Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
After the disastrous dinner when Andy left and like a coward she hadn’t gone after him, she’d stayed to face her family’s barrage of questions.
Thankfully, Annie stepped in when it became clear that Kat didn’t have the capacity to answer any of them. They knew enough.
And they’d already all formed their opinions about it. It didn’t matter what she said about it. They were angry. Especially Craig and Asher. They felt betrayed, and Kat couldn’t blame them.
They had been betrayed.
By both of them.
She’d slipped away from the big house as soon as she could. Kat expected that Andy would be waiting in her apartment. But there was no indication that he’d been there at all.
She texted and left messages on his phone that went unanswered. She waited up as long as she could but finally succumbed to sleep shortly after midnight; the events of the evening had exhausted her.
Kat woke just after four in the morning and reached over to Andy’s side of the bed, but it was empty.
Slipping out of bed, she crossed the hall to the guest room where he’d only slept that last week while they’d been fighting. But the bed hadn’t been slept in.
They’d been fighting because she was afraid to tell her family about them. “See?” she said to the empty room. “This is why I didn’t want to tell them.”
But wasn’t it inevitable that it would happen eventually anyway? She’d always known that they could never be together. They’d only been delaying the inevitable.
She retrieved her phone from the bedside table but there were no messages. She tried calling him again, but her call went straight to voicemail.
There was no way she could go back to sleep, but it was too early to do much more. She made her way downstairs and stopped in front of the hall table where the package from her father still sat waiting.
Kat picked it up and held it. “What do you have for me now, Dad? What more do you need from me?”
She blew out her breath and put the package down again. She was being unfair. Her father had never demanded much of her. As the baby in the family, she’d always gotten away with more than the others. Their dad always let her off the hook if there was something she didn’t want to do .
Except for this.
Kat stared at the package and her ready pack that was propped up against the wall next to the table.
“Okay, Dad. You win. Let’s go hiking.”
It had to be better than sitting around, waiting for another fight.
Or worse, having to admit that she screwed it all up and had lost Andy for good.
“Thanks for letting me crash here.”
The kitchen in Symon and Charli’s kitchen was bright and welcoming, full of plants. A tabby cat hopped off the counter when he walked in and threaded herself through his legs. He bent and scratched the cat’s ears.
“I know that probably didn’t make you very popular with the rest of the family,” he said to Charli when he looked up.
“Don’t worry about them.” She handed him a cup of coffee, which he accepted gratefully. “They’ll calm down.”
He noticed she didn’t say that they’d get over it, or come to accept his relationship with Kat.
“I hope so.” He sipped at the coffee and sank into a chair at the table as Symon walked in with the baby on his hip.
“Did you get any sleep, man?”
With nowhere to go after leaving the big house the night before, Andy had been beyond grateful when Symon followed him outside and offered him a bed for the night. He could have gone back to the apartment; everything inside him wanted to, but there was a time to push the issue and time for a little space. He was smart enough to know that a little time for everyone to cool off, him and Kat included, was probably a good idea. Besides, she’d made her choice clear.
Andy shook his head. “Not much.” He watched while Symon strapped the baby into her highchair next to him and tossed a handful of tiny fish-shaped crackers on the tray. She was such a happy baby, it was hard not to smile just watching her. “Someone looks like she got a good night’s sleep.”
“Ha.” Charli laughed from the counter where she was whipping up a bowl full of eggs. “I swear, that child gets by on only fifteen minutes a night. I’m exhausted. It’s my natural state by now.”
Andy leaned over and handed Poppy a cracker that was just out of her reach. “If I’d known, I could have sat up with her. I don’t think I slept more than fifteen minutes myself. But I probably wasn’t very good company.”
He sat back in his chair and lifted his mug of coffee.
“So.” It was all Symon said as he sat across from him at the table.
“So.”
“I had an inkling that’s what was going on.”
“You knew?” Charli appeared and smacked him with a tea towel. “How could you know about this and not say anything? ”
“Whoa.” Symon held his hands up. “I said I had an inkling. That’s like barely even a guess.” He raised his eyebrows in Andy’s direction, but Andy wasn’t going to be much help. “Nothing was confirmed.” He winked at Andy, who only shook his head and looked back at his coffee.
Would it have been better if he’d confided in Symon when he had the chance? Maybe he could have softened the blow? The rest of the family didn’t seem as protective over Charli and her choice of partner.
“Why is that?” he said out loud. “Why didn’t your brothers freak out when you and Symon started dating?” He elaborated before either of them could ask what he was talking about. “Why did they all go straight-up ballistic when it came to Kat, but they’re totally cool with you?” He pointed a finger at Symon.
