Chapter 5
ZACH
Iopened the back door and stepped aside just in time for Emma to barrel past me like a small, determined force of nature, and I chuckled. “Hey, you. Do you want to come to Uncle Zach?”
“Emma! Emma, slow down.” Nate was right behind her, sounding like he’d aged five years in the last three seconds as they both raced past me without even making eye contact.
Kate followed, smiling like this was normal. For her, I supposed it probably was. At least she stopped to give me a quick hug. “Hi, Zach. I apologize in advance.”
“For what?”
Emma shrieked excitedly from somewhere down the corridor, and Kate’s eyebrows swept up a little. “For that.”
Jesse and Jacqueline came in behind them, with Jesse carrying two pizza boxes as carefully as if they were precious cargo. “I’m starving. Please tell me you have the plates ready.”
“They’re in the kitchen,” I replied. “Still in the cabinets, but they’re there and they’re clean.”
Jesse sighed. “I guess that’s going to have to be good enough.”
Theo appeared from somewhere, grinning as his gaze skipped between Jesse, Jacque, and me. “Who ordered the pizza and who ordered the chaos?”
“Pizza,” Jesse said.
Kate called back at us from the hall. “Just because we brought the chaos doesn’t mean we ordered it!”
Theo grinned. “That’s exactly the way I like it. Welcome home, everybody.”
I rolled my eyes and shut the door before trailing after them into the house. Emma had already made it to the grand staircase—or, in the case of a two-year-old, the grand invitation to break your neck.
It was wide and sweeping, exactly dangerous enough to keep Nate permanently on edge. We ended up perched along the steps, passing pizza boxes up and down, forgoing plates so there was less clutter for her to trip over.
She climbed, descended, and launched herself between us at random with absolutely no concern for the laws of physics or consequences. Nate hovered like a true helicopter, stressing over every sharp corner and hard tile in the vicinity, and there were many.
“We grew up here,” I said. “This is, at present, her preferred place to nearly kill herself, but we survived and so will she.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “Don’t start today, Zach. Please?”
I lifted my hands in surrender. “Who is starting? I’m just saying. Take a page out of your wife’s book and sit down.”
He completely ignored me, hovering two steps below her with a look on his face that told me he was mentally calculating every possible way this could go wrong. “God, I don’t like this.”
“She’s fine,” Kate said easily, taking a slice of pizza.
“Do what your brother said and take a page out of my book. Look at how laid back I am. Do you really think I’d just be sitting here if I thought she was actually about to get hurt?
She needs to learn, babe. She’s not going to do that if you don’t let her make any mistakes. ”
“She’s also not going to break her damn neck,” he grumbled but accepted the slice she handed him on his way back down the stairs after her.
Emma climbed onto Jesse’s lap, then immediately stood on it like it was a platform designed specifically for her. He laughed, taking one of her little hands in one of his and moving his legs underneath her.
“Watch out, Em,” he joked. “It’s an earthquake.”
She squealed with laughter, but Nate reached for her like she was about to be electrocuted. “Okay. No. We’re not doing earthquakes. Emma—”
“She’s fine,” Jesse echoed, steadying her with one hand while eating with the other. “Leave her. I need some cuddles with Little J all the way on the other side of an ocean.”
Nate looked like he might actually combust. Theo leaned over to Kate, keeping his voice low enough that Nate probably couldn’t hear him. “He looks like he’s about thirty seconds away from a stroke.”
Kate laughed, not bothering to keep her voice down in turn. “He’s the best dad in the world, even if his blood pressure is through the roof most days.”
I leaned back against the step. “That’s not healthy.”
She glanced up at me and smiled. “You’re telling me, but you should be telling him.”
Emma launched herself again, off Jesse’s lap this time and toward Theo, but Nate caught her mid-air this time, scooping her up and cradling her against his chest. “Okay. That’s quite enough of that. We’re taking a break.”
“No bweak,” she wailed, immediately protesting at the top of her lungs, but Nate was already carrying her to the downstairs drawing room and the soft couches inside.
“You need a break, sweetheart,” he said firmly. “Your mother needs a break.”
“I’m fine,” Kate called after them, her head shaking but her smile soft.
“You’re not,” Nate shot back over his shoulder. “Your heart is about to give out.”
The rest of us watched him go, but Theo was the one who finally said it. “That man is going to age ten years in the next six months.”
“What do you mean, going to?” Jesse said. “He already has. What you should say is that he’s going to age another ten years.”
