Page 68 of The Wolf and the Monarch

He nodded. “I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t on bitch duty. I doubt I would have even met you. And if I didn’t…you wouldn’t be here right now either.”

He supposed Sawyer had a point. “Everything happens for a reason,” he muttered under his breath. That statement was becoming more and more evident to him the more he thought about it.

Stretching out his arms and legs, Sawyer yawned (but Benji was pretty sure it was fake) and looked towards him. “I think I’m gonna head upstairs then.”

Reaching out, he grabbed his plate and stood up to head towards the kitchen. “Yeah, not a bad idea. Tomorrow, I think we should be able to leave here, if you wanted.”

His brow raised. “Really? Already?”

“I mean,” he shrugged, “If you want. I think if they were looking for us, they probably lost our trail. And we have a different car now too so I feel pretty good about leaving without being seen.”

Sawyer swallowed hard and nodded. “Okay, yeah. We can…do that.”

Benji tossed out the paper plates and turned back to the man on the couch with a tilt of his head. “You okay?”

He cleared his throat softly, clearly thinking about that statement. “Yeah, I think so.”

“That doesn’t…sound okay?”

Sawyer sighed. “I guess I just…I’ve kind of liked just…being here. With you. Away from everything. When we leave here, things are going to be hard.”

He wasn’t wrong. Things were going to be extremely hard. For Benji in particular. “Once I figure out my dad situation, things will be fine.”

His gaze drifted down towards his lap as he picked at a loose string on his t-shirt. “I just don’t know where I’m going to go. I’m kind of a stray now.”

Benji walked back into the living room and sat down beside Sawyer again, turning towards him a bit. “You can stay with me if you want.”

“What?” He laughed. “You’re crazy.”

“I mean it. Just stay with me for a while until you find a job and an apartment or whatever,” Benji paused, then said, “Unless you don’t want to live in DC.”

He ran his fingers through his dark locks and huffed. “I don’t really have any thoughts about it. I’m sure it’s fine there.”

“Fine enough, yeah,” he paused again. “And you could probably work with me.”

That got a full laugh from Sawyer. “Yeah, right.”

“I mean it. I mean, who knows what’s really going on with my dad. If he’s doing what I think, there might be a full blown mutiny and we’ll need someone else.”

“I’m not going to take over for your dad, Benji.”

“No, not his job,” he chuckled, “But you could train with my uncles or Andi… or me, if you wanted. You’d be good at it. You’re smart as hell. Resourceful. Strong,” Benji shrugged, “Seems like the perfect fit to me.”

Sawyer smiled. “I think you’re just biased.”

“Probably but I also think what I said is true.”

There were a few moments of silence between them again as Sawyer thought about what Benji said. Finally, he shrugged. “We’ll see about the job thing. But I would like to stay with you for the time being.”

Benji smiled. “Good.” Truth be told, he didn’t want to see Sawyer go. He was really hoping that he would agree to staying with him. It was probably foolish of him to have such a need for him to stick around but Benji was just going to chalk it up to something about trauma and leave it at that. He didn’t really want to dig too far into his psyche about all that at the moment.

With a sigh, Sawyer stood up from the couch and began to walk upstairs. “I’ll see you up there?”

He shook his head and stood up, following after Sawyer immediately. “You’ll see me now.” Sawyer simply grinned while they made their way upstairs.

Chapter Thirty One

Benji