Chapter 13
ZACH
Back at our house on Sunday night, I was trying to decide what to order for dinner when Theo walked into the kitchen. I thought he was here to offer his opinion on food, but instead, he completely ignored the pile of menus and hopped onto the counter, leaving the decisions, as always, to me.
“Jennifer completely cleaned out my wallet,” he said, his head shaking, but he was smiling. “Can you believe that? She’s only seven and took me to the freaking cleaners.”
“Yeah, well, think about everything you said.” I set down the menu for the Chinese place down the block and pulled out my phone to place an order on the app. “You deserved it.”
“For what?” He scoffed down a laugh. “What could I possibly have done to deserve that?”
I finally looked up at him and arched both my eyebrows. “You called a little kid a fart head, among other things.”
“He was a fart head. He was taunting Lu. I was standing up for her.”
“You’re twenty-nine.”
“So?”
“So Lu can handle herself without you escalating a playground dispute into a lawsuit for defamation.”
“Hey, it was both a substantial truth and my subjective opinion,” he said. “He was creating a hostile environment and I acted accordingly.”
“It’s interesting that you know the defenses to defamation so well,” I said as I placed our usual order instead of any of the things I’d just decided I might try from the menu.
“Either way, considering the rate at which our siblings are churning out kids, it was better for you to learn now. Cheaper, too. With only one kid to pay up to instead of all of them.”
He laughed. “Fair enough. Nate would probably have tried to have me arrested for auditory assault if Emma had been on that climbing frame.”
“I’d say that charge doesn’t exist in law, but you’re not wrong. He probably would’ve paid someone to have it written in only so he could have you charged with it.”
“Truth.” He finally slid off the counter and pulled up a barstool instead, silent for a beat before he looked at me again. “How did it go today?”
I knew he wanted juicy details, but I didn’t take the bait. “How did what go today?”
“You know what.” He widened his eyes at me. “Okay, I’ll start. It looked like your talk with your former lover went well. No one cried. Except for that other kid, but he had it coming. Fart head.”
“That’s a strong metric,” I said dryly. “Besides, why would anyone cry?”
He snorted. “Why would anyone cry? Dude, you two are, like, star-crossed lovers who were torn apart by their rich and inconsiderate families, only to be forced back together again almost a decade later. Neither of your hearts ever—”
“She’s signing the divorce papers this week,” I said just to shut him up before he really started building momentum. “Assuming Louis’s lawyers have finally decided to cooperate long enough to let him review the papers on his end and sign them.”
Theo blinked a few times, all the humor fading from his eyes as he frowned. “What happens then?”
I shrugged. “We move from there, I guess.”
“Move where, exactly? Move in together. Move straight into a marriage? Where are you moving?”
I gave him a look. “We’ll move forward.”
He groaned. “That’s not a direction, Zach.”
“It is when you don’t have a map,” I snapped. “This is uncharted territory, man. For all of us. As far as I know, neither Dad or Clark, Sr. have ever had to deal with a situation like ours.”
“Okay, but it’s happening, then. You and Adeline are probably getting hitched.” He leaned his elbows on the counter. “How do you feel about that?”
A sharp, dry bark of laughter shot out of me. “How do you think I feel about it?”
“I think that you should be happy,” he said carefully, then rose from his stool, paused, and rapped his knuckles across the counter. “You can let yourself be happy about this. Hell, you deserve to be happy about this. Call me when the food comes.”
With that, he strode out of the kitchen like he had somewhere to be instead of just leaving to make a dramatic exit. I shook my head, but once he was gone, I sank into the stool he’d vacated and turned those words over in my head.
You deserve to be happy about this.
It wasn’t a complicated statement, but I still wasn’t really sure what he’d meant by it. Personally, I felt so torn up by everything that was happening that I couldn’t even see straight.
In the end, I carried my food to my home office when it arrived and texted Theo to let him know the rest of the huge order was in our kitchen, waiting for him. The guy ate like an ox. Or a cow. Whichever one ate more.
Usually, I’d stick around to give him helpful hints about healthy eating habits, but tonight, I just wasn’t up to it. Retreating to the sanctuary offered by work felt like a safer bet than talking to my brother about my confused fucking feelings.
As I ate my dumplings and noodles, I tried to answer a few emails and review some documents Colin had sent over, but my focus wasn’t there. It hadn’t been all week.
I was so far gone down memory lane when my phone buzzed against my desk that I nearly vaulted out of my chair.
Thankfully, I caught the noodle container just before it went flying off my lap.
I glanced down, expecting the message to be from one of my brothers or perhaps even Charlotte, sending another ultrasound photo.
