Chapter 33 #2
“No. I meant…” I drew a breath. Ah, hell. The gig was up. I couldn’t hide it from myself anymore, much less them. I just shook my head helplessly, so out of my league I couldn’t even see the league.
“Cute,” Caleb said. “You ever going to tell her ?”
“This isn’t funny.”
“If you could see the look on your face, you’d think it was a little funny,” Tucker said.
“How did this happen?” Kiera asked. “I’d have laid down money you’d be the last of us to fall.”
“Well,” Tucker said, “when a man and a woman?—”
Kiera elbowed him in the gut. “I meant because he doesn’t easily engage.”
“Takes one to know one,” I muttered.
“Hey, my husband died.”
Caleb slid her a look. “How long do you get to use that excuse?”
Anyone else might’ve been horrified or taken offense, but Kiera grinned. “As long as it works,” she said and laughed. She laughed so hard she had to sit down, which she did, right there on the floor. Then she went from laughter to sobs.
Shit. Aching for her, for us, I sat next to her, and when she didn’t punch me in the nose, I slid an arm around her. She slumped against me, shaking from head to toe.
Tucker sat on her other side and reached for her hand.
Caleb vanished down the hall and came back a moment later with a box of tissues, which he dropped in Kiera’s lap before sitting on the floor in front of her.
“The kids are watching a show on my phone.” He drew a breath. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked you that.”
She made good use of the tissues, then sighed, seeming…lighter. “No, it’s okay,” she managed past what sounded like a ragged throat. “I think…” She shook her head. “I think I needed that. I must be in my Caleb-Meltdown Era.”
“Hey,” he said.
When Caleb had gotten hurt in the NCAA’s Frozen Four tournament, he’d been stoic. When he’d gone on to have three subsequent surgeries, he’d been stoic. When he’d been told his hockey career was over, losing out on being the nation’s number one draft pick, he’d remained stoic—for a full year.
Which I knew because he’d been living with me at the time. He’d been quiet. Unflappable but also unreachable. No one could get him to talk about what was happening to him—not me, not Kiera, not Tucker.
Then one day the four of us had been sharing a pizza and nachos at the Cork and Barrel, and some drunk idiot had called out in passing, “Hey, No Hands, how ya doing?”
Caleb had ignored him, but Tucker had asked, “What does that even mean?”
“It means I’ve seen better hands on a digital clock!” the guy had yelled and jabbed a finger at Caleb. “I lost two large when you tanked that championship game because you got a little boo-boo and were too pussy to go back in!”
Caleb had erupted. One second, he was drinking a beer, the next he’d taken a flying leap over the table and tackled the guy to the floor.
When we were bailing Caleb out of jail a few hours later, we learned that the guy had gone to college with Caleb, had spent a lot of time heckling him during games no matter how Caleb had played, and had also slept with someone Caleb had been seeing.
Turned out Caleb had not been quiet and calm during that period between getting injured and the bar incident—he’d been a volcano building pressure, and he’d finally burst.
Now he looked at Kiera, rubbing a rueful hand over his jaw. “At least during your meltdown you didn’t get arrested.”
Kiera shrugged. “Day’s still young.” She turned to me. “So who’s the woman?”
A direct question, and I knew it’d only cause more trouble down the line if I didn’t tell her. “Penny.”
She blinked. “The Penny who works for me? My Penny?”
“Yes.”
“You’re seeing Penny…” she said slowly. “One of my employees.”
“If it helps,” Tucker said, “I’m pretty sure he got himself friend-zoned.”
I gave him a shove that knocked him over. “She didn’t start it,” I said to Kiera. “Which means your problem, if you have one, is with me, not her.”
She just shook her head. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Caleb and Tucker slid me a quick look and I knew we were all thinking the same thing—that there were a lot of things we hadn’t told her over the past two years, all to protect her. One of them a six-foot-tall, ex-military man who’d had a personality transplant via stroke.
“Oh my God.” Kiera drew a deep breath. “What else don’t I know?”
Just about everything …
“To be fair to Ry,” Tucker said into the awkward silence. “You haven’t wanted us to tell you much since…”
She grimaced. “I get that. But I didn’t mean to make you feel like you had to keep things from me.”
He cleared his throat. “I believe your exact words were ‘All of you go away and forget about me.’”
Kiera went still, looking stricken. “I said that, didn’t I…” She closed her eyes. “I’m sorry. I take it back.” She turned to me. “But…you and Penny?”
“I mean…maybe,” I said. “Tucker might be right about the friend zone.”
“No,” Caleb said. “No way are you two just friends. I saw her patch you up after you got hurt. I’ve seen how she looks at you. She gets all flustered, like they do in those porn books.”
She looked at me. “You got hurt?” Then turned back to Caleb. “They’re not porn, they’re romances. Not that I expect you idiots to understand.”
“It was nothing.”
