Chapter 6
Chapter Six
“Hey ZB, did you want a ribeye or a flank steak?”
“Ribeye,” Zane grunted. “What kind of question is that?”
“Greedy,” Lila commented, pushing over to where Zane was standing by the barbecue. “I’ll just take a strip, Cody.”
“That’s just because you don’t have discerning taste,” Nolan said. “All taste the same to you.” He reached out and ruffled Lila’s hair, like she was a small child or a pet, and she rounded on him, teeth bared.
They never knew what to do when he was in the middle of this sort of thing, and years of it hadn’t helped him figure it out.
It was so… Familiar.
He could remember times like that, but it had been so long since he had been a part of a family unit that they felt like half-member daydreams.
He could remember chasing his brother around the house, threatening to kill him for daring to breathe toward his gaming system, and he could remember beating him with a pillow when he caught him.
But it brought things up to the surface every single time he was in the middle of this, and he wondered if that would ever change. If it would ever fade.
The only way to really let all that fade away was to be alone.
It haunted him then, in a different way. Usually, in the middle of the night, which was why he usually slept with the lights on. Sure, he slept out in the wilderness in the pitch dark. But there was something about the wilderness that calmed him.
When he was in a bed, in a bedroom, half the time he left the light switched on because when he opened his eyes and tried to remember where he was after a particular vivid dream, he needed to be able to place himself immediately.
He had mainly come tonight because he had invited Cara. He wanted to see how she was doing. After all that. Thinking about her made his stomach just a little bit tighter, made his muscles twitch.
But he just stood there, waiting for Cody to put a steak on his plate.
That was when he saw that little car in the distance on the road.
“Cara is coming,” he said.
With the steak on the plate, he walked away from the group and set it on one of the tables outside, then moved around to the front of the house, just in case she needed help with anything, considering she was still on crutches.
He stood there, arms crossed, as she pulled up next to Marlowe’s car and reached over to the passenger seat for her crutches, which were taking up the space there.
He moved over to the car and opened the driver’s side door. “You good?”
“Yeah. I don’t… I can stand, actually, it’s just I’m using these out of an abundance of caution, so that doesn’t take me any longer to heal than it ought to.” She dragged the crutches out of the car, placed them out in front of her, and then hoisted herself up out of the vehicle.
She took a couple of steps away from the car, and he closed the door for her.
“Thank you,” she said.
“No problem. Can’t get the image of you buried in all that rubble out of my head.” He’d meant it to be flippant, but it was also true. He couldn’t get the image of her buried like that out of his head, vulnerable and in need of protection.
“Well, you don’t need to remind me of that.”
He grunted. “It was pretty pathetic.”
“I was there. Believe me. Nobody felt more pathetic about it than I did.”
“Fair enough,” he said.
Their eyes clashed and held, and he had the strangest sensation of not being able to catch his breath. He didn’t know what that was.
“Come on,” he said. “There’s steak. Ribeye and strip, what would you like?”
“Would you think that I was an absolute uncultured swine if I said I don’t totally know the difference?”
“You will pay a lot more for one of those cuts at a restaurant.”
“Oh. Well, I don’t mind.”
She should have the ribeye, though.
“Do you have anything that you need me to help carry?”
“Oh, I did bring… I almost forgot. I have some sweet rolls that need to be eaten.”
“Great.”
“In the backseat.”
“All right,” he said, moving around to the back of the car and grabbing the basket of sweets.
Then the two of them walked around the side of the house toward the back, where Cody was grilling.
He looked at the grill and saw that there were no more ribeyes to be had.
“Here,” he said, gesturing toward the plate that he had set on the table. “This one’s all ready for you. Go ahead and sit down.”
He walked over to the grill. “Can I get a strip?”
Cody’s eyebrows shot up. “Sure,” he said.
“She’s on crutches,” he said.
“So she is.”
“Just saying. And she brought sweet rolls for you, assholes.”
“Oh, yum,” Lila said, digging into the basket, even though she was holding a full plate of food. She took a bite of the sweet roll and left icing all over her lips. He wasn’t sure he was hallucinating when he saw Nolan’s eyes dip there just for a moment before moving away quickly.
“Go sit down,” Nolan said. “You’re feral.”
“I’d rather be feral than boring,” she said.
“Who are you calling boring?” Nolan asked.
Lila sniffed. “I think you know.”
“Okay,” Cody said. “Take this bullshit away from my grill, please. You’re going to permeate the meat with your salt.”
Lila skipped away toward where Cara was sitting and joined her at the table. For his part, Zane went and filled a plate up with sides, both his and a clean one for Cara, and brought it to place down at the table.
He could feel everybody watching him, but nobody said anything.
Then he cleared his throat and sat down at the far end of the table.
