Eighteen
HUTCH DID NOT drop me, right then, at the sound of Cole’s voice.
I’m glad to report.
But he did snap me up into a standing position and then push himself back—hot-potato style. And then he stared at his brother like he’d never seen him before, as Rue walked over to give Cole a hug.
“What a fantastic surprise!” Rue sang out, not surprised at all. Cole hugged her tight enough to lift her feet off the ground.
The Gals also came in for hugs, but Hutch and I both just stood there, catching our breath. I tried to classify the frown that now overtook Hutch’s face, but this one was new.
Next, the ladies parted, and Cole came through toward Hutch, holding out his hand.
“Hutch,” he said, making his voice lower than normal.
“Cole,” Hutch said back, taking his hand like they were colleagues at the UN.
“I see you’ve met my girlfriend,” Cole said then.
I looked around. Did Cole have a girlfriend?
“You made sure of that, didn’t you?” Hutch said, seeming to know who he meant.
It took me far longer than it should have to realize that Cole—along with everyone else—was looking at me.
I held very still to contain my rising panic as Cole walked around to me and placed his arm— unfathomably —around my waist.
What in the ever-loving hell was going on?
“Is Katie your girlfriend?” Ginger asked Cole, seeming delighted. “We’ve all been trying to set her up with Hutch!”
I stayed frozen in disbelief as Cole nodded, patted me on the hip, shifted into distorted slow motion, and said, “She sure is.”
Okay. Time to shut this down. “Cole—” I started, trying to take reality back.
But he interrupted by pointing at Hutch, and saying, in a pretend-scolding tone, “So, hands off the lady, bro.”
The whole group gave Cole a generous courtesy laugh.
The whole group, that is, except for Hutch.
Then Cole turned to me. “Hey, babe,” he said, pulling me into a tight, full-body, overly long hug.
I let it happen so that I could keep a tense smile on my face, hover near his ear, and whisper through my teeth, “What the hell are you doing?”
I assume his smile was similar as he whispered back, “We’ve got an emergency right now, so just go with it.”
“I don’t have an emergency. And I’m not going with anything.”
“Just trust me, okay?” Cole said. “Seriously.”
“I don’t trust you. And I am not your girlfriend.”
“I know that. I’ll explain everything later.”
“Explain it right now,” I demanded.
But next, before I could reply, I heard a woman’s voice behind me. “Is this her?” Then the voice said, “You’re adorable together.”
I stepped away from Cole and turned to see… Sullivan.
Our boss, Sullivan. The she-wolf.
Not back in Texas, in the office, in businesswear. But here, in the keys, wearing a sarong so bright and floral, she could’ve shoplifted it right out of Vitamin Sea.
All I could do was look back and forth between Cole and… Sullivan.
Sullivan, who wanted to fire me.
Sullivan. Standing here at the Starlite.
Cole seized my moment of confusion to take back the narrative.
He grabbed a random sangria glass off a nearby table and held it up. “It’s so great to be back,” Cole announced—his voice weirdly loud, like he was playing a part on a stage.
At the announcement, the party guests quieted and gave him their attention.
“I’m so happy,” Cole said next, “to see my beautiful aunt Rue and my heroic big brother, Hutch.”
Okay—that heroic sounded sarcastic, but the group lifted their drinks in support.
He was hijacking Ginger’s birthday party, by the way! Not cool! But Ginger didn’t seem to mind.
She clapped and cheered with the crowd.
Cole kept grandstanding. “And happy birthday to Ginger—and anyone else who’s had a birthday lately.”
The group kept clapping, like the world hadn’t just gone sideways.
I took the chance to step away from Cole and back into the crowd.
Safety in numbers, right?
I glanced over at Hutch, the only other person watching Cole like I was.
Next, Cole just turned toward Sullivan and raised his glass. “You all may know that the company I work for has been doing a promo video for the US Coast Guard starring the one and only Hutch Hutcheson, and I’m so excited to introduce you to the lady who made it all possible, our boss, Karen Sullivan.”
Sullivan stepped up next to Cole, and the group went ahead and clapped for her, too.
