Chapter 3
chapter
three
Jules
“Jules?”
I turn around at the sound of Hope’s voice, and my whole body pivots toward it like a compass needle.
She stands in the doorway, chewing on her bottom lip, one hand braced on the wall as if she needs the support to stay upright.
“What happened?”
She shakes her head. “Nothing. Still waiting.”
My shoulders drop, and my breath rushes out of me.
“Okay. I just didn’t know where you went.”
“I was negotiating the release of a hostage.”
Her forehead wrinkles.
I hold up the candy bar, chocolate smeared at the corner of the wrapper. “The situation became violent.”
She chuckles. “Of course it did.”
Her eyes move to the cowboy behind me, and they widen slightly. Just a flicker, there and gone, but I catch it.
I know that look.
I’ve seen that look on Hope’s face approximately four hundred and thirty-two times over the years.
It says, Holy wow. Hot man alert!
I give her the smallest shake of my head. Not now.
Her eyebrows climb.
I narrow my eyes.
She presses her lips together.
We’ve been sisters long enough to have an entire conversation without saying a word. Foster sisters, technically, if anyone’s counting.
Nobody in our family counts.
“Jules?”
The cowboy says my name behind me, and something in his voice has changed. A low note of surprise threaded through it.
I turn back, candy bar still in hand. “Yeah?”
Something shifts in his expression. The easy warmth is still there, but there’s curiosity too.
“You’re Jules?”
I glance down at myself, at the hoodie and my coffee-stained sleeve, like the answer might be written somewhere on my body.
“Um, last time I checked.”
“Jules…”
My shoulders stiffen. Every muscle across my back goes tight at once, a full-body flinch dressed up as stillness.
“Who wants to know?”
Instead of being put off, he looks amused, that same twitch tugging at his mouth.
Of course he does.
“Payton Blankenship.” He holds out his hand, big and open, palm up like an offering. “Oliver’s brother.”
Oh.
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
Of course he is.
I look at his hand and then back at his face, doing the math I should have done three minutes ago. Apparently the Blankenships have access to some kind of secret cowboy laboratory where they grow ridiculously large men with broad shoulders and excellent bone structure.
It would explain Oliver and this one.
I put my hand in his.
His fingers close around mine, warm, calloused, rough in a way that catches faintly against my skin, big enough to swallow my whole hand, which I absolutely do not notice.
I definitely don’t notice the way his thumb brushes once, barely, against the side of my wrist before he lets go.
“Oliver said you were coming,” he says. “He texted me from the back. Told me to keep an eye out for Cora’s sisters.”
I pull my hand back, tucking it against my stomach like it needs protecting.
“Should I be concerned Oliver warned you about us?”
“Probably,” Hope snorts behind me.
Traitor.
“What did he say?”
“That you and Hope are her sisters.”
Something in the way he says it makes me pause, makes my chest go still for half a second.
Not foster sisters. Not friends from foster care. Just sisters.
An acknowledgment of our self-made family group.
My chest does a weird little squeeze, a hot pressure right behind my sternum that has nothing to do with the fluorescent lights or the vending machine hum.
“She’s ours,” I say.
My voice comes out rougher than I mean it to.
His smile softens, loses its teasing edge entirely.
“Yeah. I get that.”
I shove another bite of chocolate into my mouth because apparently eating is safer than talking to Payton Blankenship.
It’s not.
The chocolate has gone thick and hard to swallow, my throat working around it like it’s trying to buy me time.
“Do you know what happened?” I ask once I’ve swallowed. “Did Oliver tell you anything?”
“I was there. She got dizzy or something at my grandparents’ anniversary party. Oliver had her in his truck before anybody else figured out something was wrong.” He hesitates, then lowers his voice. “Mimz told us about the baby.”
Oh.
They know. Some of it, anyway. There’s nothing on his face but concern. He doesn’t know whose baby it is.
And it is not my news to tell.
My stomach drops again, all the way this time, a cold plummet that leaves my fingertips tingling.
Payton straightens away from the vending machine, his weight shifting like he’s bracing to catch something. “But Oliver’s with her.”
“That is not nearly as comforting as you seem to think it is.”
His laugh is a short huff of breath. “I mean, she’s not alone.”
Oh.
I hate the way that lands, hate the little unclenching in my chest, the traitorous relief of it, because Cora has never been alone.
She has me.
She has Hope.
We have each other. Three girls stitched together out of nothing else.
But this is different.
Oliver is different, and I don’t know exactly what the hell is going on between those two, but I’ve heard enough—the way Cora’s voice goes quiet when she says his name—to know he’s not just some cowboy from a bar anymore. Not to her.
