Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
“A bruised tailbone, a broken rib, and a swollen ankle. All in all, relatively minor injuries considering your fall.”
Cal replayed the doctor’s words to his mom in his head as he drove her home. The drive from the hospital in Jackson back to Windsor was quiet after midnight, no one else on the tree-lined road except the occasional eighteen-wheeler. Cal turned on his high beams and navigated in silence, Barbara brooding on his right.
Christ, he was tired. And there were only a handful of hours before he had to start his workday.
Grinding his molars together, he passed one hand down his face. “What were you even doing on the roof?”
“Cleaning the gutters.” Mom’s voice was as petulant as a child’s—and a little woozy thanks to the painkillers—as she stared out the window, hugging one arm to her ribcage. Cal had broken a rib once when he was a teenager and the pain had been excruciating. He wouldn’t wish that on anyone. “You were supposed to do that earlier, but you left in a huff after mowing the lawn, so I had to do it. So really, this—” She waved at her entire person. “—is your fault.”
Hands clenching on the wheel, Cal sucked in a slow and steady breath through his nose. “I was going to do it on Wednesday when I brought your weekly grocery order,” he said through gritted teeth.
“They needed to be done now.”
More like stubbornness had sent her up the ladder and onto the roof without the proper safety measures in place. She’d fallen from a single story only, but still—people died from that kind of fall.
Silence sat between them the rest of the way home. Guilt ate at Cal’s stomach with hungry teeth, gnawing until he felt like he was going to throw up. He shouldn’t have left like he had this morning. Should’ve stuck around to finish his chores. If he had, none of this would’ve happened. He wouldn’t have gotten a phone call from the hospital, wouldn’t have spent hours in the emergency room, wouldn’t have had to put up with the guilt his mom piled on top of his own, wouldn’t have missed dinner with?—
Shit! Austin.
“Fuck.”
“Language.”
It was an effort not to roll his eyes. As though Barbara hadn’t let the F-bomb drop every day of his life.
The amount of willpower it took not to reach for his phone was almost more than he could stand. Somehow, he made it to his mom’s, got her inside, and?—
“What time will I see you tomorrow?”
He paused, one foot out the door. “Excuse me?”
“I’ll need help making breakfast. And you’ll need to come back to help me with lunch and dinner too.”
“Are your arms broken?”
Cal winced, hating himself for sounding like an ableist asshole. Guilt hit again, stronger than ever.
But there was also a kernel of annoyance—a very large kernel—simmering beneath his breastbone. Had she asked instead of assumed, he would’ve agreed to drop by mid-morning to help her out. But everything was the same as it had always been, with Barbara acting like she was entitled to something Cal had never agreed to give.
Anger turned her cheeks ruddy. “You need to?—”
“The Mountain Peak Diner has an app now,” he told her. “Order before eight p.m. and they’ll deliver. I’ll send you the link.”
With that, he stepped outside and shut the door behind him. He jogged back to his truck, pulling out his phone as he did so.
“Shit.”
He had numerous missed texts and calls from Austin, as well as four voicemails. He ignored the texts for now and hit Play on the first voicemail as he backed out of his mom’s driveway.
The first voicemail was simple enough, Austin wondering where he was and telling him about cooling pizza. The second would’ve been simple too—if Cal hadn’t known Austin well enough to hear the thread of fear in his voice. The third was a simple, “Call me back when you get this.”
The fourth?
“Okay, I’m way past the point of thinking that you’re avoiding me because you don’t want to talk.”
Cal sucked in a breath. Had Austin really thought that?
“Because you wouldn’t ghost me like this,” Austin’s message went on, that thread of fear kicked up to level twenty. “Not after all the texts and voicemails I’ve left you. Which means something’s wrong, and I’m trying really hard not to imagine all the scenarios that would keep you from calling me back. I’m at your house keeping myself sane by reorganizing your pantry—which, by the way, how many times do I have to tell you that the peanut butter and Nutella go on the same shelf?” There was a long pause in which Cal could imagine Austin running a hand through his hair and yanking on the strands out of frustration. “Just... please call me back. Please.”