I looked around. What was going on?
“So before our time together goes any further…” Cole went on, turning toward the place next to him where I’d been standing—only to realize I wasn’t there. Then he searched the faces until he spotted me. “Katie, could you come up here?”
Oh, shit. Whatever this was, it was bad.
I shook my head, stepping farther back.
“Come on,” Cole said, making a get on over here gesture with his arm.
I shook again. “I’m fine right here.”
Now Cole went overly playful to disguise what he must’ve thought was a commanding order. “Katie,” he said, all cutesy, “get up here.”
I wasn’t sure what he was planning to do. But I was sure I didn’t want to find out.
I was done following his lead.
Whatever game this was, I wasn’t playing.
The whole crowd was waiting for me to give in, aw-shucks style, and walk up to join them.
But instead, I gave one last headshake. And then I peeled away from the crowd and marched back toward my cottage.
I heard Cole’s voice behind me—“Katie? Katie!”—as the crowd shifted into a perplexed murmur. Then I heard him ad-libbing, “Don’t be mad, honey!,” as if we were having some kind of lovers’ quarrel.
Next, feet that could only be Cole’s thumped up behind me, and then there he was, falling into step, and trying to put his arm over my shoulder.
“Get off me,” I said, sidestepping away.
We were far enough away that they couldn’t hear us over the music, but Cole dropped his voice anyway. “What are you doing? I told you to trust me!”
“Yeah—that’s not happening,” I said, still moving toward my cottage.
Cole tugged at my shirt. “Just talk to me. Just let me explain.”
So I stopped and turned. “Okay,” I said. “Explain.”
But then, instead of explaining, Cole looked back toward the party. “Do you think he can read lips?”
I turned to look. He was clearly Hutch. Cole was staring at him, and Hutch was staring at Cole right back.
Next to Hutch, by the way, was Sullivan. Chatting with him the way you might heckle a stony-faced guard in front of a palace.
“Cole!” I said, like Focus! “What’s going on?”
“Fine,” Cole said, turning back. “The other day on the phone, I told Hutch we were dating.”
“What?!”
“I had to.”
“You told him we were— Why?! ”
“It worked, didn’t it?”
I was so lost. “What worked?” I asked.
“It got him to do the ‘Day in the Life’ with you.”
“But I’d already told you that wasn’t happening. I texted you!”
“He said no to you,” Cole said, “but I knew I could get him to say yes to me.”
“But it was already settled!”
“He owes me,” Cole said. “He knows that.”
“He knows that you think that ,” I corrected.
Cole shrugged. “I had a nuclear option, and I took it. You should be thanking me.”
“You mean—because of what happened at your wedding?”
“He told you about that?”
“So you thought if you told Hutch I was special to you, he’d do anything for me because he’ll do anything for you?”
Cole shrugged. “Pretty much. And I was right.”
“But…” Now it all started clicking into place. Hutch’s change of heart about the video—and about me. How he went from kissing me like mad one night to barely tolerating me the next day. How strangely standoffish he became. His kicking me out of bed. “But—you lied to him . That’s a big lie, Cole!”
“Look, you told him about Sullivan, and he still said no. We needed a big lie.”
“I never told him about Sullivan.”
“You never told him about Sullivan?”
I shook my head.
“Why not?”
“Because he told me why he doesn’t want to be famous.”
Cole wasn’t expecting that. “He did?”
“Yes. And I was respecting his wishes.”
“Why doesn’t he want to be famous?”
“You don’t know?”
He clearly didn’t. “I just want to see if your answer and my answer are the same.”
I sighed. How much to tell Cole? “Well,” I finally said, “he has his reasons.”
“You’re not going to tell me?”
“Go ask him yourself.”
“I’m not asking that guy shit .”
“Look,” I said. “Hutch is…” Then I tried, “Hutch isn’t…”
“What?” Cole demanded.
“He’s not someone you can just go around lying to for no reason.”
“Oh, I had a reason.”
“What—revenge?”
“Why not?”
“He’s a person, Cole! He’s your brother—and he loves you.”
