Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
Eddie
At night, the house finally settles. Cleo is in the middle of everything. So far, nobody’s asked why the fuck she’s here—they’re probably just grateful she’s safe and not in a ditch. Or was it a car on fire? Or drowning and found mostly decomposed? Fuck, I’m too tired to keep the plan straight.
Arthur’s working with a team putting together the evidence. He’s got a buddy who owns a production company. Not sure how that’s supposed to help, but they say everything’s under control, and I have to believe them, even when it takes everything in me not to take control of this.
Cleo sleeps.
Barret sits in the armchair by the window, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. He’s been staring at the closed curtains so long, I think he’s counting the threads. I’m on the floor beside the bed, just close enough to Cleo to convince myself I’m part of the reason she keeps sleeping.
Barret glances over without moving his head. “You’re gonna kink your neck,” he whispers.
“I already did.” I shift my weight. The floorboard under my thigh complains. “You should sleep. I’ll sit up.”
“Why are we doing this again?” he mumbles, half-absent.
I frown. “What are we asking?”
“We usually sleep in your bedroom. Today . . . it seems weird you want us here.” He plays with his lip, and for a second, I want to kiss him—or fuck him.
I’m in that mood that sex might calm me down, but the house is full and I don’t want anyone asking about our situation because it’s too fucking complicated to explain—not because I don’t know what’s happening, but because I don’t know how to get from point A to point B.
He lets out a quiet sound that could be a laugh. “Earth to Eddie, what’s happening, Reznor? There’s a lot going on in that head of yours.”
“I want to be here in case she has a nightmare,” I remind him.
“She hasn’t had one in the past week,” he states, then he studies her. “You just don’t want to share her attention with them.”
The way he smirks, like he just found the problem and can’t believe I’m being so possessive.
“Is it wrong?”
He shakes his head. “I mean, it’s a bit weird that you don’t like to share, but as one of the people you hate to share, it feels endearing and at times good.”
Yet there’s something that he’s not saying. “What bothers you about it?”
Barret narrows his gaze, as if he’s thinking deeply about the answer.
Then, after taking what appears like a cleansing breath, he says, “We get all this attention and love and then you fucking leave. You take off without a word because you think it’s best for everyone. It fucks with people, you know?”
“It seemed like the best thing to do at the time,” I confess weakly because I know it wasn’t, and that I should’ve handled it differently.
“Both times?” He glares at me. “Because they fucked me up deeply. I was already in a hole, and then the only person that I had to lean on disappeared—because it was the best for me.”
“I should have handled it differently,” I admit.
“You still think leaving was for the best?” He asks, and it feels like a challenge.
“Trying to fix the past isn’t going to help either of us, B.
The answer is no if you’re asking me if I’ll do it again.
This . . .” I point at him, at Cleo, and myself.
“What we’re doing here, while we’re helping her get out of that fucked up situation, is the plan.
Communicate about everything that’s hurting either one of us.
I’m not just going to jump out of this because it got hard—I learned my lesson. ”
He nods a couple of times and pokes at me again. “How is this going to work in a world where being queer is unacceptable?”
“The Deckers have done a great job,” I say, because his sponsor, Chris Decker, has been hiding his relationship with his best friend for years. Nobody knows they have three children.
“I don’t want my man parading some bimbo—or for Cleo to look like she’s only yours or only mine when other people are watching.”
“I’m not saying we have to announce it,” he says, low. “But I don’t want us pretending, either. Making up stories so the paparazzi don’t sniff around twenty-four-seven.”
I drag my fingers through my hair until it protests. “You’re not making it easy today, are you?”
“I’m thinking about her—about us, too.”
We both turn to look at Cleo at the same time, as if checking together will keep whatever fragile thing she has left asleep and untroubled.
Her breaths are calm and small. The blanket is tucked up under her chin the way she used to when she’d fall asleep on Roderick’s couch during practice, a textbook splayed over her stomach.
The living room light painted her lashes gold.
Up close, her face looks younger, unguarded.
