Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
RYDER
Flanked by my brothers, both of their mouths shut for once, I stared at Auggie’s gravestone and let out an irritated breath. “I don’t need a babysitter.”
“No shit, o-grumpy-one.” Tucker gave me a not-too-gentle shoulder check, shoving me into a chair. “Babysitting was your role. You always, and I do mean always , covered our asses.” He sat too. “Today we’ve got yours.”
I accepted a beer, but didn’t speak. Couldn’t. When we’d first lost Auggie, I’d spent those early days and weeks and months as a shadow of my usual self. These two had pushed, nagged, and bullied me back to the land of the living.
Something Auggie hadn’t had the luxury of.
Caleb opened a beer for himself and lifted it in a toast to the headstone in front of us. “Hey, Aug. Happy birthday, man. Wish you were here so I could rag you about being old now.”
I slid him a look. “You’re only two years younger.”
“The key word there is younger.”
Today would’ve been Auggie’s thirty-second, which made my chest tighten. Too damn young to be gone. We were silent for a long moment, and it was only when Tucker suddenly sucked in a breath and pointed at the sky that I was brought out of my grief.
When had night fallen?
And even as I wondered that, I caught what Tucker saw—three falling stars arching in unison across the moonless sky.
Caleb pushed his glasses closer to his eyes, then let out a sound of surprise. “Is that…”
“Three falling stars,” I murmured in stunned surprise, watching them arc in perfect unison.
“Hell, no.” Tucker slapped his hands over his eyes. “I don’t see anything. And I damn well don’t see the Legend of Star Falls.”
“It’s just a myth,” I said, somehow unable to take my eyes off them. “Like Loch Ness and Elvis being alive.”
Caleb’s eyes were closed. “It’s not real, it’s not real,” he whispered to himself on repeat.
I watched the trio of stars slowly blink away as if they’d never been. I knew the lore went that seeing the stars meant a soulmate would enter your life—whether you wanted such a thing or not. And for the record, I did not.
“You guys don’t really believe that three little stars can determine our fate.”
“Nope, just yours,” Tucker quipped. “Since you’re the only one who looked. Right, Caleb?”
Caleb was quiet for so long, we both turned to him.
“Bobby Ramirez,” he said. “Our electrical subcontractor. Remember when a few years back he claimed to see the Legend of Star Falls? He went straight to his girlfriend’s house and proposed.”
“And now he and Mindy have three kids.” Tucker shuddered in horror. Without opening his eyes, he jabbed a finger in my direction. “Make sure you drive straight home instead of asking some rando woman to marry you.”
I rolled my eyes. “You can look now. The stars are gone.”
“What’s gone?” Tucker asked. “I saw nothing.”
Caleb knocked their bottles together. “That’s the spirit.”
We fell quiet after that. I stared at Auggie’s gravestone, my airway constricted with grief. “I can’t get used to him being gone.”
“Yeah, well, whoever said time heals all wounds was full of shit,” Tucker said.
“True that.” Caleb cracked open the pizza box to reveal a fully loaded pie. “I’m starving.”
He’d been born starving. The family joke was that he had a gut of iron and a hollow leg. He gestured for me to take a slice.
I shook my head.
“Come on. It’s a birthday party.” He took a piece. “Auggie loved pizza. The least we can do is let him smell it.” Then he turned to me, no smile on his face. “Eat. You’ve lost some weight.” His voice was uncharacteristically solemn.
I shook my head, ignoring the long look they exchanged.
After a long moment, Tucker turned to me. “Ry.”
I knew he probably intended to have a well-meaning conversation about my feelings, but I could think of nothing I’d rather do less. “No.”
Caleb blew out a breath. “Fine. I’ll shut up. Soon as I say one more thing.”
“Please don’t.”
“Oh, I’m going to. I’m going to keep saying it until you finally get it through your thick skull. Auggie’s death on that mountain wasn’t your fault.”
I tipped my head back and again stared up at the night sky, each star so sharp and perfect that they looked like diamonds scattered across a bed of black velvet. It didn’t seem real.
Just like Auggie being gone still didn’t seem real.