“You’ve been here three weeks. Don’t act like you know everything.”
But I was shaking my head. “I’m not doing this. You need to tell him the truth.”
“What are you talking about? You barely know this guy!” But then Cole’s face shifted. “Wait—do you have a thing for my brother? Did you come down here and fall for him?”
I mean… I did. I had.
But I wasn’t telling Cole that.
I covered with: “What kind of question is that?”
But I guess I didn’t cover very well. “Oh, my god,” Cole said, tilting his head back toward the heavens. “You did. Now he’s stolen two girls from me.”
“I am not yours to steal.”
“He doesn’t know that.”
The whole thing was just so astonishing. How had we gotten here? “This is a mess, Cole,” I said. “What on earth were you thinking?”
“I was trying to help you!”
“You were trying to help yourself.”
“Okay, that’s true. It started that way. I didn’t want to have to spend months making a video about what a hero my brother is. But I have also genuinely been trying to help you not get fired.”
“Why?”
“Hutch isn’t the only person in this family who can rescue people.”
“Oh, god . You’re competing with him?”
“Who cares? You benefit no matter what.”
“I’m not sure this is benefitting .”
“Are you saying you want to get fired?”
“No! I just want to do whatever non-liars do when things don’t go their way.”
“Then you’ll have to kiss that ‘Day in the Life’ goodbye.”
“I wasn’t going to make it, anyway.”
That got Cole’s attention. “You don’t want to keep your job?”
“Not by selling out Hutch.”
Cole thought about that. “Well, it’s too late now, anyway.”
“What does that mean— it’s too late ?”
“I can’t tell the truth now, anyway. Even if I wanted to.”
“Why not?”
Cole glanced back toward the party. “Because I also told Sullivan we were dating.”
I couldn’t have heard that right. “You told—?! Sullivan?!”
“That’s why she’s here.”
I put my hand to my forehead.
“It was an accident. I panicked. I saw your name on the termination list in her office, and, you know—I’d already said it to Hutch, so it was just right there in my head.”
“You’re out of control.”
“I don’t normally lie. It all just—snowballed.”
“You told Sullivan we were dating? Sullivan?” It made no sense. “Why?”
“It was the only thing I could think of.”
“How would that even help?”
Cole shook his head, like he knew he’d already lost, then ventured, “Because I wouldn’t be dating you if you were bad at your job?”
I sighed.
“But then it got worse,” Cole said. “Because she didn’t believe me. So I had to amp it up.”
“No,” I said, trying to rewrite history, “you didn’t have to amp it up.”
“And so I told her I was coming to Key West this weekend to propose to you.”
I squeezed my eyes closed. “No, no, no.”
“Which was true, by the way. I really was coming here this weekend. Not to propose—but still.”
Now I was just shaking my head, like This can’t be happening.
“But guess what?” Cole said. “Sullivan said, ‘Great. I’ll come with you.’ She said she could call it a business trip and write it off. She knows a guy with a private jet. She flew me here for free. That’s why I’m a little tipsy,” he added, shrugging. “Open bar.”
My mind searched for a question that could make things make sense. But it was starting to look like no question like that existed.
Cole went on. “Sullivan had a few drinks on the flight, too, and told me she wants to meet Hutch.”
I shook my head, refusing to take his meaning.
“You know. Meet him?”
I looked over again. Sullivan was trying to show Hutch her necklace. Holding it toward him and leaning forward. But Hutch’s eyes were still on Cole and me.
I closed my eyes. “You brought Sullivan here for a booty call?”
But Cole lifted his hands like he was innocent. “She brought herself.”
I squeezed my eyes closed.
“Where’s your feminist solidarity?” Cole said next, taking a stab at a positive spin. “She’s had a rough year. Maybe she deserves a little Marvin Gaye–style healing. This could be the answer to everything. This could be what saves your job. No video necessary!”
But I just met his eyes and shook my head. “How is it possible that you’ve made every single thing worse?”
Cole shrugged, like he didn’t know, either. “Once I started lying, I didn’t know how to stop.”
“Just—stop!”