Today drained her dry. Her brothers. Kit. The baby. The questions she dodged. The questions I gave. The way her face changed when she snuggled baby Arlo.
I promised everyone we’d do questions tomorrow. I almost said next week. What I really wanted to say was never.
“Should we reward Alfie for not bringing the Duchess?” Barret cuts through the silence.
I snort. “We’ll reward him with cookies for that one,” I pause, then blurt, “I feel like Dexter and Alec should’ve been here.”
“We said family only,” Barret answers, polite and final.
“They’re family,” I state, adding, “We’re their only family, B.”
He cocks an eyebrow. “Is that why you’re always inviting them everywhere?”
“Yeah. They’re getting better, you know?” I say it almost like an afterthought. “Alec is going to therapy more often, and Dexter is dating some starlet.”
He groans. “Oh, fuck, there comes the drama.”
“Why do you assume?”
Barret points at me. “I’ll remind you of this the next time you have to hire a PR because of some sex tape or whatever scandal you’re cleaning up for Dex.”
“It was a one-time thing.”
“You have a very short memory where our fuck-ups are concerned.” He exhales. “You never let us go. Even when you started your company, you still came back to fix us.”
“That’s what you do for family.”
“I’m learning that,” he admits. “But for this—maybe we don’t include them. Not yet. Don’t you think?”
I rub my chin. He might be right, but the word worry is already warm in my throat. “They’ll worry.”
He rolls his eyes like I’m being theatrical. “They won’t.”
“They do,” I say. “They care in ways you don’t see. They message me on EchoZone.”
“Have they asked about Cleo?”
I nod. “A few times, I’ve told them the same as the others. Don’t believe the gossip.” I huff. “They do care even when they haven’t shown it. Those two are carrying a lot of grief, too. Adding more things when they find . . .”
I don’t finish because I know it’s not Cleo that they’ll find, but there’s going to be a lot that’s going to happen when they discover the bodies of Caleb Wilder and Clara Vanderpool’s daughter.
It’s going to be national news, people will be grieving and .
. . “You’re probably right, they don’t need to know until it’s necessary. ”
“That’s all I’m saying.” Barret exhales. “You try to carry every single thing.”
I close my eyes and press the heel of my hand into the back of my neck.
There’s a small, sharp picture in my head of a house with two mugs cooling on the counter, rooms that smell like busy lives that have slowed into something else.
“There’s a world where this splits us. She’ll tell herself she can’t be the reason we fall apart.
She’ll walk out to save us and leave us with cold mugs and a house that smells like something we won’t cook for ourselves again. ”
Barret swallows. “Yeah.”
“I don’t want that world.”
“Me neither.”
“I want this one.” My voice frays at the edge, and I force it back into line.
I look up and he’s watching me like he’s memorizing a line in a play.
“The world where she wakes and sees us and doesn’t flinch.
Where you and I don’t have to label things to make strangers comfortable.
Where she isn’t forced to choose just so we can all breathe.
Where your toothbrush is where it always is, because it always is.
Where I complain about your socks in the shoe basket and you steal half my fries and Cleo laughs—like she did before, like she does now. ”
Something in Barret loosens—relief, yes, but rawer than that, like the release after holding something taut for too long. He says softly, “Say that last thing again.”
“I want the world where she doesn’t have to choose—and neither do we.
” My voice cracks. I press my tongue to my teeth until it steadies.
“I want a world where we carry this together. All of it. Where your toothbrush is here because it always is. Where I complain about your socks in the shoe basket and you steal half of my fries, and Cleo laughs like she did before and after and now.”
Barret’s mouth finds the curve of a smile that is mostly grief. “There he is,” he murmurs, as if he’s finally found me in a crowd.
“I’m not hiding.”
“You were.”
“Shut up.”
He smiles, but it curves with grief. “I’ll shut up when you sleep.”
“I can’t yet.”
“I know.”
We both look at Cleo again—at the slow rise of her shoulder, at the textbook’s dog-eared corner peeking out—and then back at each other, and for a moment the room is only our breathing and the faint scent of baby lotion and coffee gone cold on the table.