I drew in a careful breath, remembering Kiera’s anxiety before that fateful trip, so worried about Auggie’s safety. And what had I done? I’d blithely told her that sometimes you had to push yourself, that life was about exploring. So, yeah. Not my fault, my ass .
“Did you tell him to go skiing alone?” Caleb asked. “Off trail, no less?”
I ground my back teeth. “I encouraged the trip.”
“Yeah,” Tucker said. “You encouraged someone you cared about to go after his dream, and you know better than anyone there are no guarantees when you’re going after a dream. In fact, you do that for all of us all the time, encourage us to follow our heart.”
I shook my head. “Not talking about this.”
“Then just listen,” Caleb said. “Because when it comes to your dreams, you’ve given them up. You’ve gone from the guy who was always the first of us to take a risk to being the guy who cuts the corners off your bread because they’re too sharp.”
I slid him a look.
“Oh, you know what I mean. I know we were young when Mom died, but I very clearly remember her telling me that not only was I her favorite, but also that I was never wrong.”
I rolled my eyes, and Caleb smiled, proud of himself.
“Why are you here?” I asked in my best asshole- boss voice. “Did your team finish fixing the problems with the contract for the Escobar job?”
“Just about.” Caleb took another piece of pizza.
“Just about?”
He made a show of chewing slowly, then swallowing before answering. “You going to micro-manage me?”
“Here we go,” Tucker muttered.
“The contract is coming along,” Caleb finally said, licking some sauce off his thumb.
It was a huge job, a renovation of a historical landmark, a 1920s tenant house on fifteen acres along the Russian River, to be turned into a retail space.
But there’d been nothing but problems with every agency in town approving the plans.
The owner of the property, our client, had given us the job knowing that we excel at solving problems.
“What’s happening with it? I’m happy to help,” I said.
“Like you have the bandwidth right now.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I asked.
Not stupid, Tucker snagged the pizza box from Caleb’s hand and scooted his chair back from us a bit.
Caleb rolled his eyes. “You nearly walked into a wall twice this week because you were busy staring at the cutie pie who cooks like an angel.”
I drew a deep breath. “The job. Say more words about the damn job.”
He sighed, like I was being an unfathomable pain in his ass. “It involves permits, Caltrans, and Bill. They all had a meeting that nearly ended with fists in faces.”
Shit. Bill, brilliant as he was, also had the shortest fuse on the planet, and it had cost us over the years. “ What happened?”
“The city planner got involved. He’s a class A asshole, and?—”
“Just tell me you didn’t inform him of that fact to his face. Again.”
Caleb grinned. “Do I look stupid?”
“Don’t answer that,” Tucker muttered to me.
Caleb looked at the gravestone. “Auggie, man, how did you do it for so long, dealing with this guy’s do-as-I-say-and-not-as-I-do bullshit? Oh, and let’s not forget his daddy issues.”
Tucker grimaced. “It’s like you want to die.”
“You about done?” I asked Caleb.
“Oh, not even close.”
Tucker sighed dramatically. “We don’t have enough alcohol.”
Caleb slid me a smug-ass grin. “Someone saw you two getting cozy in the staff kitchen early one morning over a week ago now.”
I choked on my beer, then cursed myself for the tell. The last thing I needed was for my stupid little brother to know just how thoroughly infatuated I was.
“ Someone? ”
Caleb turned and eyeballed Tucker.
Who groaned and stared at his beer. “Definitely didn’t bring enough alcohol. And I told you that in confidence, dickwad.”
“What’s her name again?” Caleb asked. “Payton? Pheobe?”
“ Penny ,” I said through clenched teeth, and when the idiot cackled and clapped his hands in glee, I wanted to chuck the pizza at him.
But Tucker hugged the box tight to his chest like it was a precious baby. “The girl who lives with dad’s caretaker,” he said helpfully.
“She’s no girl,” Caleb said. “She’s all woman. Gutsy, sharp- witted, pretty?—”
I nearly growled. Or maybe I did, given how Caleb smirked. “Oh, did I hit a nerve?” he and his big, fat mouth asked innocently.
“Seriously though,” Tucker asked him. “Are you tired of your front teeth?”
