Chapter 18
Lacey
“ L acey, I still can’t find Dad’s— What the fuck ?” My brother’s voice startles me awake.
I need a moment to regain control of my senses, blinking until I’m able to make out Oliver’s silhouette in the doorway of my bedroom. I can’t make sense of the shocked expression on his face.
That’s when I feel a hard, warm chest pressing against my back, and I look down to see TJ’s arm draped over my stomach.
Oh. That’s why.
TJ and I are spooning in my bed. And we’re lying on top of the covers. Oh, and TJ’s shirtless, only wearing a pair of sweats. We were so exhausted last night we passed out as soon as our heads hit the pillow.
I chuckle nervously. “Oli? W-What are you doing here?”
My brother raises an eyebrow at my question. “Pretty sure I live here. And I told you Malcom’s mom was dropping me off in the morning.”
He did tell me that. Right before he got out of the car when I gave him a ride to Malcom’s. I can’t believe I forgot.
To be fair, after everything that’s happened, it seems like a lifetime ago.
“That’s right, you did. I’m sorry, I completely spaced.”
He doesn’t say anything, watching me struggle to get out of TJ’s embrace. He’s holding me so tight he doesn’t even budge when I wiggle in his arms.
He’s still out cold. Meanwhile, I’m wondering how the hell I’m going to explain myself to my twelve-year-old brother.
Not to mention, me having a sleepover with a boy is the least of my concerns right now. I still have to tell him about me and Sierra almost getting kidnapped so that he isn’t completely clueless when the cops drop by for a few follow-up questions later today.
“Did you want something?” I ask in an attempt to drag Oliver’s attention away from the elephant in the room.
It doesn’t work one bit.
He scoffs. “Seriously? Are you not going to acknowledge the half-naked man in your bed?”
“Oh, him? That’s TJ. He’s… Kelsea’s brother. You know, Sierra’s best friend. A lot happened last night, and we came home late, so he stayed over.”
TJ starts to stir next to me, slowly coming to, and I immediately dread the awkward introductions ahead.
“Why does he look like he was the designated target of an entire paintball team?”
He’s not wrong about that. Bruises spread across the side of TJ’s ribs and oblique muscles, and his wounded lip and cheekbone are impossible to overlook.
TJ opens his eyes a heartbeat later, needing a few seconds to adapt to the sunrays peeking through my drawn curtains. The first thing he sees is me, and his lips curve into the most adorable smile, a smile that fades as soon as he sees my brother standing in the doorway, watching us.
“TJ, Oliver. Oliver, TJ.” I get the formalities out of the way.
TJ releases my waist and sits up in bed, running a quick hand through his messy hair and saying a husky “Nice meeting you, man.”
“Have you been doing nasty things to my sister?” Oli says without a smidge of shame.
“Oli!” I scold him.
“Yeah,” TJ matches his energy.
“TJ!” I scold him, too.
Boys, I swear to God .
“What? He asked.” TJ’s amused grin makes me want to hit him in the back of the head.
“So, you two are dating?” My brother continues to demonstrate that he does not, in fact, have any type of filter.
“No!” I blurt out before TJ can get a word in. “We’re not. We’re… friends.”
“Friends who see each other naked,” TJ adds, causing Oli to laugh, and I punch TJ in the arm. Hard.
“Ouch,” he whines in between laughter. “Would you rather I lie to the kid?”
“I’m not a kid. I’m twelve,” Oli argues.
TJ knows better than to disagree with Oli. “My bad.”
“You didn’t answer my question.” Oli circles back to the point. “Why’s he all bruised up?”
TJ and I exchange glances. This is the fun part. The part where I introduce Oli to the dangers of talking to strangers on the internet.
“Yeah, I’m going to let you take this one,” TJ declares and smacks a kiss on my cheek before rising off the bed. Then he’s walking out the door, probably headed for the bathroom.
I clear my throat. “Oli, I think you should sit down.”
It could’ve gone worse.
Words I’ve been mentally repeating since I broke the news to Oli about how he could’ve lost not one but two of his family members last night.
He didn’t say a word for at least a minute while he tried to process the bombshell I’d just dropped on him. Then, after he asked me five times if I was fucking with him, he did the last thing I expected and gave me a hug.
On purpose.
I didn’t even have to bribe him into it.
The last time the kid hugged me was at our dad’s funeral. Needless to say, I was shocked. And a little teary-eyed.
Although, the affectionate part of him didn’t stick around for long because as soon as he pulled away, he was asking about breakfast.