Which is good.
It’s what she deserves.
It’s just—
“Jules?”
I blink, and the hallway swims back into focus.
Payton is watching me, head tilted, eyes doing that unhurried thing again, except this time it isn’t heat that’s stirring. It’s something closer to concern.
“What?”
“You okay?”
“Peachy.”
The word comes out clipped, too fast.
His eyebrows rise. “Do people still say peachy?”
“I do.”
“What do you kids say now? Is my sister’s situation giving? Is the candy bar bussin’?”
He winces like I’ve stepped on his foot. “Please never say that again.”
“Then peachy stays.”
“Peachy’s great,” he says. “Peachy’s making a comeback.”
I take another bite of candy. My hand is not quite steady, and I press my thumb against the wrapper to hide it.
He keeps looking at me.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“That is twice now you’ve claimed nothing while clearly doing something.”
“I’m just standing here.”
“Judgmentally.”
“I don’t think I’m judging you.”
“Good, because I assure you, whatever conclusions you’re drawing are probably wrong.”
“Okay.”
I narrow my eyes. “Okay?”
“Okay.”
“You’re very agreeable.”
His smile comes back, slow, easy, spreading like something warm poured over ice.
“So I’ve been told.”
“It’s annoying.”
“Also been told that. Of course, I am the youngest of five kids, so they pretty much all think I’m annoying.”
I hate how much I like him.
Not just like him. Not like-like him.
Jesus, I don’t even know him. We met four minutes ago over vending machine chocolate, and already I know the exact temperature of his hand.
I mean, I like talking to him.
I definitely like looking at him.
He’s easy in a way that loosens something behind my ribs, and I don’t know how to explain that.
But it feels dangerous.
There’s a certain amount of calculation involved when meeting strangers. You have to figure out, What do they want? Is this going somewhere? Do I want it to?
Payton doesn’t seem to want anything.
He’s just standing here with me in a hallway that smells like bleach and old coffee, under lights that make everyone look a little bit dead.
And somehow, he’s the only warm thing in it.
“Come on,” Hope says. “Let’s go sit down.”
“Yeah.”
She disappears through the doorway, and the sound of the waiting room spills out after her.
I start after her, my sneakers squeaking faintly against the linoleum.
“You know you don’t have to pretend not to be scared, right?”
My feet stop.
Just like that, mid-stride, like he’s reached out and grabbed my ankle.
Well, fuck you very much, Payton Blankenship.
I turn slowly, the candy bar wrapper crinkling in my fist.
He’s not smiling now, but there isn’t any pity on his face either.
Thank God.
I would have to punch him if there were. I genuinely don’t know if my hand would survive making contact with whatever that jaw is made of.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do.”
“You’ve known me for five minutes.”
“Closer to seven.”
“Then you definitely don’t know me well enough to psychoanalyze me.”
“I’m not psychoanalyzing you.”
“Could have fooled me.”
He shrugs one shoulder, unbothered. “You said she’s your sister.”
“She is.”
“And you’re at a hospital waiting to find out why she passed out.”
My fingers tighten around the candy bar.
“Most people would be scared.”
I look away.
My eyes land on the vending machine glass, on my own reflection ghosted over rows of chips and gum, on the fluorescent tube overhead that is flickering just slightly. Just enough to be annoying. Just enough to give my eyes something to focus on besides him.
Stupid fluorescent lights.
Stupid vending machines.
Stupid ridiculously perceptive cowboy.
“I always look like this.”
My voice comes out steadier than I feel, which is its own small victory.
“Terrifying.”
I glance back at him.
Something in my chest loosens half an inch at the word, at the fact that he didn’t say sad or scared or any of the words that would have made this so much harder to survive standing up.
“Exactly.”
His grin returns, slow, and God help me, I smile back.
It’s tiny, barely there, but he catches it.
Of course he does.
He seems to catch everything.
And his expression changes for half a second, something flickering behind his eyes, like I’m giving him something.
Which is ridiculous.
It’s chocolate and a hallway and seven minutes.
“Come on, Dr. Phil.” I jerk my head toward the waiting room, grateful for something to do with my body besides stand here feeling seen. “If you’re Oliver’s brother, I assume you’re here for Cora too.”
“I am.”
He falls into step beside me, close enough that I can feel the heat coming off him, a whole furnace of a person moving at my shoulder.
And somehow that helps.
My pulse slows a fraction with every step, like his presence is setting some kind of pace I didn’t know that I needed.
Payton Blankenship is the baby of the family.
I learn exactly how much of a baby approximately thirty minutes later, after the hospital waiting room has been invaded by enough Blankenships to form their own sovereign nation.