I drank some beer and took a deep breath.
“Whatever you think you saw that morning between Penny and me, it wasn’t that.
She nearly got run over, I was just helping her patch herself up.
” Every time I thought about that morning and what could have happened to her, my heart stopped.
It’d stopped that morning too. The way she’d taken the whole incident in stride, like maybe her life was as questionable and as uncertain as it’d been in that heartbeat when she could’ve been killed, had done something to me.
And then there was how I still couldn’t forget the way she’d reacted when I’d reached out to touch her. That recoil. Not the usual reaction I got from a woman…
She got hurt…
Yeah. Nell’s words still haunted me.
“Penny,” Caleb said.
My head jerked up. “What about her?”
“Nothing. Just wanted to see how fast you’d look up.” He grinned. “Like a moth to the flame.”
“Here we go,” Tucker muttered, tipping his head back to stare up at the stars.
Caleb just grinned. “You two played doctor. Adorable .”
“We’re not talking about this.”
Tucker took another bite of pizza and then choked dramatically, a hand to his chest like an old woman clutching her pearls.
“What?” I nearly broke my neck trying to see what had spooked him.
“It’s the Legend,” Tucker said. “The Legend of Star Falls. You saw them, and now you’ve officially met your soulmate.”
“We just saw them. Even the universe can’t work retroactively.”
“Maybe the Legend somehow knew you’d see the stars tonight and started working ahead of time,” Caleb said helpfully.
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Caleb managed to be quiet for ten whole seconds—an amazing feat—before he said, “But what if it’s not?” The amusement was gone from his tone. “Stupid, I mean. What if it’s real? You, of all of us, Ry, deserve to find someone. You know that, right?”
“No.” I shook my head. “We all deserve happiness, yes, but?—”
“It’s your turn,” Tucker said. “You never put yourself first. You took the initial shift with Captain Asshole, and you keep saying you don’t need help, that you’re fine—which we know is a lie.
What if it’s your time to meet your person, and maybe that person is, say, a funny, feisty, pretty brunette who cooks like heaven on earth? ”
Dangerous territory. Especially since I had a feeling about Penny that I couldn’t shake. Like she was different, special.
And I didn’t deserve to find happiness with her.
Caleb jabbed a finger at me. “I know what that look means, you bastard. You’re going to be stupid about this.”
I smacked his finger out of my face. “Not stupid. Practical.”
“How is it practical to deny yourself something good?”
“He thinks he doesn’t deserve it,” Tucker said quietly, and maybe also angrily.
“That’s bullshit,” Caleb said.
“Yeah, it is.” Tucker didn’t take his eyes off me. “We owe you.”
“You owe me nothing.”
“We owe you everything ,” Caleb snapped. “Every damn thing that we are today, it’s because of you.”
Unbearably moved, with a stupid lump the size of a regulation hockey puck in my throat, I couldn’t do more than shake my head.
Caleb wasn’t having it. “You’ve always shielded the people you love, taking everything on your shoulders. When Mom died. Whenever Dad was out for blood. And I know you think you didn’t shield Auggie, but he was his own person, and he made a choice. That isn’t on you.”
I looked away.
But then Caleb took my hand in his—something he hadn’t done since we were kids—and gave me a serious look.
“You’re ugly and were found under a rock.”
I choked out a laugh through my burning throat. “Love you too, you prick.” It’d been a while since that particular Colburn sibling insult had been deployed.
Caleb leaned past me and glared meaningfully at Tucker, who blew out a breath and reached for my other hand even as he muttered, “We look like three little girls.”
“Hey, girls love this shit,” Caleb said. “Being with a guy who can access his feelings? Gold. And that bad attitude of yours is going to keep you from getting laid.”
“Hasn’t so far,” Tucker replied smugly.
I looked at Auggie’s grave. I appreciated the company, I did. And I knew they’d always be here for me if they thought I needed them—whether I liked it or not. They only wanted to help, but I needed to bandage my invisible wounds in my own way.
I squeezed their hands. “ No more words.”
Tucker shrugged, easily accepting that. “Then eat.”
So I took a piece of pizza and we ate, keeping Auggie company.