Instead, it had come from an unsaved number and I frowned. My spam blocking software was amazing, so I assumed the message had to be from a client until I opened it—and then immediately felt like an idiot.
Unknown Sender: Tell Theo we said thanks!
There was a picture attached, the image loading to reveal two girls at what appeared to be an extremely cheerful ice cream shop.
Bright colors against the walls and vibrant pink booths.
Jennifer was beaming, her smile full of unfiltered joy even though her ice cream had already started to melt down the side of her cone.
Lu was wearing her usual frown. Despite the cheerfulness of her surroundings, she looked faintly suspicious of the entire situation. I let out a quiet laugh and wondered if that was Lu’s default setting, a little too serious and faintly suspicious of everything.
When I glanced back up at the number, I was confused for a beat about why it hadn’t come up as Adeline, but then I remembered that I’d deleted it. Years ago, right after she’d ended things, I’d done it in a moment of clarity.
Or what I’d told myself was clarity at the time, at least.
Heartbroken and deep in the clutches of a bottle of cheap tequila, I’d scrolled to her contact, but instead of giving into the temptation to call her, I’d hit delete.
It’d felt like the clean break I needed, removing every possibility of a late-night mistake and making it impossible to revisit a chapter that had very clearly been closed.
It had devastated me the first time I’d typed her name into my phone and she just… wasn’t there. Honestly, it had hurt so bad that I’d screamed into my pillow. Now she was back and Theo thought I should be happy about it.
God, I’m still trying to blame the breakup on her, aren’t I?
I squeezed my eyes shut and inhaled a deep breath, then looked at the picture again, staring at the adorable little faces looking back at me. The faint echo of all that bitterness I’d been carrying around for so long started creeping up inside, but it wasn’t so bad this time.
For eight depressing, long-ass years, I’d blamed her.
I’d thought about her often and then beat myself up for it.
I’d done some things I was proud of and a lot that I really wasn’t, and through it all, the bitterness had been there.
A constant companion to carry me through every lonely and not-so-lonely night.
All because she’d left. She’d chosen someone else and that was where the story had ended.
Except it wasn’t really where it had ended. Deep down, I’d known that for a long time too.
It hadn’t really been her fault. Sure, she’d gone along with it, but I knew she hadn’t really had a choice. I’d seen it with my brothers. With my cousins.
When that hammer came down, it came down fast and hard, when you least expected. Fuck, both Adeline and I were going through it right now. That hammer was about to slam down on her for the second time, before the dust had even settled in the aftermath of the first time.
Glancing back down at the picture she’d sent, I found my fingers moving of their own accord, zooming in just slightly on Jennifer’s smile and then on Lu’s frown. These girls were already going through it in the worst possible way.
Whatever happened with me and Adeline, I didn’t want to do anything that could make things even remotely worse for them. Which included blaming their mother to kingdom come for something I knew hadn’t been entirely her fault.
Back when I’d deleted her number, I hadn’t been able to bring myself to block her forever, and strangely, I was happy about that now. I typed out a response but reread it before I sent it.
Me: Glad they’re enjoying the money they pilfered from my brother.
No. God no.
I deleted that response, then quickly typed out another.
Me: Lu looks thrilled
When I reread it, that didn’t feel right either. Nothing I thought of did. After deleting that message too, I glanced back at what she’d sent. It was so simple and so casual, like maybe we could just start here.
I blew out a slow breath and ran a hand through my hair, then picked up my phone again. Overthinking it wasn’t helping, and maybe she was right. Maybe we could just start here.
Finally, I stopped trying to find the perfect response and just answered.
Me: Theo will survive. He’s been financially reckless for years.
I stared at it for a second, then hit send before I could change my mind. The three dots appeared almost immediately and my pulse ticked up in response.
Adeline: Let him know he has a reputation to maintain now as the sponsor of ice cream.
A small smile pulled at the corner of my mouth. She’s still her, isn’t she?
Somehow, that was a relief. I hadn’t expected the girl I used to know to still be in there somewhere, even though I’d seen her in this version of Adeline’s eyes that very first time we’d run into each other again at the restaurant.
Maybe I’d just been too scared to hope that it really could be her.
Either way, it felt good to know that on some level, I really did still know her.
Me: Would you like to take them out together sometime?
The three dots took longer to appear this time. Long enough that I started reconsidering everything from the tone of the message, to the timing, to whether I should’ve just left it completely, but then her reply popped up.
Adeline: Yes. I think they’d like that.
All the nerves vanished and I might even have smiled a little. I still didn’t have a map and I still wasn’t sure what would come next, but I suddenly had a feeling I knew what moving forward looked like—and it felt a hell of a lot like this.