Seven #5
He gently dried my face, patting it, and then tipped my head so he could dry my hair.
“You’re soaked. You need to get everything off. What were you doing?”
“Moving cars, carrying Shelly out, stuff like that,” I replied, lifting my head. “All good?”
He reached out and put his fingers through my hair, raking it back from my forehead. “There you are.”
“Does it look all right?”
He smiled. “You’ve got a lot of hair, and some of it is standing up.”
“Aw, man,” I whined, walking by him, taking off my boots and leaving the mudroom in my socks. “Do you have any idea how much work it takes to reach this level of perfection every morning?”
“Well, it’s nearly two now, so it doesn’t matter anymore, though I’m betting you roll out of bed and it just falls into place with how thick it is.”
I rounded on him. “You would be correct.”
“Yeah, I figured,” he rumbled, his gaze locked with mine.
We stood there silently.
“I’m gonna go change.”
“Do it fast because I wanna talk to you.”
“Yeah,” was all I could think to say before I bolted from the room, moving quicker than I needed to.
In my room, I stripped down, throwing everything over the top of the shower door to dry, and then grabbed a pair of underwear, cargo pants, a long-sleeve T-shirt, and socks. On my way back out, I nearly plowed into Luke. He took hold of my hips to steady me.
“Sorry,” I said quickly.
He didn’t let go, instead taking a step closer and staring.
“You all right?” I asked softly.
“You weren’t sure of her,” he replied, studying me.
“No, I wasn’t.”
“And because of that, you brought Tatum to me and sent me upstairs, and then the boys. Because you were afraid she might hurt us, given the state she was in.”
“I don’t think she would have, but you’re right. I wasn’t sure.”
“So in that moment,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper, “you chose to direct whatever she was feeling at you and not any of us.”
“Of course. That’s what I’m paid to do.”
He shook his head. “You’re full of shit.”
This was a surprise. “Sorry?”
“I saw it in your face. Your voice was so steady, but your eyes gave you away.”
“I don’t know what you?—”
“You didn’t want Shelly anywhere near Tatum or me.”
“Again, that’s the?—”
“No,” he insisted, and I saw him swallow and felt his hands clutch my hips. “You didn’t need to protect us. She couldn’t have hurt us, but you were thinkin’, she’s acting strange around my people. It’s why you sent the boys upstairs too. You’re attached, Nash Miller, and you’re not supposed to be.”
“No,” I granted, “that’s right. I’m not supposed to be.”
“You fell for my kids.”
“Yeah,” I confessed. “It’s easy to do.”
“Yes, it is. And though I yelled at you this morning, and then you assaulted me with not one, but two towels, I?—”
“Really? Assaulted?”
“Even with our shitty start, you still hugged me when I needed it and kept me from falling apart.”
“I dunno about that. You’ve done pretty well.”
He scoffed, and his hands slid up from my hips to my sides. “I have been a shit father and almost lost my kids, but I’ve come home to a completely different…everything.”
“It’s not me. It’s the kids. I promise you.”
“It’s the kids wanting the change, yes,” he husked. “But everything feels better, lighter, and how you handled Shelly… I need to know what happened there.”
“Of course. Come with me.”
He let me go, and I led him to the dining area, where I took a seat on the bench at the table so I could put on my socks.
“You don’t like the chairs,” he said, smiling.
“The chairs are… I think the seats are too short or something.”
“I agree. Always have. We’ll get new ones.”
I was going to correct him and say, you’ll get new ones, but it didn’t feel like the time. “Okay, so…” What was I supposed to say?
“Just tell me.”
“My guess is Caitlyn’s friends knew she was going to divorce you and go and live with Conti in San Francisco even before she confessed her plan to you.”
“I have no doubt they knew before me. She told Ronnie, Kara, and Shelly everything. I mean, Shelly is her oldest friend, has been since we moved to this town before Griff was born.”
“Where did you and Caitlyn meet?”
“In Seattle. I came here from Maine on a job, she was here for school. Once I met her, I decided to stay.”
“Romantic.”
“I suspect you’re the romantic.”
“Never been called that before,” I assured him.
“No? You and your big, soft heart? Never been called a romantic?”
Big, soft heart? “No, but listen. Turns out Caitlyn filled Shelly’s head with you and Tatum, and Shelly thought you two were going to be hers.”
He was quiet a moment, but I saw the exact second my words sank in.
“I’m sorry, the fuck did you say?”
I coughed softly. “See, Caitlyn had Shelly believing that?—”
“You’re assuming this, or you know ?”
“She told me. Shelly did. So yeah, I know.”
He stood up and started pacing. “My ex-wife promised her best friend that when she left, I was hers for the taking. Is that what you’re saying to me?”
“Yes.”
“Did she lose her fuckin’ mind?” he roared, pacing faster, longer, farther, needing the space, I was guessing. “What the fuck ?”
“I think it originally came from a good place of wanting you and the kids to be taken care of once she left, but Shelly has a thing for you, which Caitlyn knew, so it makes what Caitlyn did very much not okay.”
He froze, then wheeled around to stare at me.
“She does,” I reiterated. “And it’s not new.”
“No.”
I nodded.
“For crissakes, Nash, I would never have asked her to check in on my kids if?—”
“I know,” I soothed him.
“That’s not me. I’m not that guy. I would never take advantage of someone’s feelings.”
“I know,” I repeated, my voice gentle. “Really.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Don’t make me say I know again.”
He huffed out a breath. “I can’t believe her.”
“Again, I think she wanted you all to be looked after.”
“All of us? I didn’t hear you mention Griff and Dar.”
“No. No I didn’t.”
“What happened there?”
