11. Grant
Chapter Eleven
GRANT
I took a bite of my burger, closing my eyes before opening them again. “Their burgers are fucking good.”
“I know,” Flynn replied.
I took a swallow of my beer, glancing around the table. Every few weeks, the guys tried to get together. Tonight, it was actually all of us—Flynn, Diego, Tucker, Gabriel, Elias, and myself. We’d met up at Glacier Brewery, which had excellent food to go along with the beer.
“Schedule’s busy these days,” Diego commented between bites of his burger.
Flynn nodded. “I know. For now, we’re just going to roll with it. I'm not up for buying another plane or hiring another pilot right now.”
“I get it, man. It's a lot to manage,” Elias replied.
Our conversation meandered along, talking about work and our respective lives. Diego happened to be seated beside me. Flynn was chatting with Gabriel about something on one of the planes, and Diego commented to me, “Thanks for letting me know about Harley, by the way. She upset with you about it?”
“Oh, yeah,” I replied with a chuckle. I ignored the jolt of heat that went through me at any mention of Harley.
Diego’s sister had definitely been upset with me. Then I’d lost my damn mind and kissed her again. That ended with her coming all over my fingers. I was so fucked.
I forced my mind to the moment. “She said she went to the doctor.”
“Yeah?” he prompted.
“She said it turned out to be no big deal. Just a low blood sugar thing.”
“Hope she's telling the truth,” he commented.
“You don’t think she is?”
Diego shrugged. “It’s Harley, and she doesn't like to make a big deal out of fucking anything.”
“Mmm,” I offered. The last thing I wanted was to spend more time talking about Harley. It was bad enough to have her parked smack dab in the middle of my thoughts most of the time.
Later that night as I lay in bed, I was attuned to any tiny sound coming from her bedroom. This was day four of managing to avoid her at the house. Yet she was here, just on the other side of the wall between our rooms.
Her door had been firmly closed when I'd gotten home. My mind replayed Diego’s last comment about Harley.
I hoped it was nothing, and that she wasn’t covering up something more serious.
My mother had passed away from an undiagnosed heart defect when I was in college.
Her death still weighed on me. She'd had problems periodically but hadn't told us the whole story. I remembered being worried, but she’d assured me she was fine and insisted I go to college.
It was midsemester one year when I got the emergency call.
The doctor had told us her prognosis wouldn't have been good long-term because of the complications. But still, I kept thinking if I hadn't been off at college, somehow, she would’ve been okay. I’d raced home to take care of Nora and Cat while I tried to hold our family together until Flynn could get there for all of us.
After Flynn came home, things started to feel less overwhelming. But even now, I carried the weight of it. Old twinges of guilt burned. I thought I should have known. Logically, I knew better, but it didn't really matter.
While I understood Harley was angry with me for mentioning it to Diego, she didn't understand where I was coming from.
My mind spun. Moments from the other night kept going off like little flashbulbs in my memories.
Every recollection triggered a visceral response as my body reacted with lingering jolts of electricity.
Diego would fucking kill me if he knew I’d even thought about his sister that way, much less had done anything about it. I thought maybe I could get over my attraction to Harley if she wasn’t fucking living here.
I glanced over at Tucker, who was walking through the garage door to one of our plane hangars. “Hey!” I called as he approached.
“Hey, want to grab some dinner at Sally’s?” he asked.
“You're not doing anything with Skylar?”
Tucker grinned as he shook his head. “She's working late tonight. She and Ludie are going over the monthly accounting. She stresses out about that. They're all set up with takeout.”
“I'm your second choice then,” I replied wryly.
Tucker reached me, cuffing me lightly on the shoulder. “No, you're my friend, and I like hanging out.”
“You can be honest. I know it's just because she's busy,” I teased.
He rolled his eyes. “Don't I show up when we all meet at the brewery?”
“You do.”
“Let’s go to Sally’s. I'll be your wingman, and I'll bow out with perfect timing,” he offered, waggling his brows.
“I don't need a wingman, dude.”
“Don't you, though?” he teased.
“No,” I countered, shrugging off the subtle irritation I felt.
Of late, I’d gotten annoyed at how I was often teased as if I was some kind of player. I wasn’t. I just wasn’t interested in anything serious.
“Let me close up here.”
I quickly leaned into the front of the plane, snagging my backpack where it sat on the floor just behind the seat.
Tucker crossed the garage, calling, “You need anything from the office, or can I turn the light out?”
“Lights out,” I called in return.
A moment later, we closed the garage bay door and walked out the side entrance together.
