Chapter 28 Brick
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I text the group thread six words: Trailer. Ten minutes. No Reno. Love you.
Levi replies with a thumbs-up and on my way. Cash sends k and a little running man that makes me smile despite everything. Blaze calls me instead of texting, because she’s a walking argument.
“You dying?” she says without hello.
“Not today.”
“Then why the family meeting voice?”
“Just get here.”
“No preview? Come on. I’m your favorite.”
I snort. “You’re all my favorite.”
“Except Reno.”
That earns a sigh. “Even Reno.”
She hangs up before I can say more. Not surprised. She has even less patience than I do.
I tidy the trailer like it matters. It doesn’t.
They’ve seen worse. But I move the ice pack puddle into the sink and throw away the half-empty Styrofoam cups that multiply when you look away.
I wipe the table with a clean towel because if your hands are doing something, they can’t shake.
The AC coughs and throws cool air down in a thin ribbon that hits the back of my neck and makes me remember I’m alive.
Blaze knocks once and lets herself in with the kind of authority only the youngest earns through charm and audacity. She clocks my face in a glance, then the cleared table, and raises one eyebrow.
“I brought snacks,” she says, holding up a bag of something that crunches in a way that will make me crazy. “And I took Reno’s keys again because I like him alive.”
“Thank you. On both accounts.”
Levi slides in behind her, quiet where she’s bright, wearing his usual armor of a plain T-shirt and a posture that makes him look like he’s resting even when his head is too busy. Cash follows, eyes on all of us, as if he’ll have to supervise.
“Where’s the old man?” Blaze asks, meaning Ford.
“Probably having a conniption after the last thing I said to him.”
“Everything okay?” Cash asks.
“I need to tell you something.” My voice is steady.
My ribs don’t feel steady at all. No one interrupts.
Even Blaze goes still. “It’s about Annie,” I add, because their faces make me realize I have to pick which truth opens the door to the rest. Probably should have rehearsed this, but I usually do better flying by the seat of my pants.
Except for right now. “And about me. And about…what’s next.”
Levi’s eyes flicker. Cash’s mouth softens. Blaze’s grin is getting ready to deploy.
“I’m seeing her.” Well, I was…
Levi blinks at that. Cash nods once. Blaze’s tone gives her away. “Oh, really? Annie who?”
Levi cuts her with a glance. “You’re gonna play dumb now?”
“You’re right, I’m too smart for that.” She shrugs. “I knew. Sue me.”
“Back to me, thanks,” I tell them. “It started wrong and then felt right, and I—we—I can’t pretend it didn’t happen, and I don’t want to pretend it wasn’t…good.”
“Okay,” Cash says, first, like he knew and was waiting for me to be the one to confirm it.
Levi’s jaw ticks. “And…what’s next, because you sound like there’s more to it.”
I look at the hat on the table, then at the three faces that make up the part of my world that didn’t leave when the camera trucks did. “She’s pregnant.”
Blaze claps both hands over her mouth and then pulls them away fast. “I knew it!” she says, which is a lie, but she wants it to be true because she’s quick to see where joy can go if you point it right.
“I mean, I didn’t know know it, but…that’s—Dad, that’s—” She starts crying and laughing in the same breath, wipes at her face like it betrayed her, and then grins so hard she might split her cheek.
“I’m no longer the baby in the family! Oh my God, I’m going to be the world’s most inappropriate sister. ”
Levi exhales a long, slow line and braces both hands on the counter. “Are you…okay?”
“Yes,” I say, because despite the way today went, that answer is true. “And terrified. Mostly terrified I’ll screw this up before I get to fix the parts I’ve already knocked crooked.”
“Reno,” Cash says, the name a single heavy word. “He’s going to lose it.”
“He already did. He’s been losing it in one way or another for a long time. This isn’t the cause. Me and her is just his latest excuse. When he finds out about the pregnancy…it won’t be pretty. I know that. But at some point, that boy’s gotta grow up.”
Levi’s not happy about it—I can see it in the set of his shoulders—but he doesn’t wear anger as a way to make me feel bad. He’s not Reno. He just holds me in his eyes and waits for me to explain how I’m going to keep from blowing our family up by accident.
“I should have told you sooner. I should have…I don’t know.
Been wiser. There’s a lot I should have done.
But we’re here now, and I’m telling you because no matter what anyone out there”—I jerk my chin toward the fairground where the speakers never shut up—“thinks I’m supposed to be, I’m going to be exactly three things.
The father you can still come to, the man Annie can count on, and the one responsible for not making this harder than it has to be. ”
Cash rubs his palms together like he’s cold. “I’m worried about Reno.”
Blaze leans across the table to shove a fistful of her terrible snack into his face. “We’ll tag team him. I’ll be mean. You’ll be nice. Levi will be the wall he bounces off when he tries to run.”
Levi huffs a small laugh that he tries to hide. “I can be nice too.”
“Your nice looks like a very stern warning. Or like you’ll rip someone a new asshole. So, try harder.”
He rolls his eyes and swings his gaze to me. “I’m not mad at you. I’m not thrilled about the timing with Reno and everything. But I’m not mad.”
“Thank you,” I say, and my voice betrays me with a crack. “I didn’t—I hoped none of you would be, but this kind of thing is delicate and can jump out the gate wild.”
Blaze is still glowing. “I’m excited. You’ll have a baby.