Since Cal was pulling into his driveway as the voicemail ended, he didn’t bother calling back. Just parked in a hurry and bounded up the porch steps.
God, he hadn’t meant to worry Austin. Had simply forgotten all about tonight when he’d gotten the call that his mother was in the hospital. All he could think was, what if she died and his last interaction with her was one where he shoved his earbuds in his ears to drown her out?
Of course, then he’d sat next to her in the ER and listened to her complain for hours. About the wait times, the no-nonsense attitude of the triage nurse, the lack of beverage options in the vending machine, the hard-backed chairs, how long it had taken Cal to arrive, the bumpy drive in the ambulance from Windsor to Jackson, and anything else she could think of.
All the reasons he wanted to drown her out summarized in an hours-long soliloquy in the emergency room.
It had gotten him thinking, though—what did he want out of his relationship with his mother? If she—or he—died tomorrow, was there anything he’d regret never having said?
He hadn’t come up with any answers.
His front door swung open before he reached it. Austin stood in the doorway, face pale, hair in disarray, dark bags under his eyes. “Thank god.”
The relief, worry, and love in that one statement nearly knocked Cal sideways.
“Are you okay?” Austin’s gaze raked him up and down. “What happened? Where’ve you been?”
“Sorry.” Cal stepped inside and walked right into Austin’s space and circled his fingers around one wrist. The skin was warm and smooth but his arm trembled ever so slightly. “I’m so sorry. My mom had to go to the hospital and I lost total track of time.”
“The hospital?” Austin let the door fall closed behind him. “What happened? Is she okay?”
“She’s fine. Bruised her tailbone and broke a rib.”
“Doing what?”
“Falling off the roof. She’s lucky she didn’t break her neck.”
Austin’s brows drew together. “What was she doing on the roof?”
“Cleaning the gutters.”
This is your fault .
Cal gritted his teeth against that memory, his fingers flexing on Austin’s wrist.
“They have services for that,” Austin said. “Hell, she has you for that.”
Cal kicked off his boots and set his cowboy hat aside and didn’t bother explaining about this morning. He still hadn’t let go of Austin.
“Well.” Austin let out a quiet breath. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
He didn’t express the same sentiment about Barbara. Because, Cal knew, Austin didn’t much care about her.
Not that he wanted her dead. Just that he wouldn’t shed a tear if something happened to her.
Cal wasn’t sure he would either.
Of course, that added yet more guilt on top of guilt on top of guilt...
Christ, he was tired. Weary down to his bones.
“I didn’t mean to worry you,” he told Austin.
“I know. Have you eaten?”
“No. But I don’t want your cooling pizza either. Pizza’s meant to be piping hot with?—”
“Melty cheese,” Austin finished with a laugh, chasing some of the shadows out of his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, I know. I can whip up something quick. Scrambled eggs and toast? I’d offer the muffins my mom made for you, but I stress ate them all.”
Cal laughed, imagining Austin sitting at his kitchen table, slathering butter on muffin after muffin. Austin started for the kitchen, and since Cal was still holding on to him, he followed along dutifully.
Austin flicked on the kitchen lights, and Cal blinked against the harsh glare, noticing the scratches on Austin’s forearm for the first time. “What happened here?” He swept his thumb up one of the scratches, about two inches long. Looked like it had broken skin at one point.
“Huh?” Austin’s arm jerked, and his voice went breathy. “Oh, uh...” He cleared his throat and stepped out of Cal’s reach, slapping one hand over the scratch as though trying to erase Cal’s touch. Or, judging by the color in his cheeks, trying to preserve it.
Cal swallowed hard at the thought.
“Sully went a little crazy after our drive,” Austin said. “I tried to get him to settle and got scratched for my troubles.”