TJ got it in his head to make chocolate chip pancakes as a result. Of course, Oli couldn’t be bothered to help and disappeared into his bedroom the next second, and we’ve been grinding away ever since—oh, and the kitchen now resembles a war zone.
“What’s next?” I wipe the flour on the back of my hand on my apron, watching as TJ whisks the ingredients together.
He’s wearing nothing but a pair of my dad’s old sweatpants. That and remnants of the flour fight we had earlier.
“Greasing the pan,” he says, and I zero in on the muscles in his forearms flexing as he whisks faster.
Boy, I’m pathetic. It’s gotten to the point where everything he does has me feeling some type of way.
To be fair, he’s shirtless in my kitchen, his gorgeous face still bruised from getting into a fight for me and my sister, and he’s cooking for my family. I’d have to be made of ice not to find him ridiculously sexy right now.
“Lace?” he calls, interrupting my drooling over him.
I snap out of it. “Sorry, what?”
A smile grazes his lips. “Could you take over for me for a bit?”
I clear my throat. “Sure, no problem.”
I fill in for him, mixing away as he heats and greases the pan. I’m so focused on the task at hand I don’t notice him closing in on me from behind.
His mouth finds my ear at the same time his hands lock around my waist. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I can’t stop thinking about bending you over that counter and having you for breakfast.”
“Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I just threw up in my mouth .”
I jump out of my skin at my sister’s voice, whipping my head to the doorway and seeing Sierra and Kelsea watching us.
How long have they been standing there?
I try to step away from TJ’s arms, but he doesn’t budge, his hands tightening around my hip bones.
My cheeks burn with embarrassment. “Oh, it’s not… This isn’t…”
Both Sierra and Kelsea cock an eyebrow, a knowing smile on their faces, and I get the sense that there isn’t a single excuse I could drum up right now that wouldn’t make this look damning. They’re teenagers. Not stupid.
Cat’s out of the bag. Might as well own it.
“Let’s start over, shall we? Good morning, girls. We’re making chocolate chip pancakes. Oh, and TJ and I are seeing each other. Any questions?”
The girls crack a laugh at my I-Don’t-Even-Care attitude.
Kelsea takes it upon herself to start. “Seeing each other how? Like seriously?”
TJ opens his mouth to answer, but I beat him to the punch. “No. Not seriously. We’re just… having fun.”
Sierra snorts. “So, you’re fucking?”
“Not really. We haven’t…” I shut my mouth before I say too much. “That’s none of your business.”
The girls exchange amused glances and cut across the kitchen to sit at the dining table.
“You guys can do whatever you want, but if this all goes to shit, please don’t make it awkward by refusing to see each other,” Kelsea requests.
“Yeah. Kelsea and I are going to stay friends regardless. Just so we’re clear,” Sierra adds.
Man, I hadn’t even thought about that. The possibility never even crossed my mind, but now that they mention it, it would be awkward having to keep seeing him in the event that this all goes up in flames.
“Noted,” TJ assures them.
“Well, then. Now that we’re all on the same page, could you guys unload the dishwasher while we finish up?” I change the subject.
The girls argue a little but end up complying. It isn’t long before TJ and his sister start to bicker, and Sierra and I chime in. Oli joins us a few minutes later, more than happy to talk shit with the girls while I set the table.
This is weird.
All five of us sharing this harmless little banter.
It’s almost like we’re some sort of reconstituted family for a minute there.
And it scares me.
Because I could get used to this.
We all grab a seat at the table to eat breakfast a few minutes later. We’re about to dig in when Sierra says, “Do we have any ice cream?”
I immediately know why she’s asking. It’s another one of our dad’s traditions. Pancakes and ice cream. Don’t ask.
“We don’t, I’m sorry.”
“We can’t eat pancakes without ice cream.” I can tell her emotions are beginning to rise to the surface, her eyes becoming misty.
This is bringing back a lot of memories.
“I can go get ice cream,” TJ offers.
Normally, I’d tell him not to bother, but the look on Sierra’s face is tugging at my heartstrings.
I rise to my feet. “Let’s go get ice cream.”
I knock on Sierra’s opened bedroom door. “Hey, could I talk to you for a second?”
Color drains from her face at my question, but she doesn’t send me away, giving a small nod. She’s lying in bed, rereading one of her favorite romance novels.
She must’ve known that I’d want to revisit what she said in the ambulance. It just took a little while longer because we had company.
TJ took his sister home a little after five. After we dropped by the grocery store to get ice cream, we spent most of the afternoon playing board games—except for when the cops showed up for more questioning.