“But then everything falls apart.”
“So it falls apart. That’s got to be better than whatever this is.”
“You want me to just come clean? About everything?”
“Yeah,” I said, like Duh.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“For lots of reasons. For reasons stacked on top of other reasons.”
“Tell me the reasons,” I demanded.
“If I tell the truth now, one: you will get fired. And I don’t want you to get fired. And, two: I will get fired. And I don’t want to get fired, either.”
“Maybe she won’t fire you. Maybe she’ll—”
“What? Let it go? Some douchey manager at her company lied to her face multiple times in cahoots with an underling, and she just doesn’t care?”
“We were never in cahoots.”
“She won’t just fire me, by the way. She’ll fire me with extreme prejudice . And then she’ll blackball me with every future employer. I won’t just have to change jobs. I’ll have to change industries .”
“This seems extreme.”
“And she’ll do the exact same thing to you.”
“To me ? I didn’t do anything!”
“But that’s not the worst of it.”
“How is that not the worst of it?”
“The worst of it has nothing to do with Sullivan. And it’s got nothing to do with our jobs. The worst of it is the real reason I’m here.”
I sighed, like Seriously? Then I demanded: “Which is?”
“It’s not because I want to be, that’s for damn sure. It’s because Rue told me to be .”
Rue told him to be? “What’s going on, Cole?”
But here Cole’s tone shifted. He looked away for a second. “So…” he said, his voice quieting. “Nobody really knows about this yet, except for me, and now you… so don’t talk about it with anyone else, okay?”
This was a lot of buildup. “Okay,” I said.
“Rue…” Cole said then, looking down at the grass and then rubbing the back of his neck as he hesitated to say the words, “is sick.”
My first reaction was to demand that he take that back . How dare he say that about Rue?
“Of all the lies you’ve told—” I started.
“You think I’m lying ? About Rue?”
“You’ve been lying all night, so it’s definitely on-brand.”
“I would never lie about this.”
Okay, that felt true enough.
I looked over at the party across the way. Rue was relaxing in a chair near the pool, fruity drink in hand, smiling in that purposeful way she had—determined to enjoy every minute. She didn’t seem sick. But Rue was also the kind of person who wouldn’t seem sick.
I turned back to ask, “What’s she sick with?,” and saw that Cole was watching her, too.
“Something that has no cure.”
“Just say it, Cole,” I said.
Cole said, “It’s what they call a long-term terminal illness.”
“What does that mean?”
Cole looked down, and then he said, “It means she has heart failure.”
I wanted to argue with him. But something about his expression stopped me.
“She was having chest pains and shortness of breath,” Cole went on. “She was worried it was lung cancer because she used to smoke back in the seventies, so she insists that run-of-the-mill heart failure is an improvement. Rue said it will be the thing that gets her —but not right away. She’s convinced that she can make it another ten years.”
“What do the doctors say?”
“They love her optimism.”
I sat with this idea for a moment, giving it the benefit of the doubt. Then I said, “Okay, so, if you’re not lying— if —why would Rue being sick mean that I have to go along with all this?”
Cole nodded as he answered. “Because Friday is the anniversary.”
“The anniversary of what?”
“The anniversary,” Cole explained, “of the accident.”
OF THE CAR accident.
Cole studied me to see if I got it. Then he nodded. “It’s a big day in our family. And every year, no matter where we are or what we’re doing, the three of us find a way to spend it together. We hand out flowers to strangers in honor of our mom, and then we eat an Italian dinner in honor of Rue’s husband, and then at the end, we give our waiter a hundred-dollar tip, in honor of our dad. And all through dinner, we tell stories about them, and remember them, and let ourselves miss them.”
“That’s actually lovely.”
Cole nodded. “Except after Hutch stole my fiancée—”
“He did not steal your fiancée—”
“—I stayed away. Last year, I didn’t go. And I wasn’t planning to come this year, either—until Rue called and told me about her diagnosis. She declared she wasn’t putting up with any nonsense this year. It’s time to stop wasting time , she said.” Cole shrugged. “So here I am.”
