Chapter 14 #2
"Ooooh. Hang back. Captain's in trouble." He saunters back in, arms crossed, doing his best impression of our actual father. "I'll stay too. Big brother stuff… I should be here. You know, for Mase."
"You are the youngest. Now get out!"
"No, see, this is a family matter, and I am family—"
I reach over and smack him upside the head.
"OW—" He rubs his scalp so his hair starts sticking up all over the place. "You're so abusive, I'm telling Mom—"
"GO."
He goes, grumbling something about elder abuse and threatening to report me to HR, whoever that would even be in this scenario, and finally the front door bangs shut behind him.
Through the window I watch him chase Biscuit across the lawn while Mason loads bags into the trunk, and Diego stands on the porch with his arms crossed like a furious, gorgeous prison guard.
I turn back to the tablet.
Zoey's just looking at me and I hate how much she looks like Mom right now. Not in a cruel way, not in the way that makes my stomach turn, but in the tired way.
"So. You talked to Mom again?" I ask, looking over my shoulder to make sure there isn't an audience.
Zoey nods. "Yeah. How are they taking it?" She jerks her head to gesture behind me.
"Like only a Morrison can." I grunt, crossing my arms. "Deny, deflect, and pray it resolves itself."
Zoey snorts. "It's worked for thirty years."
"Has it, though? Or did it just get us to the point where Mom is sobbing into her sourdough and Dad is googling 'how to split a boat in a divorce.'"
She winces. "Okay, when you put it like that—"
I glance over my shoulder again. Still no sign of Beck or Mason lurking, thank God.
"So what exactly did Mom say?" I ask, because someone has to. "How bad was the call?"
"Bad." She exhales, long and shaky. "She cried for like twenty minutes, Dec. Full on sobbing."
"Fuck."
"She kept asking me what she did wrong. Like it's her fault he decided to—" She presses her lips together hard, swallows it down. "She wants to know if she should move. Sell the house. But she doesn't know where to even start."
"She could come stay with you. In Chilmore."
"Where, Declan? I live above a bakery. I've got one bedroom and a daughter who already shares space with my flour delivery schedule. There's nowhere to put her."
"Right." I drag a hand down my face. "Right, yeah. Stupid idea."
"It's not stupid. It's just—" She shakes her head. "There's no good answer here. There's no version of this where it doesn't completely flip her life upside down."
We sit there in silence for a beat, the two of us staring at each other through a screen, three thousand miles apart, both trying to solve a problem that doesn't have a fix.
"So Beck still doesn't know the whole of it?" Zoey asks quietly. "He still thinks this is just... a normal divorce. Irreconcilable differences. Boring grown-up stuff."
I nod. "Yeah. I haven't told him anything."
"Fuck. Beck," Zoey murmurs, and the way she says it, soft and aching, tells me she's thinking the exact same thing I am. "This is going to shatter him."
It will. Out of all of us, Beck's the one who still believes that somewhere underneath all that noise and chaos we lived with… that the family was real.
That this all means something. The fact that he lives with his brothers and idolizes his sister… all of this is normal.
In Beck's eyes, he has the perfect life.
And when this finally breaks open, when he finds out the real reason, that our father's been finding his own source of happiness for thirty years while screwing it up behind closed doors—
I don't know what that does to him.
"We'll figure it out," I say, even though I have no idea how. "When we're back from this trip. We'll sit down, the three of us, figure out what Mom needs."
"Yeah." Zoey nods, even though neither of us believes it's that simple. "Yeah, okay."
She's quiet for a second, studying me through the screen in that way she's always done. My sister can see straight through whatever I'm trying to hold together on the surface, and I fucking hate it.
"Okay," she says, voice shifting, lighter now, deliberately steering us somewhere else. "So tell me about the girl."
I roll my eyes.
"What girl."
"Declan." She gives me a look. The exact look she used to give me in high school when I'd come home smelling like someone else's perfume. "Beck told me everything. The jersey. The bedroom. The naked bodies under the duvet."
"I'm going to kill him."
"His words, not mine." She grins. "Now… talk to me. This is new for you."
I rake a hand through my hair, looking anywhere but the camera.
Back in that conference room yesterday, watching Josie stand at the head of the table in that fitted blazer, rattling off about how much success she's bringing like she wasn't the same woman who screamed my name into my pillow four nights ago.
I sat across from her and told the room that the team was "fine" like she was just another name on my roster instead of the reason I actually give a damn about this season.
The whole time, all I wanted to do was cross that room, drag her into my lap, and kiss her senseless in front of everyone.
Instead I stared out the window like a coward, because what am I supposed to do… announce it? Blow up the one good thing in my life the same week my family's already blowing up?
I don't know how to hold both. So I've just been holding neither.
"It's complicated."
"It's always complicated with you. But with everything else going on, I think you should talk to me anyway. You're carrying too much."
So I do. Or I try to.
I give her the bare bones about Josie, the PR job, the chaos of the first night together and the way everything's spiraled since. I leave out the parts that are mine to keep, the parts I'll cherish for the rest of my life.
"So when did you last talk to her? Properly, I mean. Not texting."
I open my mouth, but the truth stays hidden.
Truth is, I haven't. Not since she cried against my chest and told me things she's never said out loud to anyone. I promised myself I'd be the one person who helps her prove her mother wrong.
I'd show up, stay present, give her what nobody else bothered to.
Instead I've been a ghost. Buried in my own wreckage, forgetting she's drowning in hers too.
"Been busy," I say.
Zoey doesn't say anything for a second. She just looks at me, head tilted off to the side.
"Declan."
She leans closer to the camera.
"You don't get to do this," she says. "I watched you shut down with every single person who ever tried to get close to you, and I get it. I'm a divorcee too, remember? So believe me, I get it."
I roll my eyes and look out at the ocean.
"But don't be a jerk about this. Don't be a guy about it, Dec. Don't just start pulling away the second it starts meaning something, because meaning feels dangerous."
"Zoey—"
"You're not a regular guy."
Her eyes are glassy now, and I don't think this is just about me. I think it's about everything that's going on. Dad, Mom, the whole rotting foundation we've been standing on our entire lives.
This is my sister's way of letting it all out.
"You're better than that. You always have been. And if this girl can see that, if she's already seeing it—which, according to Beck, she is—then let her, Declan. Don't run from the one good thing because the world is burning around you. Run towards it."
Outside, a car horn blares, followed immediately by Beck's voice hollering something about missing our flight.
"Listen, Zo. I have to go," I say.
"Of course." Zoey nods, swallowing hard, pulling herself back together. "Go. Win some games. Be amazing."
"Love you, Zo."
"Love you too. Take care of your brothers."
Take care of your brothers.
Like I haven't been doing that since I was twelve years old.
I end the call, grab my bag off the counter, and walk out into the blinding Beachside sun. I pile into a car full of brothers who don't know the truth yet, heading towards a road trip that's supposed to save our franchise.
But that's not even the hardest part.
The hardest part is that Zoey's right. I've fallen for a woman that I haven't let myself have yet.
All because I'm too busy trying to hold everyone else together.
Some things never change.