Chapter 26
26
Amy
Kincaid getting up from the bed woke her up. Zach was still breathing heavily on the other side of her, his warm breath wafting over her bare neck. She turned, wincing slightly, and looking up at Kincaid. He smiled down at her, his gaze soft.
“How are you feeling?” he asked as soon as he realized she was looking at him.
“Sore.” She gave him a rueful smile. “But good.”
“Good.” His smile changed to just a little more smug, a little more like a smirk. It was all she could do not to roll her eyes.
Men.
He hesitated, and she got the strangest impression that he wanted to lean down and kiss her. Even though they weren’t at the club or in the middle of a scene.
Or maybe her wishful thinking was getting out of control again.
“I’m going to go make breakfast,” he said and hurried out the bedroom door, leaving her there with the still-sleeping Zach.
Well. That was… awkward.
Or maybe it was all in her head, like thinking he’d had the urge to kiss her.
With a groan, she flopped back down next to Zach, who didn’t budge an inch. Her feelings were getting way more complicated than she’d expected. Was this what a rebound was like?
She didn’t have much time to think about it because her phone started vibrating. Someone was calling her. Thankful for the distraction, she leaned over to check the screen, not even thinking for a moment that it might be Jeremy until her stomach did a weird swooping thing in memory of how he’d called her last weekend. Thankfully, it wasn’t him.
It was her mom.
Amy scooted to the side of the bed, glancing over her shoulder. Zach was still fast asleep. Still. Better take it out to the hall.
Hurrying out the bedroom door, she stayed at the end of the hall rather than going down to the main room. Yeah, her parents knew she was staying with Zach and Kincaid, but since things had changed between them, she felt the need to… well, hide.
“Hey, Mom.”
“Good morning, sweetheart. How are you?” Her mom’s voice was filled with sympathy, making Amy’s stomach flip, worried that something terrible had happened and she had missed it.
Then she realized—the terrible thing had happened to her. Her parents hadn’t been able to do much more than email and occasionally text while on their trip. Her mom had no idea that Amy wasn’t in mourning. That she didn’t miss Jeremy at all. And that she was actually way happier than she’d been in years.
“I’m fine,” she said automatically because saying ‘I’m the best I’ve ever been’ after she’d been a total wreck the last time her mom had seen her felt wrong. “How was your trip?”
“Oh, we had a great time, but I couldn’t help but worry about you the whole time. I felt so guilty taking off like that.” The guilt was evident in her mom’s voice, making Amy feel bad.
Maybe she should tell her mom she was the best she’d ever been.
“Don’t feel guilty. I would have felt way worse if you hadn’t gone. I’m glad you guys had a great time. That’s exactly what I wanted. And, really, I… this is going to sound terrible, but I don’t think I was heartbroken as much as I was humiliated.” She shrugged one shoulder, even though her mom couldn’t see her. “The longer I’ve been away from Jeremy, the more I’ve realized what a terrible boyfriend and fiancé he was.”
“About time,” her dad muttered.
“Am I on speakerphone?”
“Yes, honey, we’re both here,” her mom said, and her dad grunted, as if her mom had just elbowed him or something. She probably had.
“Hi, honey,” he said.
“Hi, Dad.” She couldn’t help but smile. Wanting a relationship like her parents might have been part of the reason she’d been so invested in getting married, but just being married didn’t make the relationship. That’s what she was waking up to now. If she had married Jeremy, it wasn’t like things would have changed. She would have still been unhappy and unfulfilled; she just would have been even more trapped than before. “Well, seriously, don’t worry about me. I did my crying, and I’ve moved on to the anger phase. My friends and I are getting together tonight to burn my dress.”
“Oh, that sounds like fun!” her mom said brightly, just as her dad asked, “Why?” Amy didn’t need to answer because her mother immediately did it for her. “Because it’s cathartic.”
“But we spent so much money on it,” he complained.
Oh, shoot. They had.
“I don’t have to burn it. I can…” Amy’s voice trailed off.
“You can what? We don’t need to resell it. We basically had to rip it off you. The repairs wouldn’t be worth it, and no one is going to buy a dress that’s that damaged, not at a price that would be worth selling it for. Burn it, sweetie.” Her mom sounded very sure of herself. “Burn all that bad juju away.”
