Chapter 14
Holt
“Pop Pop!” Leah yells as she tears through my parents’ house like a banshee. Lauren follows behind her at a slightly slower pace.
“Lee Lee!” Dad yells back at her. He’s in the kitchen, rolling out pie dough.
He’s covered in flour as usual, and his grin is just as wide as it always is.
His hair is mostly gray now, but it used to be jet-black when I was a kid.
He might be seventy, but he acts twenty years younger.
That’s mostly due to the fact that Mom and Dad still work the farm like they always did.
My twin brothers, Camden and Reese, live on the property and run it as a business, but our parents still help every day.
Leah moves a stool around the island to stand next to Dad. “I want to help.”
“Go wash your hands first. Then you’re on flour duty.”
She dutifully climbs off the stool to wash her hands in the hallway bathroom sink before racing back.
Dad narrows his eyes at her. “Did you use soap?”
“Yes?”
He just gives her his “I wasn’t born yesterday” look, and she turns around and is gone much longer than the first time.
“What’s something new you’ve learned this week, Lo Lo?”
Lauren grins as she settles onto a stool. “My art teacher taught us how to watercolor.”
Dad’s pride shines in his eyes. “You know who will want to see those paintings.”
“Uncle Nix! I brought my sketch book to show him.”
“He’s in the greenhouse with Mimi.” Dad nods toward the back door. He barely has the sentence out of his mouth before Lauren jumps off her stool and rushes outside with her sketchbook clutched to her chest.
“I’m ready now. You can smell my hands.” Leah races back into the room with her hands held out.
“I believe you. Hop on up here. I need you to sprinkle flour on the dough when I say.”
“Got it. And we only use a little at a time ’cause the dough will get too dry.”
“That’s my girl.” Dad winks at her. “What new thing are you working on, son?”
My self-control. I don’t say that out loud though.
It’s killing me not to ask Gia to spend time with me every day.
It’s as if the days are flying by in a blur.
The upside is, I think she’s feeling the same way.
We text almost every day, and if I’m not asking her to come over for dinner, she’s asking me to get coffee or go to lunch.
There have been several lunches spent not eating actual food, and I swear every time I get that woman naked, I become this insatiable man I don’t recognize. I kind of like it, and Gia seems to benefit just as much.
“I’m learning new things about myself.”
“Does this have anything to do with the cute little blonde I’ve been hearing you’re hanging out with lately?”
“That’s Gia. She’s so nice. She had a sleepover with us.”
Dad raises an eyebrow at me.
“She got stuck on the side of the road in that snowstorm we got during the Ice Festival, and the girls and I picked her up. She didn’t have anywhere else to stay, so she stayed with us for a few days.”
I swear, Dad’s shoulders drop in disappointment. “Well, that was nice of you.”
“We’ve had lunch a few times since then,” I emphasize the word to key him into my relationship with Gia.
Dad’s face lights up. “That’s wonderful, son. Did she want to come out here with you guys?”
“Aw, Daddy. We shoulda inbited her. I coulda showed her my tree house.”
That tree house was built when I was a kid, and yet it’s sturdier than ever. Dad regularly checks that none of the boards have rotted and that it’s safe.
“I believe she had other plans today,” I tell Leah.
Gia didn’t actually have plans today. She asked what we were up to, and when I told her we were coming out to the farm, she seemed a little disappointed.
I wanted to invite her right then, but that would’ve been way too much for our temporary relationship.
Fuck, every time I think about this thing ending, my stomach knots. I don’t want it to be temporary. I want her to stay, but that’s insane. She’s only been here for three weeks. It’s not possible to have this strong of feelings for someone I barely know.
I dodge Dad’s narrow-eyed stare. It’s the one that my brothers and I always hated. We swore Dad could read our minds when he looked at us like that.
Before he can needle out what’s on my mind, Gage and Xander walk into the house.
“Hey, Holty!” Gage grins at me. He gives me a tight hug, and I hold on to him until he lets go. It was one of the things Mom always did with us. She was never the first person to let go when we needed a hug. Sometimes she’d hold us for several minutes when we were really needing a cuddle.
