at this hour was not nothing and he was still standing straight. "That’s all. I just ca for Nala."

"Ethan." Nala’s voice behind him was one specific kind of tight.

"I tracked the phone, I know that was—"

"How did you get past the periter?" I said it quietly.

He blinked. "What?"

"The periter." I said it the sa way. "My n on the outside. How did you get past them."

Sothing shifted in his face. "I just ca through the—"

"My n do not just let people through." I watched him. "So either you got past them which ans you have resources I didn’t know about, or they let you through which ans I have a different problem entirely." I paused. "Which one is it Ethan."

His mouth opened and closed once.

There it was.

That specific expression, the one I had watched him wear a hundred tis in a different life when he had run out of the particular kind of confidence that had no business being confidence in the first place.

Ethan at the end of his material. Ethan when the charm had nowhere left to go and what was underneath it had to show itself.

I had missed that expression approximately zero tis.

"I don’t know." He said it finally. "They were just gone. The outside was clear when I ca in."

I held his gaze for another second and then I turned to the man on my left. "Get Matt. Tell him the east periter needs a full check right now."

The man moved imdiately.

I turned back to Ethan and the corridor was quieter now with one less body in it and Nala was sowhere just behind his left shoulder and I was aware of her the way I was becoming increasingly and inconveniently aware of her in spaces.

"You compromised this location." I said it without much heat because heat was not necessary and I had learned a long ti ago that the absence of it was more effective than the presence. "There are people in this building that have nothing to do with what you owe and you led whatever you are running from to the door."

"I told you I wasn’t followed—"

"And I told you my periter was staffed." I let that land. "So one of us is wrong about what we know and it isn’t ."

Ethan looked at and underneath the performance, underneath the jacket and the healing cut and the attempt at composure, I could see the thing I had watched build in him for years before everything ended the way it ended.

That particular combination of knowing he had done sothing that couldn’t be undone and not being ready to pay for it yet.

So things really did not change.

"You can’t keep her here." He said it and nodded toward Nala. "She doesn’t have anything to do with this."

"She has everything to do with this." I said it simply. "Because you made her."

His jaw tightened and I watched him decide whether to push it and decide against it and that decision told more than anything he had said since I walked into the corridor.

"You’re going to want to get so sleep." I said it to him like I was telling him the ti.

"Tomorrow we will talk about what you owe and how you’re going to pay it and how long that is going to take." I paused. "And you’re going to tell exactly how you got past my periter or that conversation is going to be very short."

I turned and walked back the way I ca.

Behind I heard Nala say his na once, low and complicated, and I heard Ethan exhale like a man who had been holding his breath since the mont he saw .

I did not look back.