“Sully is...?”
“My neighbor’s puppy. You met him recently, remember?”
“Right. Were you pet-sitting?”
“All freaking day,” Austin grumbled. “First and last time. Puppies are terrible. Why would anybody want one?”
Cal sank into a chair at the table, and even though he’d been sitting all day, sitting in his own home helped rid him of the stress of the last few hours. “Like babies, right? Isn’t that what people say?”
“Except worse. Babies can’t run away from you.”
Cal watched Austin pop bread in the toaster and crack enough eggs into a pan for three people. His movements were graceful, liquid, and familiar, though his shoulders were a touch higher than normal and he kept glancing at Cal, perhaps to reassure himself that Cal was still there. Cal rose to lean next to the stove so Austin wouldn’t have to crane his neck so much.
Shoving his hands in his pockets, Cal debated not asking, but fuck it—this was Austin. He’d talk about anything, even the hard topics. “Speaking of babies, did you and Lindsay want kids?”
Austin grabbed a spatula from the holder next to the stove. “Yeah. We wanted the whole house, white picket fence, two-point-five kids, and a dog thing.” He gave Cal a cheeky smile. “We didn’t know better about the dog.”
“So... you want kids then?” Cal asked, his heart rate kicking up for no discernible reason.
Austin didn’t lose the smile as he pushed the eggs around in the pan, but its edges softened. “That’s not a yes or no answer. I wanted kids with Lindsay because I liked the future she saw for us. But Lindsay isn’t here. That future she saw, I’m never going to have it, no matter how much I once wanted it. I came to terms with that a long time ago. If I’m lucky enough to—” He broke off, his movements stilling for a moment, before his gaze came up to meet Cal’s. “If I’m lucky enough to be someone’s person again, the whole kids thing would be something we decide together. It needs to be right for us, as a couple.”
Right for us...
As a couple...
Cal’s pulse drummed in his ears. He could see it as surely as Austin no doubt could, the two of them, at some point in the not-so-distant future, having an honest conversation about whether or not they wanted kids.
At this present moment, however, Cal didn’t have a ready answer for him.
Besides, there was another conversation they needed to have first.
“I’m sorry about last night.”
Austin blinked once, clearly startled. “What are you sorry for? I’m the one who should be sorry. The whole thing was—” He cut himself off again, searching for the right word.
“Not us,” Cal supplied, reaching out to run a finger over the back of Austin’s hand because he couldn’t not touch him. And for the first time ever, Cal felt like he could touch him in the ways he really wanted to.
“No.” Austin’s voice was barely a whisper as he watched Cal’s fingers close around his wrist again. “It wasn’t us.”
“Maybe we can try again?” Cal hadn’t known the words were going to come out of his mouth until they did, but he didn’t regret them.
Austin’s gaze flew to his, wide and dumbstruck and so, so hopeful. “You really want to?”
“Yeah. Just... no fancy restaurants this time, okay?”
“No,” Austin said with a laugh. “Definitely not. I’m thinking something much more low-key.”
He’d been thinking about it, had he? Cal didn’t know what to think about that except Holy shit. This is serious.
He squeezed Austin’s wrist, then let go. “Okay.”
“Okay.”
That hopeful glint to Austin’s gaze intensified, turning his eyes from aquamarine to teal. It was heady, being the center of Austin’s focus like this. It was terrifying too, not knowing where this change to their relationship would take them. But if Austin was willing to take the risk, Cal could at least meet him halfway.
Because wasn’t that what they’d done their whole lives? Meet each other halfway?
Austin’s gaze dropped to Cal’s mouth, and Cal inhaled sharply when Austin swayed forward and?—
The scent of burned eggs split the air between them, burning Cal’s nostrils. He sneezed.
Austin frowned and stared morosely at his eggs. “Damn it. It is not my day for meal prep.”
Cal laughed and got the egg carton out of the fridge.