Chapter 3 Caleb
Caleb
The next morning, I lay in bed, eyes closed, taking in the distant bleat of goats, squawks of annoyed chickens, and the faint whir of a tractor. My mind ignored all that to feed me flashes of yesterday’s blast from my past.
Emma Sumner had been a whirlwind of creativity and smarts, and the way she lifted her nose ever so slightly when she knew she was right… Damn. Hot as hell.
But appreciating her presence and trusting her were two very different things. She’d long ago proven the lengths she’d go to in order to win. And I wasn’t about to let it happen.
I shifted, and my bedmates stirred, lifting their heads.
Great, I’d blinked, and now we had to start our day.
We being me and the two boxers I’d rescued after finding them abandoned on a jobsite a few months ago.
They completely owned my heart, but I’d rather they owned it from their cushy, ridiculously expensive dog bed in the corner.
Calvin and Klein—named by my sister, not me—were approximately two years old, brothers, and, according to our vet, fully grown.
At eighty pounds each, I could only hope so.
“Woo woo woo!”
Translation: Hey, buddy, it’s thirty seconds past breakfast time.
I sat up, which prompted pandemonium. “Calm,” I said.
Calvin immediately settled, panting happily, his eyes warm and attentive—and hopeful. Klein went batshit bonkers, racing around in wild circles over and around me on the mattress. Klein had no calm.
We’d been to training class. Twice. Some things had stuck. Most hadn’t. “Klein. Sit.”
Klein, whose unfortunate underbite gave him the look of a hooligan, pretended to sit, then got the zoomies again.
“Sit.”
Klein huffed out a breath but sat, tail going about a hundred miles an hour as Hank padded into my room to join the chaos.
He sat on my bed and said, “Ah.”
In the mindfuck of the century, the Colburn sire had suffered two strokes, then a craniotomy, and was now nonverbal. And…different. Different as in he had the temperament of…Klein.
It had been nearly a year now, and I was still waiting for him to become the monster in my closet. Not my goofball dogs though. Nope, they greeted him with exuberant licks to the face until I pushed them off the bed.
Hank just smiled and, since he no longer understood anyone’s personal space boundaries, patted me on the head, a question in his eyes.
I managed not to flinch, thanks in no small part to all those years getting beat to hell in hockey.
“I’ve got a doctor’s appointment this morning before work,” I said, answering his unspoken question.
“And since Nell can’t take you for another hour, you’re coming with.
” I eyed him. “No shenanigans this time.”
Hank gave me an innocent look that I didn’t buy for one second.
His medical team had assured us time and time again that it was unlikely he remembered much from before the strokes. That he might never remember. That this personality, this…puppy, was here to stay.
I was still working on believing that. My entire goal in life was to survive these next three months with him before passing him off to Tucker for his turn at caretaking.
“I mean it,” I said. “Last time you came with me, you flirted with the nurses so they’d feed you goodies and stole a handful of pens, which you stuffed in your pants. Today, none of that is happening, got me?”
“Ah.”
Shaking my head, I got up and showered, with Calvin and Klein sitting just outside the shower door wearing forlorn faces because I wouldn’t let them join me. By the time I got out, Calvin had fallen asleep on his back, mouth open, legs straight up in the air like roadkill.
Klein was licking the glass door of the shower.
I got myself and my dad dressed with minimal fuss—if I discounted the fact Hank hadn’t wanted to wear shoes. I won that battle—bribed him with a cookie—and went to the kitchen to let the dogs out.
My sprinklers were on, and that was my first mistake. Calvin and Klein loved water, and sure enough, they each ran to lie on a sprinkler head, immediately becoming drenched and muddy. “Let’s go,” I said.
They did not, in fact, go. Instead, they rolled to their backs, wriggling in muddy, wet ecstasy. Assholes. I strode through the wet grass and scooped them up, tucking one under each arm like sacks of flour.
Very heavy sacks of flour.
I felt like my day had been twenty years long by the time I parked in front of my orthopedist’s office. I was still damp and smelled like wet dog. I eyed Hank in the passenger seat. “You’re going to behave.”
“Ah.”
Right. Let the shit show begin. We walked into the medical office hand in hand. Hank was steady enough on his feet, but making his way through terrain he wasn’t used to sometimes tripped him up. He had a cane, but he also wanted to hold my hand.
Something he’d never, ever done before the strokes.
Linda the receptionist, somewhere between Hank’s age and a hundred, beamed at the sight of us. “Hank!” Jumping up, she headed straight for him. “I brought you another of those oatmeal raisin cookies you love!”
