Chapter Twenty-Three Barrett
Chapter Twenty-Three
Barrett
No one moved.
My mind raced, battling between running after her, and not making a complete spectacle of what had just happened.
“She seems . . . nice,” Ruby said carefully.
Griffin nodded, catching my eye with a smug smile.
“I get it.” Ruby whacked his chest, and he rubbed at the spot.
“Ouch. I don’t mean it like that. There’s not a single woman on earth who would ever top you, birdy—but for him .
. .” he said, gesturing toward me, still frozen in place, staring after where Lily had stomped off. “I get it,” he finished.
Ruby was appeased by this, and I’d witnessed enough of their teasing to know she wasn’t really mad at him in the first place. With a growing sense of hysteria, I thought about what my brother had said. About how Ruby loved it when he pissed her off.
Well . . . I’d gone and done that.
“Wait,” I said, setting my hands on my hips and turning toward Griffin. “What did she say before I came out?”
His face went blank. “Nothing.”
“Bullshit, what did she say?”
“Nothing,” he said slowly, “that I’m going to tell you,” he finished in a rush. He winced. “Pretty sure she’d rather die than repeat it at the moment, so I think you should give her a little breathing room—”
“No way,” Ruby interrupted. “Go over there. She’s embarrassed. You could see it on her face.”
“Just give me a hint,” I told Griffin. “Was it good? Bad?”
“Eh, a little of both? She’s not happy with you. Well . . .” He paused to consider, tilting his hand back and forth. “She’s not happy with me because she thought I was you. And that is all I’m going to say about it.”
“Shit,” I whispered under my breath. “When do you guys need to leave?”
Griffin glanced at the watch on his wrist. “Less than five minutes. I thought we’d have more time, but the roads are getting worse, so we should head to the airport.”
I nodded wearily. “I’ll try to talk to her after you leave. I need to say goodbye to the kids.”
Griffin leaned in and tapped me on the chest. “Snowed-in weekend. No work. No kids. Don’t fuck this up, Barrett. This might be your best shot at getting laid in the foreseeable future.”
Ruby pinched the bridge of her nose and muttered something under her breath.
My brother grinned. “She does that a lot.”
“Thank you,” I said flatly. “That’s helpful advice, while she’s over there plotting my death.”
“I am here for you, brother.” He winked, and I wondered how he might respond if I punched him in the throat.
With a sigh seemingly born from the depths of my weary soul, I pulled myself together enough when the kids jogged out of the house, hopped up on adrenaline for their long weekend in Colorado. They both hugged me fiercely.
“Be respectful, use your manners,” I told them. “Listen to Uncle Griffin, and make sure you abide by the house rules.”
“Pfft. We don’t have any house rules,” my brother said.
Ruby just shook her head and mouthed, Yes, we do.
I smiled.
The kids promised all manner of things—that they’d be perfect and never get in trouble again and I was the best dad in the entire world for allowing this. Their eyes were bright with excitement, and it tempered the sting of missing them. They weren’t even gone and I already did.
“Will you get bored?” Maggie asked.
“Are you kidding? I can’t wait to be bored.”
Griffin and I shared a look, and he wisely decided not to call me on my bullshit. I didn’t know how to be bored any more than he did. I’d be working within fifteen minutes of them leaving the house. At home, due to the storm, but working nonetheless.
The kids gave me one last hug and piled into the car with Ruby. Griffin paused, holding out his hand, which I grasped in my own.
“Maybe, uh, maybe next time you can come with them,” he said casually, belying the brief flash of intensity in his eyes.
“You’d want me to?”
He shrugged, tucking his hands into his pockets. “I guess.” Then he stopped and looked up, his eyes clear and direct. “Yeah. I’d want you to come next time.”
My chest clenched. “Okay.”
“Okay.”
I managed a small smile. “Text me when you land.”
He snorted. “Like you won’t be tracking our flight.”
I laughed easily. “You’re right. I will.”
“Unless you’re busy,” he said with a meaningful look next door.
“Aren’t you leaving yet?”
