CHAPTER SIXTEEN #2
“Yes, it is,” I said, smiling as Meg wrapped Mom in a tight hug. “I'm too far gone.”
Dad shoved me away, rolling his eyes playfully. “God, I can't deal with you people anymore. Gotta go find your brother. Maybe he'll bust out of this joint with me.”
“Gonna make a prison break?” I teased, smirking as I grabbed a carrot stick from a dish on the table and dipped it into a bowl of ranch dressing.
“I mean, I wouldn't have taken my chances at Wayward. Security was pretty tight over there. But I think I could get out of here without anyone noticing. Or at least not until I was—”
“Soldier, can you reach the butter dish?” Mom called from the kitchen.
He looked absolutely downtrodden as he sighed. “The amount of stepladders that woman owns, and she still asks me to reach everything,” he grumbled, shaking his head.
“Foiled again,” I teased, popping the carrot into my mouth and grinning.
“Yeah,” he muttered, trudging into the kitchen. “Guess it's too late for me too.”
He spoke with such disdain, but the moment he was in the vicinity of my mom, he couldn't keep his hands off of her.
He kissed her cheek, molding his fingers around her waist as she pointed to what she needed on the top shelf.
She could've gotten that stepladder. She could've asked me even. But she’d asked him because she needed him.
She needed his presence, his touch, his closeness … and he needed her just as fiercely.
It'd been an incredible thing to witness the birth of that relationship. To watch it grow and thrive in the midst of the darkest time of our lives.
I sat at the table in front of the plate of sliced vegetables and bowl of ranch dip, munching and watching Mom and Dad interact with each other, with Meg in the middle of it all, and it occurred to me how sorry I felt for Levi Stratton.
That the greatest relationship—friendship or otherwise—he'd ever had was with a cousin who had easily thrown him under the bus.
“Hey.” Miles, my younger brother—well, half-brother, but we didn't fuss over technicalities in this house—entered the living room from the stairs, noticing me sitting at the table. “I didn't know you guys were here already.”
“Just got here a few minutes ago,” I said.
He took the seat next to me and grabbed a celery stick, chomping into it without bothering to dip.
I scrunched my nose. “What are you, a rabbit?”
Mid-chew, he asked, “What do you mean?”
“Who the hell eats plain celery?”
He shrugged. “It's good.”
“It's nasty,” I argued. “That shit tastes like it belongs in the ground. You gotta cover it up with … something. I don't even care what. You gotta mask that shit.”
“That's ‘cause you're uncultured,” he countered, a smug little grin on his face.
To prove a point, he shoved another celery stick into his mouth, chewing without wincing at all.
“Uncultured. Yeah, okay, and you're fuckin' diabolical,” I said, staring at him with an expression of horror. “I'll take uncultured over that shit, thanks.”
“Who's cursing in here?” Mom asked, walking into the dining room with a platter of beef brisket in her hands.
“Noah,” Miles replied without hesitation.
“Fuckin' rat,” I muttered, jabbing him in the ribs with my elbow.
“See? He did it again.”
Mom sniffed a laugh, shaking her head as her eyes met mine with a raised brow. “I should wash that mouth out with soap.”
“Sorry, I surpassed the age limit on cursing in this house,” I said with a coy quirk of my mouth.
“Yeah? And what age limit is that?” She crossed her arms, a challenge glinting in her green eyes that perfectly matched my own.
“Eighteen probably. Right? Legal adulthood?”
“Eighteen?” Dad asked, carrying a bowl of mashed potatoes. “Dude, she still yells at me if I curse around this kid.”
“I yell at you, yeah,” Mom mumbled, rolling her eyes up toward his. “Doesn't stop you from doing it though, does it?”
“The kid's twelve! You act like he didn't grow up around the word fuck.”
“Oh, and whose fault is that?”
Mom and Dad bantered, their laughter coalescing with the heated words they fired back and forth.
Miles continued to gnaw on his plain celery while the two of us watched our parents playfully fight—the only way they knew how.
He might be too young to understand what he was seeing, though he laughed at the retorts and comebacks, but I understood.
They were flirting, this was their foreplay, and, God, I was filled with such an overwhelming amount of gratitude for that big guy who had stumbled into our lives.
For the fact that he'd saved her once when they were kids …
and then again and again and again in adulthood.
There was no limit to how far he'd go for any of us. He'd proven that time and time again.
He'd made the greatest sacrifice of all. Then, as Meg walked into the room, I caught her eye and thought, I'd do it for her. I'd do it for any of them … but especially her.
After all, I had learned from the best.
And it was because of him that I knew what I needed to do, and that was to find out what had happened to Tommy Nolan. To put the puzzle together and lay it to rest, to free my mind to move forward, unburdened by my haunted past.
Because let’s face it …
Us Mason men never could leave things alone.