Oh, and after we finished devouring our ice-cream-covered pancakes this morning, TJ opened the freezer to put the ice cream away.
There was no room, so he had to reorganize the freezer, and it turns out…
My dad’s watch was hiding in there.
Oli looked like he was about to cry when TJ pulled it out.
The verdict? Oli’s sleepwalking again. He used to do it often growing up, but I thought that was over. It hadn’t happened since we found his favorite action figure in the microwave one morning when he was ten.
I enter Sierra’s room and take a seat on the edge of her bed. “I wanted to talk about what you said in the ambulance.”
She puts her book down and sits cross-legged on her bed. “Then talk. Let’s get it over with.”
Just like that, she’s back at it.
Being this closed-off, less-than-pleasant teenager.
“I’m sorry, that was bitchy.”
My, my, could this ordeal have given my sister some perspective about the way she talks to me?
“What did you mean? When you said I protect you too much?”
She swallows hard, doubt smeared all over her face.
“Sierra, I want this to work. I want to be good at this, but I need your help.”
That seems to help my case because she exhales a sigh.
“You said it yourself, you’ve been trying to be Dad. You got so caught up in trying to be this perfect parent that you just… stopped being our big sister.” She scoots closer to me on the bed. “You and I, we used to tell each other everything. We were so close. You were the one person I could tell all of my secrets to. Things Dad never knew about.”
She’s right.
We used to be partners in crime.
High school Lacey used to talk boys with her and tell her all about the wild things she’d done behind her parents’ backs. We had a very different dynamic back then.
“I feel like I can’t talk to you anymore. Especially not about Dad. You never bring him up. For God’s sake, you barely cried after he died. It’s like you never even grieved him.”
Her words hit me like a truck.
Because she’s right.
I didn’t grieve him. Not completely anyway. I still haven’t accepted that he’s gone. I convinced myself I needed to be strong for my siblings, but maybe that was just an excuse so that I wouldn’t have to deal with his death.
My heart caves in on itself.
She thinks I don’t care.
She couldn’t be more wrong.
“Do you remember when I used to pick you and Oli up from summer camp? Before we moved?”
She furrows her brow. “Yeah?”
It was right after our dad’s accident. Back when we still lived in Silver Springs, our hometown. Before I left for college and moved us out here. Sierra had landed a job as a lifeguard at a summer camp, and Oli was a camper there. It was easier for me as I could drop them off at the same place in the morning.
“You used to get mad at me because I would always pick you up ten minutes late, remember?”
She nods.
“I would always get there early and park down the block so you wouldn’t see me. Then, I would just set a timer and cry for those ten minutes. It was my ritual. Every day for months, I’d have a ten-minute breakdown, and then when the timer went off, I’d put on a happy face, wipe my tears, and go pick you up.”
She’s speechless.
Understandably so.
She assumed because she didn’t see my suffering that it never existed.
“It’s not that I didn’t cry. It’s that I didn’t let you see it. Dad always seemed so strong. Even when Patricia broke his heart and left him, he never let it show.”
“Because we were kids! We were too young to understand heartbreak, but we’ve grown up since then. I hate that you feel the need to shield us from everything. You don’t need to be strong all the time.”
Tears begin to amass in my eyes, and, of course, my instinct is to try and bury my feelings before they’re set free, but I refuse to take the easy way out. These tears need to be shed, so I let them flow without restraint.
Everything I know about being a parent, I learned from my own parents. On one hand, my dad never shared his emotions, and on the other, my mom shared them too much. She treated me like her therapist. My mom dumped her trauma on me and made me feel like it was my responsibility to make her happy. I promised myself if I got to be a parent one day, I’d be nothing like her.
Maybe that’s why I’ve been so careful not to let my siblings witness my pain. By wanting to be nothing like my mom and everything like my dad, I forgot that there needs to be a balance.
“I’m so sorry. I just wanted to be like him,” I croak.
I don’t know what else to say. Thankfully, that’s all she needed because she doesn’t answer, opening her arms for a hug.
“You’re not Dad. You’re you. And that’s okay. I miss my big sister. Can you bring her back?”
I nod. “I can do that.”
I welcome her embrace, finally liberating myself from a burden that’s been weighing on my chest for years, and allow my tears to stream down in an unrelenting cascade.
Only then, when I fall apart in my sister’s arms, do I understand that being strong isn’t about making people think you’re unbreakable.
It’s about knowing when to share your broken pieces with them.