Amy couldn’t help but laugh, even as her dad huffed. He didn’t argue, though. And her mom was right. She’d forgotten about the damage Kincaid had done getting the thing off her. She doubted she could even give it away. The repairs would cost enough that someone might as well buy a new dress rather than take her severely damaged one.
Catching up with her parents was really nice and being able to truthfully reassure them that she was doing just fine. She relaxed enough that, rather than standing in the hallway and talking, she wandered down to the main rooms. Kincaid looked up from where he was standing at the stove, flashing her a quick smile before turning back to his tasks.
And everything in the world was right again.
Zach
Being out without Amy felt weird. Even though he was having a great time, and so was Kincaid. His sister’s new boyfriend was pretty great. His name was Thaddeus, but he went by Tad. Like Zach, he worked in finance, and like Zach he preferred to talk about anything else when away from the job.
Though if the two of them got alone, they’d probably have an interesting discussion about work.
He and Krista had met while LARPing—Live Action Role Play—one of Krista’s passions. Zach had been dragged to quite a few Renaissance Fairs with her when they were younger.
Eventually, Zach wanted Krista to meet Amy, but obviously, tonight wasn’t the right time. Tonight was about meeting Krista’s new boyfriend, not introducing his sister to the girl he and Kincaid were scening with on the side. He wasn’t even sure his sister would understand what was going on between them.
“And then she took off her helmet and said, ‘I am no man’ and stabbed me through the heart,” Tad said, grinning. His eyes were for Krista and Krista only as he finished up the story of how they’d met on the battlefield at Pennsic. She beamed back at him. They were really cute together, Tad with his long, dark blond hair that he had tied back in a ponytail and his dark eyes, next to Krista with her black curls and bright blue eyes. They might have opposite colored hair and eyes, but they were clearly kindred spirits.
“So, you don’t need the warning that she’s a handful,” he joked. “Sounds like you already found out for yourself.”
Krista sniffed derisively. “I may be a handful, but so is this ass.”
She leaned to the side so she could pat the ass in question, making Zach groan and cover his eyes while Kincaid cracked up. When Zach opened his eyes again, Tad was staring at Krista in a besotted manner, as if she was the most amazing thing he’d ever seen.
Yeah, he liked the guy.
“I think that’s the best ‘how did you meet’ story I’ve ever heard,” Kincaid said, lifting his beer. “Cheers to that.”
“Cheers!” Everyone lifted their own drink and clinked them together, laughing. Once again, Zach wished Amy had been here. She would have died laughing at Krista’s declaration about her ass. He’d have to tell her later.
As if his sister knew where his mind was, she asked about Amy as she was putting her drink back on the table.
“So, how is the friend that moved in with you?” She glanced over at Tad. “I think I told you about her. Her asshole of a fiancé eloped with one of her bridesmaids on her wedding day.”
“Oh, yeah, that dickweed.” Tad shook his head. “Who the fuck even does that?”
“Dickweeds,” Zach and Krista chorused in unison, which made everyone laugh again.
“Hashtag: Siblings,” she said with a smirk. “Seriously though, how is she?”
“She’s burning her wedding dress tonight with her friends,” Kincaid answered while Zach was still trying to come up with a response that didn’t involve how complicated things had gotten with her. He was pretty sure his sister wasn’t asking if they were fucking her. Why would she think that? But that was the first place his mind had gone. Thank goodness Kincaid was more on top of things.
“Oh, good for her.” Krista lit up. “She sounds like my kind of girl. I need to meet her at some point.”
“You two should come over for dinner sometime next week,” Kincaid offered. “I’m sure she’d love to meet you. She’s one of the friendliest people I’ve ever met.”
Something about that idea made Zach want to bristle, but it wasn’t like he could reverse the invitation now that it was out there. Especially when Krista’s eyes lit up.
“I would love to. And I promise not to be too nosy.”
“Ha,” Zach answered, trying to cover up his unease. Why didn’t he want Krista to meet Amy? What made him feel so anxious about that? He didn’t know, but his stomach was starting to churn uncomfortably, the way it did when his mom bothered him about whether or not he’d met any nice girls recently. “You, not nosy? In what universe?”
Krista kicked him under the table.
“Ow!”
“Brutal,” Tad said, shaking his head. “Just like my sister.”
Thankfully, the conversation turned to how awful sisters were, though Tad somehow managed to walk the line of telling the horror stories of being a younger brother while maintaining that Krista had probably been an angel of a sister and that Zach had deserved everything he’d gotten. Which made Zach like him even more.
