Chapter 29
29
I t had been three days and Carlisle felt like she was about to crawl out of her skin. She remembered this feeling from the days right after she’d come out of the water. When she’d been on antibiotics and her mother had hovered incessantly and fed her nothing but soup.
Reminding herself there was an upside—she didn’t feel that way all the time and she had come out of it—wasn’t much when she was feeling the urge to flee her own body. But she tried to talk herself down.
Charlie had come home. He’d been home for seventy-two hours and . . . nothing. Everyone else had gone to see him, except her. She’d kept her promise and not bothered him. He had enough people showing up, asking how he was doing and wanting answers.
She had messaged him once that she heard he arrived. She’d simply let him know that she was here, that she wasn’t going to bother him until he requested that she come by or call or whatever. And that all he had to do was say the word.
But he hadn't said anything .
Though she’d stayed away, Jane was right about the family fungal structure. The network had been activated and probably wasn’t at all what Charlie needed. Carlisle had managed to get most everyone else on board—at least the cousins. By the time she got to Jax, though, he'd already showed up and said hello.
He insisted that Charlie seemed fine.
Of course he did, Carlisle thought. That's what people did when they weren’t fine. But Charlie had been home three days and hadn’t contacted her. In fact, he hadn't messaged her anything in the last two months, which was not like him.
He was obviously home. Obviously, his phone worked. People had seen him, and he’d held up well enough to seem fine. But she was worried. If nothing else, she’d learned that worry did no good. Shit could strike at any time. It had been a perfectly normal day when she’d slid off the road into the water. Worry had done nothing for her.
She did manage to get to Emma Kate and Keith. Emma Kate was fully on board with not bothering Charlie and had even managed to convince Carlisle’s mom that enough of them weren’t going to be able to make it. Convincing Westerley Weaver to hold off on anything was an achievement worthy of an Oscar.
For that, Carlisle was going to be grateful for maybe the rest of her life.
Then there was Simon. She'd seen Simon a handful of times since the other night. She'd gone over to check on Kitten several times each day, often staying to keep the adorable baby company. But that meant she now had a key to her boyfriend's house.
And he was her boyfriend . He told her so. As ridiculous as the word was, she found she liked it. It settled into her soul like something right in the world. Then there was Kitten who would come running when she walked through the door. Maybe she did need a kitten of her own, but not yet. Right now, this little girl needed her attention and gave plenty in return. Kitten was keeping her sane right now.
Yesterday, rather than coming to check on the baby and getting stuck on the floor playing with her, Carlisle had simply brought her laptop and planned to stay. She’d worked at Simon's table for a while and, a few times, she'd let her fingers drift up under the edge, feeling the condom still taped there.
She'd lose her train of thought, trying to imagine exactly what fantasy he had. The table wasn't that sturdy. She’d have to get him to show her.
She made sure to leave before he got home, though. He’d told her to let herself in, keep the baby company, stay as long as she wanted, but she still didn’t want to invade his space.
They’d had dinner together two out of three days. She'd stayed over once, and she had no idea how to tell him that she'd seen what he was hiding. She wanted to say she understood, but the thing she understood the most was that she probably didn't understand at all. She was a nurse. She basically had a few names for it and that was all. Everything else was still up to him, even if she’d seen it.
She was sitting on Simon's couch, her laptop on her knees with Kitten draped over one side of her lap. The baby had her little paws forward, head down, passed out cold after a bit of play. She didn’t even budge when Carlisle’s phone rang or when she dug it out of her back pocket.
Too damn cute. Carlisle ran her hand down her head, grateful that she was touching another living thing that wanted her there. What wonderful moral support the tiny baby was.
But Carlisle felt her head jerk in surprise. Her brother's name splashed across the screen, finally calling her. she answered, suddenly excited and wary at the same time.
“Do you want to go get lunch?” he asked her as if it were any normal Friday. No hellos, no mention of why he was home or why he hadn’t contacted her in so long.
She wanted to say no, she couldn’t. She had real work to do, an odd feeling after so long of self-propelling and doing that badly. Apparently, people had found the website and, though it wasn't a lot, there were a few orders from names she didn't recognize. She'd asked Jane about it and had finally gotten word that three of the people were Jane’s family doing the same as Carlisle’s had. But there were four that neither of them knew.
Carlisle immediately wondered if they were fakes of some kind. But Jane pointed out that the money had deposited into their account, so the credit card numbers at least had been real. Carlisle had then expressed worry that it was fraud. Jane wanted to know who was going to commit credit card fraud for one car kit? On pre-order at that?
So they would count those as legitimate sales. Carlisle still had to clear out her garage, which turned out to be far more work than she’d expected. When she didn't feel like she could get moving, she remembered that she had to do it so that Jane didn't fail.
“Of course, I can go to lunch,” she told her brother as if this were a perfectly normal conversation. “Do you need me to come by and get you?”
“Please.” He didn't have a car at home, and she wondered if he'd gotten his motorcycle out of storage again. Probably not a good idea . She didn't even mention its existence.
She wanted to tell him that she needed to finish her work, that she would be a little while, but she couldn’t turn him down. Besides, it was two o'clock and she hadn't eaten. She'd come over late that morning, played with Kitten, and expected things would go much faster than they had with the website.
She’d been right, Kitten had enjoyed the company. And so had she, but now she had to go. She didn’t have to ask where he was, they all knew he was at Mama and Daddy's. He was probably sleeping in his old room and she wondered what that was doing for his mental health. His baseball posters were still up on the wall. No one had repainted that almost-concerning shade of blue of one of his favorite teams.
She still lived in town, so she'd been in his room more than once and was grateful that someone had taken down the posters of his celebrity crushes. Not only was it a bit much, but they were all tacky and out of date by this point. Mom had left the pennants up, and the shelf with his trophies from middle school and high school and even college and a handful of odd medals on a corkboard. Carlisle knew those would get displayed whether you wanted them to or not. Mom had a thing about celebrating your wins.
“I'll be there as soon as I can,” she told him and hung up the phone. She tried to quickly finish what she’d been doing before exiting her program. She couldn’t afford to leave anything glitching on the website.
At least she’d been working on the backside of the site, and it shouldn’t affect any of these unknown people who wanted to buy a Carlisle’s Kit. She closed the laptop, reminding herself the production company had bumped the delivery date again, moving it forward only one day. But it did change when she needed to have her space ready.
That thought alone activated a whole new set of nerves. Her brother had contacted her, and everyone said he seemed just fine, but nobody knew him the way she did. Something about a twin bond maybe, or it was about being the same age, or maybe for getting in trouble together so many times as kids and even teenagers. She knew things were off and she was afraid of what she might find.
She moved Kitten off her lap, the baby protesting with a tiny mew of irritation. As the little eyes came open and glared at her, the little feet wobbled back and forth in place, as Kitten showed Carlisle what she thought about being disturbed.
“Sorry, baby girl. I've got to go, but I'll be back,” she told the kitten.
She’d be back, even if she didn't know what she was walking into.