Chapter 9 #3
Then without saying anything else, he turned and walked away, leaving me and Clara to enjoy our tea party.
ELLIOT
“Uncle Elliot!” Clara’s scream was loud and full of energy, something I understood after I hugged my niece and smelled and saw the remnants of frosting on her face. I swiped off some with a grin. “You eating sugar without me?”
Beau had obviously eased up on the whole no sugar thing, after putting her on an intense, organic, raw diet when the chemo hadn’t worked.
She smiled back, wiping her face with the back of her hand. “There might be some left, just don’t eat the eyes. I’m saving them for later.” She turned and ran. “Gotta go! I’m looking up the history of Christian Loubo-uteen .”
It wasn’t unheard of for Clara to google semi-obscure things. She’d spent a large portion of her short life in hospital beds with nothing but time to read and watch things. She was not a girl after cartoons; she loved learning.
But that was an interesting topic, even for her. Women’s shoes. Very expensive women’s shoes, if I remembered correctly. Not exactly my area of expertise. Then, of their own volition, my thoughts ventured to a specific woman who I knew wore expensive shoes.
I watched Clara run down the hall with a sharp pain in my heart. She was scheduled to be admitted tomorrow. I’d seen her at her worst, so I knew she was sick, but times like this, I almost forgot. Hopefully, tomorrow might be the beginning of this all becoming a memory.
The doctors were careful not to make promises, not to plant seeds of false hope.
But I felt it, that painful, agonizing possibility that we might be past the worst of it, that my niece would finally be able to be a child again. That my brother would be a father who wasn’t waiting to grieve the loss of his daughter, that he’d be more than a shell of a man.
When I entered the kitchen, he was sipping coffee in between cleaning plates. I was about to ask him if he was prepared for tomorrow, if he needed anything, but my brother did something rare and spoke first.
“You just missed her.” He had an interesting expression on his face. Not a smile— brother reserved those for his daughter. But it wasn’t that dreaded, heavy expression I’d grown used to, even though it was always a kick to the stomach.
I looked at the distinctive pink box, putting two and two together.
“Nora?” I settled down on the breakfast bar, pulling the box to me so I could indulge. That woman could bake. I let out a chuckle when I saw the remnants of a bright-pink spider, whose legs had been eaten.
“She’s ready to pop now, so I’m thankful she waited to give birth for this.” I swiped a finger’s length of frosting, resisting the urge to groan at the sugary decadence.
It would’ve been kind of weird to be groaning in pleasure in front of my brother over bright-pink cake.
“Not Nora.” He squeezed soap onto a sponge. “Calliope Derrick.”
I looked up at him, sure I must’ve misheard. Or I was so entrapped by the woman that I was imagining hearing her name everywhere. My brother looked appropriately serious.
I grabbed a napkin to wipe my sticky finger. “Calliope was here?”
He leaned back against the counter, narrowed eyes searching my expression.
I hadn’t told him about my night with her, but my father had a big mouth and had told him about the interaction on the boat.
My father was perceptive. He was emotionally mature, and because he was quiet, he spent a lot of time watching people, learning them.
He knew me. Knew what my reaction to Calliope on the boat meant, and though he hadn’t said a word since, I could tell he’d stored the information for later.
“She delivered the cake then stayed for coffee, hung out with Clara for about an hour while I got some accounting shit done and Clara’s stuff prepared for the hospital.”
My brows might’ve hit the ceiling. Not just at Calliope coming in for a coffee with my brother—although that certainly was not something I expected from her—but because she had hung out with my niece.
And at my brother trusting her to do that.
He didn’t trust anyone but me or my father to watch her, and even then, she was rarely out of his sight.
Which made sense, given that he was facing the real possibility that his time with her was limited.
“You’re shitting me.” The words flew from my mouth, even though I saw the three plates he had washed, the two coffee mugs, one with a distinct shade of red lipstick.
“Not shitting. She’s not what I expected.” He was still eyeing me. “Beautiful too. More than I expected.” Beau rarely commented on women’s appearances. I’d wondered if he’d become a monk in the past two years for all the interest I’d seen him give to the opposite sex.
Rage that came out of nowhere bubbled in me from the simple thought of my brother coveting her. “She’s fucking mine .” The words were out of my mouth before I could control them or register how fucking unhinged they made me sound.
My brother raised his brows, the ghost of a smile emerging underneath his beard.
He wasn’t bothered that I was shouting at him, something I had very rarely done. He was the one with the explosive temper, while I was well-known for being the peacemaker in our family.
I was surprised at myself.
“She’s yours? ” My brother hummed. “Let’s put aside the fact that Calliope Derrick doesn’t strike me as the kind of woman who can be claimed like a possession… You have never called a woman ‘yours’ in your life. Not even the one who wore your ring.” His eyes darkened. “Thankfully.”
I chewed some cake thoughtfully, thinking of Janine.
Beau was right, I’d loved her. She was pretty.
Men had looked at her appreciatively, even when I was around.
It never enraged me, never to the point of picking any kind of fight or feeling any kind of jealousy.