About an hour later, coming out of the bathroom, his own awful sister cornered him. She was waiting as soon as he stepped out of the door. He raised his eyebrows at her.
“Tad’s great,” he said, heading her off at the pass, though he wasn’t sure why she felt the need to bother him about his opinion right now. She must really like the guy if she was this impatient to get his opinion.
Krista flipped her head, making her curls bounce.
“I know that. I just needed to tell you that Mom was bugging me about getting you hooked up to a nice girl again the other day after she met Tad.”
Ice hit his heart.
“You didn’t tell her…”
His sister glared at him.
“Of course, I didn’t. It’s not my thing to tell. But you need to tell her, and soon, because I’m not lying for you. I told her I thought you were seeing someone.” She rolled her eyes at his groan. “You’re going to have to tell them, eventually. Exactly how long did you think you could keep this all a secret?”
Definitely at least a little longer. Until he found the exact right way to tell them. Part of him almost wished Krista had told their mom. At least then, the Band-Aid would have been ripped off, and he would know what the reaction was.
He put his hand to his chest, which was starting to hurt, right where his heart was.
Krista’s expression softened, and she stepped forward, putting her hand on his shoulder.
“They’re not going to reject you.”
“You don’t know that for sure. Even if they don’t, I don’t want them feeling ‘sorry’ for me because my life is going to be harder or thinking I’m just going through a phase or changing how they see me…” He gulped in a breath of air hard. It felt like his chest was constricting.
“Of course, it’s going to change how they see you, the same way it would if you quit your job and announced you were going to do something else entirely.” She rubbed his upper back. “That doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing.”
But it could be.
“Mom could decide it’s great, and Dad could hate it. And then Mom would defend me. They’d end up fighting about it.”
“Zach, it is not—and never has been—your fault when they fight, even if the topic they’re fighting about is you,” she said sternly.
The pain in his chest said it didn’t believe her.
“You know, it’s actually pretty egotistical to think that everything is about you. You always do this.”
“What do you mean?” He turned his head to look at her incredulously. What did he always do?
She shook her head at him.
“When Mom and Dad separated, you were convinced it was about you.”
“I was?” He didn’t actually remember that. He barely remembered his parents’ separation. He’d only been five when they’d separated, and they hadn’t been separated for very long.
“Yes. Because the last fight they had before Mom kicked Dad out was about where you were going to go to kindergarten. You thought you’d done something wrong for weeks. Right up until Dad came back home. But it was never actually about where you were going to school.”
“I… I don’t remember.” But his chest was hurting more than ever. Was this what a heart attack felt like?
Probably more like a panic attack.
Apparently the backrub was over because Krista took the opportunity to smack him on the back of the head instead.
“Ow!”
“Not. Everything. Is. About. You.” She punctuated each word with a slap, even as he ducked away, putting his own hand on the back of his head for protection.
“Stop it!”
“Admit that not everything is about you!”
“Not everything is about me!” Saying the words should have been easy, but instead, he felt his stomach twist inside him with nausea. I do know that, right?
Right?
“You need to tell Mom and Dad about Kincaid.”
“I need to tell Mom and Dad about Kincaid,” he agreed, sagging slightly. At least he’d gotten turned around to face her so she couldn’t keep slapping him upside his head. “I’m going to.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
Sooner than he’d meant to, thanks to Krista.
She crossed her arms and frowned, tapping her foot.
“I want a timeline. Because it’s not fair to me that I keep having to lie to Mom and Dad, and it’s definitely not fair to Kincaid.”
He knew that.
“By the end of the month.” Today was the second, so that gave him plenty of time.
Krista pressed her lips together, obviously displeased with that answer—probably too much time, in her opinion—but she nodded her agreement. The sick feeling in his stomach increased. He had till the end of the month to figure out exactly how to tell his parents that he wasn’t straight. And that he’d been living with his boyfriend for the past year and lying to them about it.
Well, if I’d told them sooner, I wouldn’t have been lying to them for a year.
Am I really afraid I’m going to break up my parents’ marriage?
Maybe.
But he felt just as afraid that it was going to change everything.
“Deal,” Krista said, uncrossing her arms and stepping forward so she could loop her arm through his. Obviously, she felt better now that the agreement was made rather than worse, like him. “Now, let’s get back to our boyfriends.”
She made it sound so much simpler than it felt.