“I think she wasn’t sure what to do with them. I mean, you, that’s romantic, she gets to sleep in your bed and?—”
“ God. ”
“And Tatum, Shelly was looking forward to doing mother-daughter things with her. The boys were harder for her to think about.”
“I could never have anyone in my house who didn’t love all my kids equally.”
“Of course not. But Shelly had this picture in her head, while at the same time dealing with this huge loss, and like I said to Tatum earlier, she’s wanting things to be the same so she can step in and be the mother.
Now, I don’t know what kind of relationship she had with hers, and maybe there’s shit to work out there too, probably is, family trauma is common as hell, but really, none of that has anything to do with you.
I’m explaining because that’s how I did it when I was a detective. I had to know the why.”
“But it doesn’t matter, does it? The why, I mean. You catch the bad guy, and they’re tried for committing the crime. The why makes no difference.”
I smiled. “You sound just like my old captain. Jesus, I can’t tell you how many times he said the same thing to me.”
“You drove him nuts.”
“Absolutely,” I assured him with a grin. “He hated me.”
“I doubt that.”
“No, no. It was hate. Believe me.”
“This fixer job suits you better, doesn’t it?”
“It does. Now I know the why from the start.”
“Okay, so it sounds like Shelly acted like she did because of her loss.” He retook his seat across from me.
“That’s exactly right. I assured her that once she feels better, she and I can have a talk.”
The expression on his face told me he didn’t love the sound of that.
“What’s wrong?”
“I should be included in that, don’t you think?”
“No, sir. I will go through everything with her, and as far as she’ll know, you’re clueless, so she won’t be embarrassed or humiliated. You will have chalked up today to her being overwrought from taking care of her mother and then losing her.”
“It’s like it never happened.”
“Yes. She gets a do-over,” I concurred. “Two weeks from now, when she sees you at the store or comes by for a visit, I will have talked to her, and she’ll know that everything Caitlyn said was bullshit and that you would like to be friends if she’s amenable.”
He leaned his chin on his fist. “Why would Shelly ever believe any of that in the first place?”
The answer, I thought, was simple, and I was sure it would come to him in a moment.
“You’re lookin’ at me like I’m an idiot.”
“I am not,” I insisted, but he was right. I was.
“Because she wanted me and my daughter.”
“That’s right,” I said, meeting his gaze. “Good old-fashioned wishful thinking.”
“I get wanting Tatum, but?—”
“Nope,” I stated, getting up and walking toward the wall. “I refuse to stroke your ego.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” he called over to me.
“You’re a catch, Duchesne. You own your own business that you work hard at to provide for your family, you’re young, handsome, you have amazing kids, and now you have a really cute cat who is, I’m happy to report, disease-free but for some worms.”
“ Worms ?”
“Easily remedied, my friend,” I told him, turning the corner and reaching the bottom of the stairs. I then yelled up, “You can come down now.”
They were right there, of course they were, all three on the landing, waiting.
“How much did you hear?”
“Just the last bit about Dad being a catch and us being amazing,” Griff said smugly, smiling at me.
“I said annoying, not amazing,” I corrected him, walking away. “Maybe we should go get your ears checked, because you’re clearly having trouble parsing words.”
I heard them all rushing down the stairs like a herd of elephants as I retook the seat across from their father, who hadn’t moved.
Griff reached me first, put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed tight, content, it seemed, to hold on a moment before he sat down beside me.
“It’s okay,” I promised him as Tatum slipped in next to me, her arm curling around mine so she could lean her head on my bicep.
“What was wrong with Aunt Shelly?”
“It’s her mom, love.”
“But she was mad about the house and my IG and—she was never like that before.”
“I know, but we have to forgive her for scaring you.”
“Because she’s so sad.”
“That’s right.”
“If she’s so sad,” Darwin asked, taking the seat on the other side of Griff, leaning on him, “how come she even came over?”
“Well, she thought she had to check in on you. She didn’t know I was here, and she was worried and didn’t want to let your father down.”
They were all quiet.
“Do you want to cook lunch, or do you want me to do it?” I asked Griff.
“Why don’t I do it?” Luke suggested.
The silence was deafening, and when I turned to look, I enjoyed seeing the stunned expressions on the faces of the two youngest. Griff, though, appeared more worried than anything else. Refocusing on Luke, I squinted at him. “I feel like maybe you can’t cook at all. Is that the case?”
“No,” he apprised me, sounding both defensive and belligerent. “I can cook.”
“Oh yeah? Like, what can you cook?” I goaded him.
The way he didn’t immediately rattle off a list was telling.
“Bad salmon,” Tatum chimed in. “Like, I don’t know how he did it, but he made it gooey on the inside and burned and crispy on the outside. It was not good.”
“That’s a fair assessment of the facts,” Darwin agreed.
“That was the air fryer,” Luke explained.
“The mac-’n-cheese came out much the same way,” Darwin said with a cough.
“No,” Luke was adamant. “No. That was because the stove was too hot and made the cheese runnier than I thought it could get.”
“Did you just say the stove was too hot?” I asked him, a picture starting to form.
“What about the spicy spaghetti?” Griff wanted to know. “Didn’t you make that with, like, salsa and marinara and tomato soup?”
“No. That was tomato paste.”
“Was it?” Griff did not sound convinced.
“Listen,” Luke began but went suddenly mute because Griff was already smiling crazily as he got up, walked around the table, and nearly fell into his father’s arms.
Luke’s face, the surprise and delight, happiness and tears, was worth the wait.
Finally, Griff had let his father back in.
And yes, he’d only been home half a day, but if it felt like an eternity to me, I was guessing it had to have been killing Luke.
And he was right—I was more than a little attached to all of them.