The old man grinned with a charm I hadn’t even realized he had. “Ah,” he said, then did something with his face, scrunching both eyes and his mouth up.
“Look at you,” Linda said, smiling. “You’ve almost got the wink down! Have you still been stargazing?” She looked at me. “You’re sitting him on the porch at night so he can look for the Legend, right?”
I felt my left eye begin to twitch. My mom had loved the romance of the Legend of Star Falls, but after her death, whimsical things—such as seeing three stars falling in an arc and believing the sight of them would bring you a soulmate—seemed like a load of horseshit.
But then, one night not too long ago, Ryder had seen the three falling stars, and so had Tucker and I—even if we pretended we hadn’t. And then Ryder had fallen in love. So now…now I had no idea what to think. “I’m not sure he understands the Legend of Star Falls, so—”
“Ah.”
I turned to Hank. “You do?”
“Aw.”
My right eye joined in on the twitching action. “And you want to stargaze for the three falling stars so, what, you can find your soulmate?”
“Ah.”
I knew the people who lived in Star Falls loved the Legend beyond reason. But it never failed to surprise me how many people, in spite of never having seen it themselves, believed unswervingly.
Not me. Except…Ryder had fallen hard for Penny shortly afterward, and something uneasy settled in my gut at the reminder.
But Hank…I was trying to decide whether he had his memories and was just running a long con on me when he made a sound of childlike glee and began pilfering pens from the cup on the counter, slipping them into his pockets.
For fuck’s sake. “Sorry,” I muttered to Linda, frisking Hank to clear him of stolen goods, including a roll of Scotch tape and three paper clips.
Linda patted Hank’s hand. “Don’t worry about it, hot stuff. Everyone gets caught at least once in their lifetime.”
I led him to a chair in the waiting area. “What are you up to?”
He just sat there with that innocent smile in place. Shaking my head, I texted Ry and Tuck.
Me:
Dad’s a klepto.
Also, he’s looking for his soulmate via the Legend of Star Falls.
Baby Bro:
It’s way too early for you to be drunk.
Oldest and Ugliest Bro:
Especially when you’re supposed to be at work rn.
Me:
I’m not drunk!
Baby Bro:
then eat something, you’re grumpier than Ry.
Oldest and Ugliest Bro:
Hey.
I got called to a room, so I shoved my phone away and helped Hank up. Two minutes later, I sat on the patient cot, Hank in the chair in the corner, eating a massive cookie from Linda, crumbs sifting down his front.
I slowly counted to ten in my head, trying to lower my blood pressure.
Nurse Daisy bounced into the room. She was tall, stacked, blond, gorgeous, funny, and wild—all reasons why I’d gone out with her for a whole week in high school. She’d been great. I’d been a thoughtless, reckless asshole.
Daisy eyed the cookie in Hank’s hand. “I tried to steal that from Linda this morning. She wasn’t having it; she’d brought it for you.”
Hank held out the cookie, offering her a bite.
Daisy squeezed his hand. “You’re a sweetheart, but you keep it.”
Hank did that thing with his face again, which, to be honest, made him look like he was having another stroke.
Without missing a beat, Daisy winked back at him, then came at me to take my vitals, all business now. No less than I deserved.
Over her shoulder, Hank smirked at me.
Helpless old man, my ass. Knock it off, I mouthed.
He stopped looking at me. Translation: Not on your life.
“You’re lucky,” Daisy said, wrapping the blood-pressure cuff around my arm. “To still have your dad with you.”
No one at school had known what our lives were like back then. We moved around a bit before landing in Star Falls, and we Colburn siblings held our tongues, keeping our eyes on the prize: getting out the second we each turned eighteen.
Which didn’t mean that we hadn’t gleefully found as much trouble as we could.
“I see a lot of Hank in you,” Daisy said.
I was nothing like Hank. He’d been mean and unnecessarily cruel. I’d gone the opposite route. I used charm and charisma to keep everything surface level. That was my comfort zone, and I was good at it, at the casual, fun flirting—
Shit. I stared at Hank. Hank, the casual, fun flirt.
Daisy eyed the screen of the blood-pressure cuff and frowned. “Did you run here?”
“No.”
“You stressed?”
I laughed mirthlessly. “Me? Of course not.”
She snickered and patted my cheek. Hard. Which I probably also deserved. “Then maybe you’re just getting old.”
I sighed, and she laughed.
“Do you want to know what I think?” she asked, slipping an oxygen monitor on my finger.
“No.”