I will teach them everything. I will buy tiny boots.
I’ll be the one who gets them inappropriately sticky and returns them.
I’ve been waiting my whole life for this moment.
Figured I’d have to wait until these guys had kids, but I get to do it now, and that’s the best news ever. ”
“It’s not about your boot fixation,” Levi says, dry.
“It is exactly about that,” she says, delighted. Then she sobers a little and points a chip at me. “Also, she’s cool. I like Annie. Most of what I know is secondhand—”
“Secondhand?” I latch onto the part of this conversation that isn’t about me being a fool. “From who?”
“Mac, Annie’s best friend,” she says, like it’s obvious. “She’s very chatty and adorable when she’s nervous, which is any time I exist within twenty feet of her.”
“Huh?”
“I get to know a woman when I hook up with her.”
I blink. Then my mouth catches up with my eyebrows. “You—and Mac—”
“Yes, Dad,” she says, sighing. “Keep up.”
Levi scrubs his face with both hands. “This family needs a spreadsheet for us to keep up.”
Cash laughs into his fist.
“Annie seems great,” Blaze continues, unbothered. “Smart. Funny. Kind in a way that has a backbone. Mac’s obsessed. She said Annie’s the kind of person who’d give the last of her lunch to a stranger and then apologize for offering too late.”
“That tracks.” The lump in my throat gets weird, tight.
Levi clears his throat and leans on the counter with both hands again, still trying to do my thinking for me. “What about Ford?” he asks. “He built your current image on family and ladies’ man in equal parts. He’s going to have a stroke. And what about your career?”
“Ford is going to be upset. He’ll tell me I’m ruining the brand if I retire.” I let a grin show I mean no harm, even as I deliver the blow. “He can count himself lucky if I decide to ride professionally ever again.”
The three of them register that at the same time. Blaze sits up so fast the chip bag crackles. “Retirement?”
“It’s tempting me, I’ll be honest.” The word doesn’t scare me as much as it did yesterday. “I’m not announcing anything. Not tonight. But I’m…looking into it.”
Levi nods silently. Cash’s eyes go watery for a second and then he blinks it away, because he’s the one who will always want one more lap even when the ride is done. Blaze looks at all of us and gets big in the face, like she’s going to cry again, but then she swallows and claps once, hard.
“Okay. We can handle that. We can handle anything if we know you’re not going to die doing something stupid just so a crowd will clap.”
“Thanks for the confidence.”
“It’s earned.”
We sit in the hum for a minute. The trailer creaks, the AC breathes out another thin thread of cool, and my kids look back at me the way they did when they were small and I was about to tell them whether snow meant a day off or just wet socks. This time, I don’t have an answer wrapped in a laugh.
“Reno,” Cash says again, because that’s a loop in his brain he can’t stop running. “You think he’ll come around?”
“I think he’ll be mad for a long time. He’ll find every version of this that makes it about me stealing something from him. I think he’ll feel humiliated that it’s me instead of a stranger. And I think you’re going to have to remind him he’s not invincible when it comes to drinking.”
Levi nods once. “We will.”
“Yeah,” Cash says. He’s quieter when he means it. “We will.”
“We will,” Blaze echoes. Then, because she cannot help herself, “Can I tell Mac?”
“No,” I say so fast she laughs out loud.
“Not even the fun part?” she pleads.
“No,” I say, because gossip travels through these grounds on a golf cart with a megaphone, and I want to talk to Annie myself before this goes sideways in a million different ways.
Blaze sighs like I’ve taken sugar out of her diet and then brightens. “So, like, what’s the plan? Do we throw a shower? Can I pick a theme? Is this where I finally get to buy that tiny plaid onesie I saw in Cheyenne?”
“We’re not there,” I say, and I try to make it gentle even though it comes out weary. “Not yet. I screwed up with Annie, but I’m gonna make it right just as soon as we’re done here.”
Blaze reaches across the table and takes my hand before I can pull it away and be macho.
Her palm is small and hot and bossy. “I like her,” she says again, without the teasing.
“Not because of Mac. Because of you. You are…lighter when you talk about her. I think she’s gonna be good for you. So don’t fuck this up.”
I laugh and close my eyes because that is both a mercy and an indictment. “I feel like I woke up and remembered there was more of me than the part that lifts a rope. And I hate that it took this to make me act right.”
Cash stands up. “Alright, you two. Let’s get out of here and let him fix this shit, because our baby brother needs his dad around.”
The other two pop up, but Blaze says, “Baby brother? You mean our baby sister.”
Levi grabs the doorknob. “We have three boys and one girl in this family, which means you are the outlier. They’re having a boy.”
“Pfft,” she snaps. “It’s definitely a girl.”
“What makes you say that?” Cash asks as he heads out the door.
Blaze shakes her head as she follows him down the steps. “Science. Dad had three boys, then me, which means he finally started getting the whole kid thing right. You make the prototype before you create perfection. It’s like evolution or something.”
Levi grins at the two of them as he closes the door. “That’s what we like about you, Blaze. Your delusions come free.”
When the door shuts, the trailer is quiet again, but not in the lonesome way. In the waiting way. I take a breath and let my hands remember what they’re good for when they’re not tied to a rope. Dialing a number, knocking on a door, holding someone steady when the world decides to wobble.
I just hope she lets me.