Chapter 9 #2
“Gabe,” I say, shrugging his hand off. “You realize I’m just kidding. I know it was an accident. I know you’d never put me in danger on purpose. Stop looking like I just peed in your Cheerios. What did you and Taryn come up with this time?”
His face goes completely blank, like I’ve just erased his whole brain, and this does make me laugh.
God, maybe I should prank Gabe more often. It’s way more entertaining than I expected.
When his face comes back to life, his expression is speculative. Almost betrayed.
“Wait,” he says slowly. “Did you pee in my Cheerios? Because I thought they tasted a little funny this morning...”
I shout with laughter at that, and a moment later he’s laughing with me and I’ve forgotten all about the crash and this fucked up situation where my father is in town again and expecting Sammy and me to live with him.
I’m just in the building that’s going to become my new studio laughing with one of my best friends, the wind blowing the smell of springtime flowers through the door and my equipment sitting around us waiting to be unpacked.
And for a second, life seems good. Easy. Peaceful.
But Gabe can’t let anything sit for long, so he ruins the moment.
“So, Taryn and I have been thinking,” he says again, a bull in a china shop. “And I think we have a plan.”
I really, really wish the people around me would stop coming up with plans for my life.
But I love Gabe too much to say so, and I let him keep going.
And pretty soon he’s telling me that they’ve been doing planning for their business and its future, and think that they’re going to need to expand into additional lines for more interest for their clients.
But there’s not much more they can do with wood, so they’re looking for something different. Something new.
“And that’s when we thought of you,” he finishes breathlessly, like he’s just delivered the equation for how to travel through time.
I pause for a moment, trying to get my brain to catch up, but can’t figure out what he’s talking about.
“You think I’m going to give you new ideas?” I ask slowly.
He gives me a look that says he thinks I’ve lost my mind.
Which is fucking rich, considering.
“Gabe,” I snap. “Details. Give them to me.”
“Oh, right,” he says with a jerk. “Your business. Your artwork. What if we started selling it alongside our furniture? Or using it as details in our furniture. What if you, what if all of this–” He gestured around my shop, indicating my tools, my forge, and the stack of pieces I’ve already started. “Is included in our business?”
Still not making sense.
“You mean you want to buy my art?” I asked, feeling like my head is full of peanut butter.
He snorts. “No, idiot. I want to become your partner. We want to bring you into a partnership. You know, give you a real platform. And give us a way to find new clients.”
The idea is so big, so surprising, that it takes a second to get through my ears and into my brain, and when it does...
When it does, it feels like it’s far too big to hold. Because that...
God, that could change everything. And the idea that Gunner and Gabe would trust me that much, that they’d actually want me to be part of their business, is like a bright, rainbow-flavored bubble inside my chest, expanding so fast I don’t know if there’s room for it, the colors swirling and flooding every organ until I feel like I might explode.
“The only thing is,” Gabe says quickly. “We can’t have Bear involved. Like, at all. My dad doesn’t want anything to do with him. I don’t understand why, really, but you know how he is when he decides on something.”
I huff out a laugh. I do know exactly how Gunner is when he decides on something.
The man is as solid and stubborn as the trees he cuts down, and twice as ornery as the biggest bear in the woods.
The only person in the world he smiles for is Taryn, and I still don’t know how she managed to wrap him around her little finger.
So, no Bear.
That’s fine; I wouldn’t want him involved, anyhow.
Especially in something this big.
A partnership with Gabe and Gunner. A real show room. A website. Clients who are there to look for artwork, rather than clients we have to go find.
This is exactly what Sammy’s been hoping for. And it seems so easy, so natural, that I can’t believe she never thought of it. How did we not think of a partnership with Gabe and Gunner? It makes so much sense.
The moment I realize that, I realize that it’s been at least an hour since I checked on Sammy.
She was upset about the fight with Bear but looked like she was going to go to her room, and I assumed she was going to see to the injured doves she currently has in cages up there.
But that would have taken ten minutes at most, and I would have expected her to come back down here as soon as she cooled off.
Instead, she’s been quiet this whole time.
And when it comes to Sammy, quiet is a big problem.
I’ve barely finished the thought when I hear an engine roar to life and the squeal of tires, and though all tires probably sound the same, I can swear those tires sound like they’re crying out from a size-6 shoe on the gas pedal, a girl barely tall enough to see over the dashboard at the wheel and blood running hot with anger and betrayal in her veins.
“Sammy!” I shout.
I’m moving before I think, the box I’d been carrying flung to the side and probably still hanging in the air when I get through the door to the courtyard. I sprint down the walkway next to the house, barely registering the pounding of footsteps behind me that tell me Gabe is coming with me.
We get to the driveway in time to see her peeling onto the street, and I have a quick flash of her face: tear-stained and blotchy like she’s been crying.
Shit. She wasn’t upstairs taking care of the birds. She was up there getting herself worked up over something, and now she’s looking for a way to get rid of the emotions.
My hand flies out beside me and I look to my cousin, knowing that my face looks frantic. “Gabe, your keys. I have to go after her and my truck is full of boxes.”
He doesn’t even pause, Christ love him. Just reaches into his pocket, grabs his keys, and throws them at me. I catch them running, my feet already taking me toward his bike, and when I shove them into the ignition and look back at him, he waves me off.
“Go get your girl. I’ll be here.”
I don’t answer. I turn the bike on, rev the engine, and take off down the street, my mind flying ahead of me and trying to connect to Sammy’s. She doesn’t have much of a head start and the bike is faster than that truck, but if I know her, she’s not going to slow down around the curves.
I saw the emotions on Bear’s face when he looked at her, and I’m guessing they were mirrored on her own face, and if I know one thing about the girl, it’s this: She doesn’t do well with emotions.
They tear her up on the inside unless she can let them out, and when they get big enough, she finds big, stupid ways to try to release them.
Like the bridge up the mountain.
Or the train tracks that go right past town.