Griffin grinned. “Yeah. But, uh, I don’t think you have anything to worry about. You only get that worked up about someone when they’re really under your skin.”
Anticipation had my stomach in knots. To talk to her. To find out what she’d said that had her so upset. Just . . . everything. I anticipated Lily, in every way she’d allow me to have her.
After the car left, I walked over to the house and knocked on the front door.
Nothing.
Hands cupped around the glass, I peered in through the side windows, but there was no movement. The TV was dark, only one lamp on in the living room, but the lights were on in the entryway. I reached over to press the doorbell.
“No, thank you,” she yelled.
“Lily, open the door. Please.”
The entryway lights turned off.
I knocked once more and tried the doorbell, but then I heard the slamming of a door inside the house, and I looked up at the sky.
The flakes weren’t big and fluffy anymore, instead coming down sideways, swirling in the gusts of wind. I wasn’t wearing a coat, and my hands were absolutely frozen.
“I’m going back,” I yelled at the door. “But only because I don’t really feel like getting hypothermia. I’m going to call you, okay?”
There was a loud thumping noise on the other side of the door, then a muttering sound, and I wondered if she’d kicked a wall or something.
I jogged back over to my house and stomped the snow off my boots before walking in the front door, toeing them off onto the mat and going straight for my phone where I’d left it on the kitchen counter.
The phone rang and rang; eventually the sound of her voicemail picked up.
“Hi, this is Lily. I don’t listen to voicemails, but I do answer texts. I trust you can make the right decision with this information.”
A sigh burst out of me, and I scratched the back of my neck.
Me: Will you please talk to me?
Lily: Nope. Can’t.
Me: As happy as it makes you to yell at me, I’d think you’d leap at this chance.
Lily: Sorry. I’ve reached my word quota for the day.
Me: Lily, please.
And then nothing. Our text thread showed a message that she’d silenced her incoming notifications, and I let my phone fall out of my hand with a loud clatter. Hands braced on the counter, I allowed my head to hang down while I tried to figure out what to do.
Maybe she did need some space.
But it felt wrong to just let this go. I picked up my phone again and sent her one more text, then forced myself to go do some work while the snow continued to fall.
Three hours later, the house shook, buffeted by the relentless wind as it howled outside. Glancing up from where I sat with my laptop, I was stunned at how much snow we’d gotten since I’d settled in with work.
Pushed around by the wind, the snow had formed serpentine drifts along the back of the house, coming halfway up the slider by this point in the day. My phone remained quiet, but I checked my messages anyway.
Another gust of wind kicked up, and I watched the branches of the trees bend to the merciless force. A large branch snapped off the oak tree in the corner of our yard, immediately disappearing into the snow. The kids would’ve gotten a kick out of that.
I heard another crack of a tree branch—this time coming from the front of the house—and when the lights flickered but held, I thanked my past self for installing a whole-house generator as soon as we’d moved in, just in case the power eventually went out.
My thumb drummed on the table as I stared in the direction of the house holding the woman currently ignoring me. She’d never lived through a major winter storm and didn’t own a home. Would she know how to hook up a generator? If they even had one . . .
Picking up my phone, I shot a quick text to Scott asking if he had a generator, and he replied immediately.
Scott: Hey, Coach. We don’t, unfortunately. Starter button died on the last one and I never got around to replacing it before we left. How is it up there?
Me: Cold. Snowy. Wind is pretty angry. Lights flickered but didn’t go off.
Scott: Yet.
Me: Yet.
Scott: Thanks for keeping an eye out. I’ll make sure to get a new one when we’re back.
I thought about trying to call her again, but I knew she wouldn’t answer. The lights flickered again, and I looked up, holding my breath.
Everything went dark.
“Shit,” I muttered.
In less than thirty seconds, all the lights came back on, the whirring of the generator attached to the back of the house hardly noticeable over the sound of the wind. The temps outside were brutal; the windchill on my phone showed negative five.
Without pausing to think about just how pissed off she’d be, I yanked my coat on, shoved my feet into my boots, and snatched the key to their house off the hook on the wall in the mudroom.
The wind was biting, and I kept my head down as I trudged through the snow, trying to find paths that weren’t as tall because of the drifting.