“He only says that because he and Penny got to play doctor,” Caleb said. “It looked very cozy.”
“It’s like you want to die,” Tucker said to him.
“Hey, I meant it in a good way,” Caleb said in his defense. “Like genuinely, it’s obvious how much she cares for him.”
“How could she not,” Kiera said softly. She shook her head, like she was surprised at herself. “I hope you’re wrong about her just wanting to be friends. She’s…special.” She held my gaze. “Like you. She’d be lucky to have you.”
I waited an extra beat for the punch line, but it never came.
“Maybe she just needs time,” Tucker said, then shrugged when we all looked at him. “I mean, Kiera’s the only one of us who believed she could be loved. The rest of us…” He shrugged. “We don’t,” he said bluntly. “Maybe she’s like that.”
I thought that was way more optimistic than I could’ve managed to come up with, but I couldn’t deny that I wished with all my might that he was right.
“I’m realizing I’ve missed a lot,” Kiera mused, letting out a long, slow exhale. “I know I’ve taken pain-in-the-ass-baby-sister to new heights these past two years, and I’m sor?—”
“Do not apologize,” I said. “Not to us.”
“No, I have to,” she said quietly. “Because I’m sorry, so very sorry for pushing you all away.
I know it’s words, but I’m ready to show you.
” She paused. Gave a tiny smile. “Also, if I’d known Caleb was stupid enough to give a couple of wild, feral three-year-olds his phone, I wouldn’t have avoided you guys for so long. ”
Caleb looked confused. “What’s wrong with letting them play a game on my phone?”
“They know what the Amazon app looks like and how to work it,” she said. “Yesterday, Amazon delivered three Candy Land games.”
“Shit.” He jumped up and vanished down the hall.
He was back in ten seconds. “I put it in airplane mode.” He looked at Kiera. “No more apologies. I mean, unless you want to apologize for this…” He parted his hair and bent his head to us. “Do you see it?”
“Your brain?” Kiera asked. “No. It’s too small.”
Chuckling, I held out my fist, and she actually fist-bumped me.
Caleb flipped off both of us. “I’m talking about my gray hair.”
“As in one singular strand?” Kiera asked.
“Yes.” He pointed at her. “And it’s got your name on it.”
She leaned in. “Let me see again.”
He lowered his head again, waiting for her to sift through his tousled mop.
“I see it,” she said and yanked it out.
Caleb yelped, then straightened and glared at her. “You can’t do that! If you pull it out, it multiplies .”
“Uh-oh.”
“Uh-oh? What uh-oh?”
“I pulled out three,” Kiera said.
“Liar.”
She held the strands up for his inspection. Three. All gray.
Caleb had his hands on his head as if protecting the rest. “Where did you learn to be so mean?”
“You lot!” Her smile faded. “But thank you,” she said more seriously, to all of us.
“For waiting me out, giving me the time I needed without smothering me—even though I know damn well you were on rotation to watch over me, stealthily filling my fridge with food and my car with gas.” Her eyes went suspiciously shiny again. “You never gave up or left me.”
“Never,” I said.
Caleb stopped messing with his hair and laid unusually solemn eyes on her. “Never ever . Even if now I’m going to have a full head of gray hair before I turn thirty and it’ll be all your fault.”
Her eyes filled and she sniffed.
“Again?” he asked, pained. He’d never known how to act in the face of tears.
I squeezed Kiera’s hand and she sniffed again. “I missed you boneheaded morons.” She then shocked the hell out of me by grabbing us all, hauling us in for a hard hug.
“Ouch,” Tucker said when his head knocked into Caleb’s with a thunk . “Why does your love always hurt?”
Kiera rolled her eyes and stepped back. “I gotta go to work.” She looked at me. “You’re in charge.”
“Hey,” Caleb said. “It’s my day.”
“What the hell,” Tucker said. “They love me best.”
“She picked me,” I said. “But whoever wants Al’s pancakes can come along.”
Caleb and Tucker raced to the door like they were little kids, shoving and yelling, “Shotgun!”
Just then a tornado ripped into the room. Two of them, actually—one named Abi and one named Alex—and took a flying leap at us.
Kiera gasped, but by some miracle, I caught them both.
My sister put a hand to her heart. “We’ve talked about this!” she said to the twins. “You can’t just expect to be caught!”
“Unca Ry Ry always catches us,” Abi said proudly, wrapping her tiny little arms around my neck with the strength of a boa constrictor. She smiled at me and set her head on my shoulder. My heart would’ve swelled with love and affection, but she’d cut off my air supply.
Ten minutes later, we were at Al’s Diner. Everyone scrambled into the big booth in the back. Our order was massive. Apparently emotional confrontations made people hungry.
Fifteen minutes, and three toddler tantrums later, the food arrived on two very full trays. I was halfway through eating when someone said my name.
I turned and came face to face with the one ache still left in my chest—Penny, flanked by Wyatt, Nell…and Hank.