Tucker paused, his gaze arcing from the plane hangars to the marshy field and the mountains beyond. “Damn. I've been here for over five years now, and I still haven’t gotten used to these long days.”
I shrugged. “It's all I've ever known. When I was a teenager, I stayed up so late, always just doing my own thing.”
“It helps to have the blackout shades. When I first moved here, I didn’t see the point. I’m smarter now,” he commented.
“When I was a kid, we couldn't afford those, so we put tinfoil on the windows.”
Tucker chuckled. We followed each other over to Sally’s because Tucker claimed he would leave sooner than I did. I would prove him wrong. I was in a new phase of responsibility and didn't feel the need to stay out late and party. I told myself this had nothing to do with Harley. Not a thing.
A short while later, we were seated at a booth.
Sally’s was an old barn renovated into a restaurant and bar.
The kitchen was in the center with the restaurant on one side with booths and tables, and the other side had smaller tables and a stage for music.
The old hayloft had been renovated into loft seating.
The place had a relaxed, casual feel with wide-plank hardwood flooring worn after years of feet crossing over them.
It was a favorite local hangout with organized card nights, karaoke nights, open mic, and the like.
It also had good pub fare, nothing fancy, and always consistent.
Tucker lifted his pint of beer, clinking his glass against mine. “To one beer tonight.”
I chuckled. “Yeah, we're both driving. So how are things with Skylar?”
He finished his swallow of beer, his lips twitching with a smile. “Good, really good.”
“Good,” I returned. “You deserve it.”
“Yeah? I never understood why people say things like that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, don't you think everybody deserves something good in life? I don't think I'm any more special than anybody else,” he offered.
I shrugged. “Okay, fair enough. But you had someone you loved, and she died, so it feels like you should catch a lucky break. How about letting yourself just enjoy this?”
He chuckled. “Old habits die hard and all that.”
“I get it.”
His gaze sobered. “I suppose you do. Both of your parents died when you were pretty young.”
I took a swallow of my beer, nodding in agreement. “Yeah. Our dad wasn't exactly around much. I miss him, but he was pretty inconsistent. My mom, though. That was a hit.” I lightly thumped my fist over my heart.
“How old were you when it happened?”
“I was in college. We knew she had some heart issues, but we didn’t know the extent. She collapsed, and they couldn't restart her heart.” I swallowed, my throat feeling tight for a minute.
Grief sometimes felt like little arrows randomly striking and stinging deeply. “She was everything for all of us.”
“It hurts to lose someone like that.”
“It does. I still miss her.”
“Flynn was with us. I remember he got that call, and then he was making arrangements to go home.”
“I was up in Anchorage. I drove home that night, of course, as soon as I heard. Nora was sixteen, and Cat wasn’t even a teenager yet.
They were trying to figure out if there should be a temporary guardianship since I was only in college.
Thank God, they got Flynn on the phone. He promised he was making arrangements to get home.
Without Flynn, I don't know what we would have done.
There's no way I could have pulled off what he did with the family business. My mom had done her best, but it was slow going. It was nothing like what we have now, in large part thanks to all of you coming out to fly.”
Tucker held my gaze, nodding slowly. “Well, we all love to fly. Flynn would have made it work without us, though.”
“Maybe. But I like it this way. It feels like we're all a family.”
“Damn straight, we are,” he said firmly.
The server arrived to take our food order. After we ordered, Layla stopped by, slipping into the booth beside me.
“Hey.” She nudged me playfully with her shoulder.
I grinned down at her. She smiled over at Tucker, asking politely about Skylar and so on. She made herself comfortable.
A while later, Tucker departed with a wink and a smile, clapping me on the shoulder. “See you tomorrow. If I don't see you at work, I'll be out at the lodge for yoga.”
“All right. Have a good one,” I replied.
Then it was Layla and me. “How have you been? I haven't seen you out much,” she commented.
“Just been busy.”
I decided then and there I needed to distract myself from Harley and that sizzling electric encounter the other night. I slid my arm around Layla’s shoulders. “Where are you headed?”
“Home,” she answered, her blue eyes blinking when she smiled up at me.
All of this should have gotten my engine revving. Instead, I just wasn't feeling it. I told myself we would go out to the parking lot and I would kiss her to get me started.
Wrong. I couldn't even bring myself to kiss her.
“Something wrong, Grant?” she asked when we were standing by her car.
“Nah. Good to see you.”
She leaned up, pressing a kiss on my cheek and catching my hand to reel me closer. I shook my head. “Not tonight.”
I drove home with Harley on my mind.