With my gloved fist, I pounded on the door. “Lily!” I yelled. “Open up.”
“I’ll be fine,” she called back, voice on the other side of the door.
“Lily,” I said, worry getting the best of me, the anxious feelings gnawing at my gut, turning it into something churlish and restless. “Open the fucking door; this isn’t the time to be stubborn.”
The door whipped open, her face barely visible through the two inches she allowed. “I’m fine. You don’t have to take care of me.”
Before she slammed it shut, I wedged my shoulder into the opening and pushed her back easily.
“You fucking caveman,” she said through gritted teeth, trying to use both hands to close the door on me.
When I was through, she stumbled back, and I eyed her head to toe. She was wearing a hat and gloves, thick woolly socks on her feet, and two blankets wrapped around her shoulders.
“Is your heat not working?”
“It was,” she hedged. “Before the power went out. But just looking at this shit made me cold.”
I pushed my tongue against the inside of my cheek. “You need to come with me.”
“The hell I do,” she said, head rearing back. “The power will come back on. Any second, I bet.”
I pulled out my phone and brought up the outage map. There were outages all over, and her brow furrowed, deeper and deeper the longer she stared at it.
“Well . . . that doesn’t mean anything.”
I tapped on the area over our neighborhood. “No restoration timeline is available. If they’ve got downed lines all over because of trees, it could be one night. Could be two. But I promise, if you’re cold now, you’re in for a rude awakening when the temps start dropping in here.”
Her eyes flickered. “Let me guess, your house is toasty warm.”
“I have a generator, so yes, it is. So either you’re driving to find a hotel . . .” My pause gave both of us enough time to glance outside, and I could practically hear her whimper. “Or you’re coming with me.”
She scoffed. “I can’t believe I thought you were turning nice,” she said, trying to brush past me. “Feel free to add kidnapping to your résumé.”
“I know that you’re embarrassed and you’ve had a really shitty couple days,” I said, tone low and urgent.
I had roughly thirty seconds before she either bolted or took a swing at me.
Lily froze, her eyes flickering back up to mine, and despite the chill in the air from my less-than-subtle entry, her cheeks were flushed pink. “I’m being nice now, and you know it.”
“What if I want to stay here and freeze?” she said. “What if that’s preferable over having this conversation with you?”
My temper ignited. “Then you’re even more stubborn than I thought.”
She let out a harsh exhale and started striding away. I grabbed her elbow—or tried, through the thick layers of blankets—and she ripped her arm away.
“Go back to your warm house with your fucking twin. I have blankets and . . . more blankets. I’ll be just fine right here without being tormented by you and your mirror image.”
Lily couldn’t even look me in the eye when she said it, the color climbing higher in her cheeks.
“I’m sorry you found out about my brother that way. We will talk about this, one way or the other,” I told her in a rough voice. “Doesn’t matter if it’s now. Or tomorrow. Or next week.” My volume increased. “But you are not staying here with the power out.”
By the time I’d finished, I was yelling, and Lily sucked in a deep breath, eyes lit with emotion. God, she was beautiful when she was pissed off. She shucked off her blankets and poked me in the chest.
Anger caught fire the moment she touched me. Anger and something else. Something hotter, and much, much harder to control. A high I’d never felt in my entire life.
“What the hell are you going to do about it?” she said, leaning until I almost grabbed her face and used my mouth and my hands to shut her up. “I fucking dare you to try and boss me around right now.”
My molars clenched together so tightly, I swear my jawbone creaked.
That slight pause must have looked like defeat to Lily, because she stepped back, a smug smile pulling at her lips.
That was when I bent at the knees, braced my shoulder in her midsection, banded my arm tight around the backs of her legs, and straightened to my full height.
“Put me down!” she yelled.
“Not a chance.”
The door slammed behind me, and with Lily pounding ineffectually against my back, cursing my existence to the angry, swirling sky, I marched us right back through the snow to my house, a grim sort of satisfaction flaring to life in the empty parts of my chest.
Keep pissing her off, my brother had said.
No fucking problem.