Jacque elbowed him lightly in the ribs. “Be nice. It’s best not to judge people in this situation until you’re a parent yourself. I learned that with my sister. You never know how you’re going to react when it’s your turn.”
“I am being nice,” he said, smirking as he looked at her. “I could’ve called him a neurotic helicopter parent who needs to chill out before he kills himself, but I didn’t. Besides, I’m not like that with Little J, so I’m pretty sure I won’t be that kind of father.”
“Sure, but Will and Eliza are responsible for keeping Little J alive,” Kate countered. “Not you. Nate wasn’t like that with Cameron or any of your cousins’ kids either, but his own? That’s a different story.”
“Are we really going to keep calling Bennet Little J?” Theo asked no one in particular.
Jesse gasped like someone had punched him. “Of course, we are. He can be Bennet to all the Brits. To us, he’s always going to be Little J.”
The conversation drifted from there, sometimes serious and sometimes nonsense.
Apparently Jane and Cameron had gone to DC with Alex in the end, which meant he was marginally happier about the trip.
Will and Eliza were knee deep in more renovations to the castle in England.
Charlotte and Trent were counting down the weeks until the baby came.
Due to neither Dad nor Alex being here, it was probably the most informal family dinner we’d ever had, but while I was physically present, I wasn’t really there either. My head was stuck between an art market, a dog park, and a pair of bright blue eyes I hadn’t planned on ever seeing again.
“Okay,” Jesse said suddenly, cutting through the noise in my head. “What’s going on with you?”
When I glanced over at him, I realized he was speaking to me. “What?”
“You’re weird today. Weird is my thing, and Theo’s, and apparently Nate’s now that he’s become a dad, but weird is not you.”
I scoffed. “Fuck you. I’m always weird. Just in my own way.”
I took another bite of pizza like that might convince him to end the conversation, but it didn’t work. Ever since Jesse had moved back to Chicago and fallen in love with Jacque, he’d been on a mission to be a better brother, and frankly, that made things difficult for me.
“Come on,” he said, standing up from the stair he’d been sitting on. “Walk with me.”
I sighed and finished the last bite of my slice. “If I come back and all the pizza is gone—”
“It will be,” Theo said.
“I’m blaming all of you,” I finally finished, but Jesse just laughed from down the hall.
“Blame them as much as you like. No one will care. Now come on. We’re walking.”
I groaned and wiped my hands on a paper towel, then followed him, hoping he’d at least be quick about this check-in. Jesse could usually be counted on not to waste time, but hell. A year ago, I could also count on him not to interfere. That wasn’t true anymore either.
We ended up in our father’s old study where the good liquor was still kept. I wasn’t surprised when Jesse headed right over to the bar cart in the corner and poured himself a drink, then glanced at me. “Do you want one?”
“No, thanks.”
“Suit yourself.”
He took a sip before leaning back against the desk and turning to me. “What’s up your ass today?”
“Nothing.”
He did a really bad imitation of a buzzer sound and shook his head. “Try again.”
I crossed my arms, still standing right inside the door and not planning on going any further into the room. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine,” he said easily. “You’ve been off since you opened the door.”
“That’s impressive,” I muttered. “You managed to diagnose me in under ten seconds.”
He rolled his eyes. “I’ve known you my entire life.”
“How unfortunate for you,” I shot back. “Seriously, Jesse. Just drop it.”
He eyed me for another beat before he lifted his hands in surrender, but instead of taking his drink and heading back to the Staircase of Impending Death, he waited me out.
At least two solid minutes later, I huffed out a breath. “I’m fine. It’s not nothing, but I’m okay.”
“Hey, you finally admitted it’s not nothing,” he said happily. “That’s better. Do you want to tell me what not nothing actually is?”
I looked past him for a moment, debating my options, but the fact was that he was like a dog with a bone some days and it looked like this was one of those days. “I just ran into someone, okay?”
“You ran into someone,” he repeated slowly, then squinted. “Who?”
I hesitated, and apparently, that was answer enough. He blinked a few times rapidly, then his eyes widened and he nearly dropped his glass but caught it just as it started sliding between his fingers. “Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
“Where?”
“It happened twice, actually,” I said. “Once at lunch with Roark and Senator Morris. Once at the park when Theo and I took Bear for a walk.”
Jesse let out a low whistle. “That’s really fucked up, man. Twice in one week. It was one week, right?”
I nodded. “Yep. Lucky me.”
“So what happened? Did you talk to her?”