Gage is the baby of the family at twenty-eight. With his blonde hair pulled back into a man bun, he looks like he’d fit in on a beach better than the mountains.
Behind him is Xander, the second youngest of the Basil clan at thirty-three. As a mechanic, he always smells like fresh soap with a hint of motor oil. It doesn’t matter how many times he washes his hands with that orange shit—they’re still stained with grease.
“You doing okay?” I ask Xan as he gives me a quick hug after Gage walks away.
“Yep.”
“Verbose as ever,” I tease. He rolls his eyes, having heard the joke too many times to find it funny anymore.
In a house packed with people, Xander always seemed to fade to the back.
We did our best to ensure he felt included, but he preferred to read while the rest of us played board games or wrestled when arguments broke out over who was cheating.
Mom and Nix come inside with Lauren behind them, jabbering a million miles an hour. Mom has her gray-streaked hair pulled back in a clip today. She’s got dirt smeared across her face that Dad immediately tries to wipe off as he lovingly grins at her.
“Hey, Holty.” Nix gives me a quick side hug. “I need to go wash my hands. Mom had me helping her spread compost.”
“I wondered what that smell was.” I grin when he rolls his eyes.
Mom’s compost usually contains some type of manure, which is great for the garden but disgusting if you think too hard about it when you’re using your hands to spread it out.
It doesn’t normally smell too bad, but the teasing comes naturally when you’re the oldest of six.
Nix is three years younger than I am, and Reese and Camden are five.
Despite our age differences, the six of us are close.
I’m not sure if it was the shared history of being adopted out of foster care or if Mom and Dad just created the right environment for us to grow close, but my brothers are my best friends.
We did everything together. The farm was our playground, and we got up to so much shit we never should’ve been doing.
Mom and Dad usually knew when we’d done something shady, but because we were usually doing it as a group, they had a hard time punishing us to the full extent.
Most of our choices were questionable, but we always had each other’s backs.
As the oldest, I took our safety seriously, so we weren’t in any real danger.
The worst we got was a couple of broken bones, and those happened when we weren’t being stupid.
“Someone set the table. Lunch will be ready in a minute,” Dad says as he puts the pie into the oven.
He’s perfected his timing for dessert to be finished right when we’re done eating.
He taught me everything I know about cooking.
Granted, I won’t ever be as good, and no matter how much I try, baking is a lost cause.
My brothers used to complain if I tried to help with dessert—I seem to have a negative impact on it despite following Dad’s very specific instructions.
We’re working together to set the table when Mom’s voice reaches us from the kitchen. “Holt Isaiah Basil!”
I wince at her shrill tone.
“Someone’s in trouble,” Gage singsongs. I punch him in the arm, which only makes him laugh harder.
“Yes, ma’am?” I respond when I get back in the kitchen.
Mom’s hands are on her hips, and her face is lined with disappointment. “I thought you were bringing your girl with you?”
I frown. She can’t possibly be talking about Gia. I literally just told Dad about her. “What girl?”
“Don’t act like I’m stupid. Your sweet little friend that Marcie told me you’ve been having lunch with.”
Ah, fuck. I forgot Mom attends the crochet club. “It’s not exactly like that,” I try to reason with her.
“She is all alone in town, and I’ll bet she hasn’t had a decent home-cooked meal since she arrived. You call her right now, Holt Basil. I can’t believe I raised you to be so heartless.”
“Jeez, Mom. The guilt trip is a little much.”
“Apparently not, since you didn’t have the decency to invite someone over who could use a good meal.”
“She’s not starving. And you’re crazy. Why would I subject her to the loony bin that is our family?”
Mom gives me her no-nonsense look, which means if I don’t have Gia here in five minutes, she won’t let me have pie, and that would be tragic. I love Dad’s cherry pie.
I sigh and pull out my phone. Gia’s name is at the top of my call log, so I press it and hold my breath.
This is going to be a disaster.