And Calliope was a woman I’d only fucked once, my brother just stating the objective fact that she was beautiful, and I was ready to rip his face off.
“You gonna clue me in here?” my brother asked after I didn’t reply.
I let out a long sigh. “There’s nothing to fill you in on.
” As much as I was never one to kiss and tell about the short list of other women I’d been with, my night with Calliope was something I was keeping sacred.
No way in fuck would I cheapen it like that.
And there was no way to properly articulate that night without sounding like I was writing a goddamn sonnet about her.
Not that you wrote sonnets about Calliope Derrick.
You wrote epic, Greek tragedies with disaster waiting at the end.
“You sure about that?” Beau asked. “You looked like you were about to kick my ass for saying she was beautiful. Which she is. And she’s not your type. Not in the slightest.”
He was right. My type was the small-town, simple, soft, rip your heart out before you know what hit you kind of girl.
Though both my brother and I had vastly different types, it didn’t escape me that we’d both chosen ones who fucked up our lives, had left us. Maybe some kind of scar from the loss of our mother. Who knew?
“Calliope Derrick is every man’s type.” I imagined her full lips, her tits, the sharpness of her gaze, her silver tongue. Her glorious fucking pussy.
My brother chuckled, and the sound hit me in the gut. It was the first time I’d heard him do that in years.
He rinsed his hands, wiping them on a dish towel. “Not mine, brother. I’m smart enough to appreciate her beauty and to acknowledge that that’s a woman who would cause fucking wreckage.”
My vision tinted red at the insinuation that Calliope was somehow bad, automatically protective over her, figuring that was a lot of people’s first impressions.
Calliope liked it that way. At least that was what she projected.
But I asked myself whether she forced herself to like it so it didn’t hurt so much.
“I like her,” my brother shrugged, still eyeing me as if he were watching the rage boil inside of me.
“ You like her?” I felt my rage dampen some. “You don’t like anyone beyond Clara, Dad, and sometimes me.”
“I like Juan.” He rubbed the back of his neck. Juan had been serving as the temporary head chef at Shaw Shack since Clara got sick. He was the only person Beau trusted with his lobster roll recipe.
“Okay, three and a half people,” I relented, counting myself as the half. “That’s not really a good batting average in a town we grew up in full of pretty decent people.”
Though Beau had grown even more introverted with Clara’s sickness, he hadn’t been the social type to begin with. He’d always been a grumpy bastard, never one to willingly socialize. He preferred being in the kitchen, out on the water or tinkering in his garage, carving shit.
He’d had friends, though. Had been known to joke and smile on occasion.
But then Naomi got her talons into him, and even before Clara was born, she distanced him from his friends.
She’d tried to do the same with us, though no way in fuck did we let that happen.
After losing our mother, we knew how important family was, and we’d never abandon one another.
And then Clara was born, and Beau existed, smiled, laughed, lived for that little girl.
Since then, there weren’t exactly a whole host of opportunities for him to socialize, forget romantic entanglements. Dad and I offered to look after Clara so he could get out, breathe a little, but he’d refused. First, because he was protective after Naomi left, and then Clara got sick.
We’d never pushed, both of us terrified we’d push him away completely.
“I don’t like people,” he grumbled.
“You know, that’s my motto,” I teased. “Broody fisherman who spends his days on the ocean, doesn’t like people, a permanent scowl etched onto his face.”
Beau let out a grunt that was his version of a laugh those days. “Yeah, that’s not your problem. You like too many people, one person in particular, if I’m not mistaken.”
“You don’t make it a habit to talk about my love life.” I arched a brow at him. “Want to braid each other’s hair too?”
Though I was joking, even I heard the edge in my tone that I hadn’t intended.
I wasn’t secretive about anything romantic, not like my brother was.
Fuck, as far as I knew, he’d been celibate for the past four years.
But I also didn’t shy away from talking about women I liked.
Not that I’d dated many after my failed engagement, but I certainly wasn’t celibate.
Nor had I been known to be overly protective or jealous. Wasn’t my style.
But I felt an animal inside me, one that had been awoken the moment I laid eyes on Calliope, one that I wasn’t entirely sure I had control over.
Beau wasn’t smiling. “I’m not talking about it further than this.
” He pushed off from the counter, moving a step closer to me.
“Calliope Derrick is a good woman. I see that. But I also hear shit. And it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see she’s got trouble on her heels.
And a woman like that, that powerful, is not the kind of trouble you’re trained to handle.
I’d advise you to buckle up if you do choose her. ”
He turned his back on me, heading for the fridge where he pulled out food he was cooking for dinner, his way of ending the conversation.
Though my instinct was to argue with him—on the account of my newly discovered fragile ego about what I could and couldn’t handle when it came to Calliope Derrick—I kept my mouth shut, staring at the black eyes of the spider cake on the counter.
My brother’s warning was not something to be taken lightly.
Neither was Calliope Derrick.
The smart thing to do was to leave it where it was, at one night together, appetites sated, having tasted the kind of ruin she’d promised, then stay far away from her.
I was known for doing the smart thing.
But no way in fuck was I ever going to be sated by just one taste of Calliope Derrick.