Page 23 of Boss and Brat

“Sit down,” Carter said, keeping his voice even. He grabbed two sodas from the fridge and set one in front of Ethan. The kid ignored it. Carter cracked his own open and leaned back. “Let’s talk.”

“I have nothing to say. I want to leave.”

Carter raised an eyebrow. “Leave and go where?”

“The stables. To ride Storm.”

Storm. So the horse was his. “Didn’t know Storm belonged to you,” Carter said. “Bet he’s missing you.”

Ethan stayed serious. The hardness remained. Just stared at the table as if it had personally offended him.

Carter set his soda down. “I’ll go riding with you. But first tell me why you’re pissed.”

Ethan’s head snapped up. “You sit there and pretend you don’t know.”

Carter blinked. “I don’t know. I gave you a job, my truck, and you came back with an attitude.”

Ethan grabbed his phone and slammed it onto the table. The sound cracked through the room. “That’s what’s wrong.”

Carter frowned. “Do you need a new phone?”

Ethan shut his eyes as if he were holding something back, then lifted the phone and shoved the screen toward him. An app glowed there—one Carter recognized immediately.

“And?” Carter asked, keeping his tone flat.

“And what is that doing on my phone?”

“I installed it per your father’s order.”

“But you didn’t tell me.”

“No,” Carter said. “I probably should’ve.” He kept his voice steady and controlled. “And your father can’t track you with this app.”

Ethan’s fingers locked around the phone, knuckles pale against the case. His leg jerked under the table in a quick, compulsive rhythm, the kind that came from pressure he couldn’t swallow down. “I don’t get how you want me to act perfect, then you do shit like this to me.”

Carter clocked every twitch. Ethan was unaware of his own actions. Ethan’s fingertips drummed against the tabletop—sharp, irregular taps that broke the quiet like static. The beat came unbidden, a tell he couldn’t hide even when he tried. “I was happy in Chico. Here I have to turn into some second version of my father. I’m not him. Never will be.”

Carter recognized the pattern: not nerves, not attitude—pressure building with nowhere to go.

Carter exhaled through his nose. The kid wasn’t wrong. But orders were orders, and he’d followed them the way he always did. Still—watching Ethan now with his anger simmering under the surface—something twisted in his chest.

He hadn’t meant to hurt him. He hadn’t meant to become another man Ethan had to survive. But the tracker sat between them like a loaded weapon, and Carter wasn’t sure how to disarm it without making things worse. He leaned forward. “Ethan,” he said, “tell me what you think I’m trying to do to you.”

Ethan remained silent. But the look in his eyes said everything.

Carter kept his voice steady. “Talk to me.”

Ethan’s shoulders rose and fell in a quick, frustrated breath. “I don’t know. But I don’t need a second father trying to destroy me at every bend.”

The words hit harder than Carter expected. Destroy. Not discipline. Not correct. Destroy. The kid wasn’t exaggerating—he believed it.

“I’m not doing that,” Carter said. He leaned back in his chair, giving Ethan space. “I want you to finish your obligation to your father. After that, you get to be whoever you want, wherever you want.”

Carter studied him. The tension in Ethan’s shoulders, the way he kept his chin tucked as if he expected a blow—none of it matched the loud, reckless kid he’d first met. This was someone cornered.

The kid folded in on himself as if he expected the world to swing at him for speaking the truth. An ache, deep within Carter’s heart, was awakened by the sight of that posture, a place he kept carefully shut.

He rubbed a thumb along the seam of his jeans, grounding himself the way he used to before saying something that mattered. “Yeah,” he said. “I know what that feels like.”