“You’re here because Rue wanted you to come.”
Cole nodded. “She just wants to spend some good time together. And she wants to be together on the anniversary like we should be. And she wants me to, and I’m quoting here, quit being an ass and get over it about my fiancée. She wants Hutch and me to make up. She called it her dying wish.”
That did sound like Rue.
I said, “Sounds like a good plan.”
“I don’t disagree,” Cole said. “But if we come clean about us now—”
“There is no us !” I protested.
“If we tell the truth—”
“If you tell the truth,” I corrected. “I am not a part of this.”
“The point is,” Cole said, “if I tell Hutch that I lied to him about you, he’s going to beat the hell out of me. I mean it. He might really put me in the hospital.”
I studied Cole’s face.
“All Rue wants,” Cole said, “is for us to get along for one night. To have a good time together on a very bad day. But I guarantee: if Hutch finds out I messed with him, she will not get that wish.”
“Hutch isn’t going to put you in the hospital,” I said, like Come on .
“You think you know him better than I do?”
“All I know is, you’re the biggest liar I’ve ever seen. Even just now, when you were lying to the whole group about a dating situation”—I gestured between the two of us—“that does not in any way exist, you seemed to be enjoying yourself. A lot.”
Cole nodded solemnly. “This situation does have a few personal upsides for me.”
“Like?”
“Like not having to show up tonight divorced and sad with nothing good in my life. You get that, right? You’ve been jilted. I got jilted for my brother .”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that.
“You want the truth? Here’s the truth: I did enjoy that moment earlier. I did enjoy taking you away from Hutch like that. I did enjoy a little taste of revenge. I did want to win, for once. Even if it’s fake. Even if it’s temporary. And even if he will—definitely—eventually pummel me for it. For a moment there, it felt good. That’s not a lie.”
I looked back toward the party.
The music was still playing, and Hutch was still watching us like a sniper. Sullivan was pulling at his arms like she was trying to get him to dance. And Rue and The Gals were watching Sullivan strike out.
There was no way any of this was going to end well.
Cole, glancing that way, too, sighed. “You have no idea how hard it is to be related to Hutch.”
“How is it hard?” I said. “He’s perfect.”
“Exactly. He’s perfect.”
I thought about Rue, and how fond of her I’d become in such a short time—how full of life and casual wisdom she was. The way she’d taken me on as a project. This sweet little cottagey beachside community she’d made. Her warm and colorful presence in the world.
“She wants me to make up with Hutch,” Cole said, “and I will absolutely do that. But it’s not going to happen if you tell him the truth right now. Do you want to take the one thing a sick old lady wants away from her?”
I sighed. Then I said, “So you’re telling me for the sake of Rue— who I love —I have to go along with this ridiculous, absurd, insulting lie— that I hate ?”
“Just until Friday,” Cole said, like that wasn’t forever . “Three days. Then I’ll fly home and tell Sullivan we broke up. And then you can tell Hutch all the truths you want. Hang on until Friday, and we all might escape unscathed.”
I sighed, and I gave my brain a minute to search for some—any—other idea.
Me getting fired—and blackballed—for something I had nothing to do with? I’d take that to tell Hutch the truth right now. Cole getting fired and blackballed—and then pummeled by his brother? Fine. Hell, he deserved it, anyway.
Where it all broke down was Rue. Lovely Rue, and all she’d lost, and all she’d done for everybody, and all she was facing now. I’d never had to make a decision like this. I didn’t know how to begin to think it through. Only one thing in this churning, relentless family mess seemed clear: protect Rue at all costs.
Could I delay the truth for three days to keep from breaking Rue’s heart?
For Rue, I could.
I let out a long, uncertain sigh.
“Just until Friday,” I said, pointing at Cole. “I will not contradict you until Friday . But that’s the full extent of what I’m willing to do. I’m not participating in this, or endorsing it, or amplifying it. I’m just letting it stand—temporarily. We’re not partners, and we’re not playing house. Do not touch me, ogle me, or—god forbid— propose to me . If I see you bend either of your knees for any reason, I will murder you in your sleep.”