“I am pretty awesome.” Symon shrugged.
“Seriously, though?”
Charli rolled her eyes at her husband. “Seriously,” she said. “It’s because Kat’s the baby, Andy. You know that. Craig and Asher have always been super protective of her. And Chase…well, that’s different because he was gone so much when we were young, but I think even he recognizes that Kat’s, well…” She shrugged. “She’s Kat.”
Andy shook his head. He knew all that. He’d seen their protectiveness firsthand growing up. But he never could have envisioned the level of rage he’d witnessed from either of them. “That can’t be it. It doesn’t make sense that it’s just big brother protectiveness.”
Charli blew out a breath and took a seat next to Symon. “ Honestly, I think it only got worse after Dad died. It’s as if they just thought it was their job to look after her.”
“And you?”
She laughed. “I never needed looking after.”
“But neither did Kat.” The way Andy saw her was a strong, independent female who had her life together. She owned a successful business and handled her life without a problem. What was he missing?
“That’s how you see her.” Charli gave him a knowing smile. “But that’s because you see her as a woman.” She stopped short of wiggling her eyebrows, a detail Andy was grateful for. “But the guys see her as a little girl. A little girl our dad always coddled a little bit. Definitely more than the rest of us. I think when he died, they just subconsciously kept caring for her like that. But I agree with you, Andy.”
“You do?”
She laughed. “Of course I do. My little sister is badass. Are you kidding? She started a successful business and made her own way in the world almost before any of the rest of us. She works her ass off and she’s never asked for help. Which is a different issue.” Charli nodded. “I have that problem, too.” She winked at her husband. “But I do agree with you that she doesn’t need to be taken care of, and she definitely doesn’t need her big brothers playing gatekeeper on her personal life. Especially not when she’s clearly chosen a good one.”
Andy let her words soak in. “Wait. You think I’m a good one? ”
“You don’t?” She looked at him pointedly. “Because I will retract every single thing I just said if you?—”
“No. No.” He held up a hand and laughed. “Obviously, I’m a good one. But it means a lot to hear you say that you think that when clearly you’re the only one.”
He dropped his head and stared into the depths of his coffee cup. He hadn’t wanted to admit it earlier, but with everything that went down the evening before, it wasn’t the punch to the face that hurt the most. It wasn’t even that Kat had chosen to side with her family—he knew she was in an impossible situation. It was that the men he considered brothers hadn’t thought he was good enough for their little sister. The way Craig, Asher, and even Chase had looked at him with so much anger and disgust had been the biggest blow he could have sustained.
“Andy. Look at me.” Charli used her mom voice, so he had no choice but to comply. “I’m going to ask you a question that I’m pretty sure I already know the answer to. And really, it probably should be one of the guys to ask, but since my brothers are clearly too stubborn to pull their heads out of their asses, I’ll be the one to do it.”
He waited while she sat back in her chair and took a deep breath.
“But before I ask it, I need to apologize on their behalf. You didn’t deserve that reaction yesterday.” She shook her head as he moved to protest. “No. It doesn’t matter if you sprung it on them, or if you held their hand through every moment. It doesn’t matter how they found out about you and Kat—the guys never should have reacted that way and you didn’t deserve it.
“And you definitely didn’t deserve to be punched in the face.” She looked pointedly at his swollen lip. “How does it feel?”
Andy nodded. “I’ll live.”
“You’re a good man, Andy Fisher. We love you like family. All of us,” she added. “Even if they’re mad right now. They still love you, and they’ll get over this, too. Just as soon as the shock wears off, they’re going to see what was right in front of all our faces.” She laughed and looked at Symon, who shrugged. “Yeah, yeah. You had an inkling .”
“I was pretty sure.” He winked, and she shook her head.
“So,” Charli focused on Andy again, “the only question left is…”
Andy inhaled deeply, pretty sure he knew what she was going to ask.
Charli leaned over the table and looked straight into his eyes. “Do you love her? And if the answer is what I think it’s going to be, what exactly are you going to do about it?”
“And whatever it is you’re going to do,” Symon added, “you better do it soon. We leave for Switzerland tomorrow morning.”
Fuck.
“I need to tell her,” he said, more to himself than anyone else.
Charli smiled knowingly. “But what are you going to tell her? ”
“I think Kat deserves to be the first person to hear that, don’t you?”
“Good answer.” She winked. “Have you heard from her this morning?”
Andy shook his head. “I lost my phone somewhere last night. Probably on the kitchen floor after…” He touched his jaw tentatively. “It doesn’t matter.” Only one thing mattered now. Kat. “I’ve gotta go.”