He mostly watched everybody make conversation, listened as Marlowe retold the story of looking for Cara again, from her perspective, and Lila and Nolan looked on.
It was then that he realized Walker wasn’t there. He should’ve noticed it from the beginning, but he and Walker never really made much conversation.
But it was odd to have him not there, adding snarky asides to the conversation.
They were halfway through the meal when Walker came through the house and out the back door, his phone pressed to his ear.
“Yes, I know that there were peacocks at the Hancock wedding. Yeah, I provided the peacocks, so I’m familiar.
We’re more than acquaintances now, honestly.
Their names are Cagney and Lacey. I… Sure, I can get them for the bridal shower if you really want them.
But I did feel like they were more of a ceremony feature.
” He paused and made a frustrated sound in the back of his throat.
“Well, it’s just that they do have a pretty packed schedule, and you asking for them right now means that I might not be able to get them.
Okay.” He continued to walk toward the grill, grabbed a plate, and dished himself a steak while he continued his phone call.
He looked toward the table and made an exaggeratedly furious expression.
“I know you’re busy. Yes, I’m quite sure that running for mayor takes a lot of time.
As does being a bride. I’m here to help with that process.
Not with your campaign.” He rolled his eyes.
“No, but I will… Cagney and Lacey will be on scene. I just want you to be aware that we may have to move the bridal shower within your weekend reservation. If that’s negotiable.
Does it really matter if you have the formal gift-giving portion on Saturday or Sunday?
Okay. I think we can figure something out. You too, Addison. Bye.”
He hung the phone up and then performatively dropped it into the grass. “Fuck my life,” he said, making his way to the table.
“What’s going on?” Nolan asked.
“You know, we’re hosting the Carey wedding in a month.
A month, and this woman is still changing things.
She’s having a bachelorette weekend before the wedding and is inviting basically every woman in town under the age of thirty, present company excluded, because you all are not classy enough to merit an invitation, and she needs the peacocks.
Those goddamn peacocks are haunting me.”
“What’s the story with the peacocks?” Lila asked.
“Oh, we had them a couple of weddings ago,” Cody said. “The bride wanted white peacocks at the ceremony. It was… It was a whole thing.”
“And now I have a peacock guy,” Walker said. He sat down at the table, his hands pinched into triangles. “I have a peacock guy,” he said, gesturing broadly with his still tightly clenched hands. “Which is a weird sentence. But here we are.”
“You handled that very well,” Lila said, reaching across the table to pat him on the wrist. Zane thought that he might take her hand off.
“Well, the weddings are bringing in a ton of revenue,” Cody said. “So let’s all give our thanks to Walker for fielding bridezilla and adding so much to the new Painted Ridge Resort.”
Everybody but Zane raised their Solo cup in his honor.
Zane did think that what Walker did sounded like the next level of hell, but he wasn’t foolish enough to involve himself in something like that. So there.
Everything just felt a little bit crowded after that. And that was his cue to leave. He was never one to linger.
He slipped away while everybody else was chatting, and was around the side of the house and nearly to his truck when he heard gravel shifting behind him. He turned around and saw Cara.
“What are you doing?”
“I just wanted to thank you,” she said, looking up at him with sincere eyes. “For everything. Again. You’ve been really kind to me.”
“I’m glad you didn’t die.”
The words came out gruffer than he’d meant them to, but it was true. He was glad that she was still here. He was glad that it wasn’t the kind of tragedy that was sudden and relentless, and that couldn’t be negotiated with.
He would rather give somebody his ribeye any day of the week than have them be six feet under.
He would rather she be here on crutches and need a little bit of help than not be here.
That was maybe a bit overdramatic considering the situation, but he knew better than anybody that what started as a normal day could end in tragedy.
He hadn’t had anybody to take care of in a long time. And while he still wanted to keep a distance between the two of them, he appreciated that he was able to do something for her.
“Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Other than continuing to bring the baked goods? No.”
But something grabbed hold of him low and tight. Something that he wanted to ignore, feral and masculine, growling inside of him.
There was something that he wanted from her.
But he didn’t want to want that.
First of all, because he wanted to be able to keep his distance, and second of all because… he’d like to be decent.
He’d like to be doing this for her just because she had been through something terrible, and not because he wanted to taste her skin.
He shouldn’t be obsessed with her.
“And follow through with that survival training.”
“You really think I need that?”
“You live here. You need to stay safe.”
He could channel that desire into the need to protect her, and dammit, that was what he was going to do.
“Okay. Well… I’ll see you. Once I’m off my crutches, we’ll get all that wilderness stuff together.”
“Sounds good.”
She turned away from him and went back toward the party.
For a long moment, Zane just stood there, alone.