17
“Do you smell that?” Murphy is the first out of the car as we pull up to the garage.
“There’s no way!” Rafe is gone, tripping over his feet to get inside and it’s like they haven’t eaten in weeks the way they're acting, but I know why the second the smell hits my nose.
We all know it’s not Birdie, which means Cress made dinner.
The kitchen is immaculate, no trace of either of them as the guys tumble through into the living room. The dining table is empty and it’s then that the smile forms on my face.
When we were little, and Mom was exhausted, she used to dump everything out on the coffee table and let us pick at it while we watched cartoons.
As we got older it evolved because we all started to find our favorite foods and family dinners became something of a potluck.
Once a week we’d pile into the kitchen, make a mess, and leave it to watch a movie, which was picked based on a specific rotation.
Koa had picked last. We watched The Land Before Time.
It’s immature, and if anyone walked in on us, we’d lose just about every ounce of credibility we gained, but it was our tradition.
It was how we did family dinners. Cress sets down a bowl of vegetables—it looks like slaw—and turns just in time to brace herself for the hug Murphy wraps around her.
Rafe kisses her cheek, and they both settle in on the floor, leaving Birdie to the open chair with her bowl of cereal and us to the couch. Together.
She made everyone's favorite for them: chicken tacos for Rafe, mashed potatoes and gravy for Murphy, and in the middle of the coffee table there’s a bowl of strawberries to go with a pile of shortcake beside it.
“It must have taken you hours,” I whisper, settling onto the couch next to her. She tucks herself into the brown cardigan she’s wearing and turns to look at me. The rogue curls around her face beg to be touched but I reach out and grab a beer instead.
“Birdie helped.” She shrugs like it was nothing.
“No, she didn’t,” I laugh. “That girl would rather trade in five fingers than cook.” I shake my head and bring the bottle to my lips.
“Everyone got their favorite.” Her eyes meet mine, and I’m forced to swallow the urge to find her lips, even briefly.
“Are they homemade?” I ask, looking at the shortcake biscuits.
She nods. “So is the whipped cream.”
“You spoil a man, Cress.” It slips out in a muffled, husky tone and I watch her cheeks turn the color of the strawberry syrup. “Sorry,” I apologize, licking my bottom lip as Rafe and Murphy start to argue over what movie they want to watch.
I bang the bottle against the table gently, just loud enough to get their attention. “Cress cooked. She picks.”
“Oliver and Company,” she says quickly as she grabs a taco from Rafe’s plate. Once they stop grumbling about her choice, Murphy finds the VHS and throws it into the TV just like always.
It’s been a long time since we did anything like this, together or apart.
But definitely together. Birdie keeps flicking Rafe’s ear with wet fingers and Murphy’s glasses are abandoned for squinty eyes and full cheeks.
Seeing them so relaxed and happy causes the muscles in my shoulders to unfurl and my heart rate to slow into a pace I don’t recognize.
I think about what Rafe said, about her just showing up. Needing us after all this time and without an apology. We’ve been working so hard to forget everything that happened that we also forgot how to be ourselves. How to be a family.
But even in her grief she remembers every single little thing. She always knew exactly how to take care of them, individually, and with way more love than Koa and I could ever figure out.
We’re a unit with or without her, but with her, there’s so much more heart to us.
“Why do you love this movie so much?” I ask her after a while. The second song has finished and I’m pushing around the rogue strawberries in my bowl after eating two servings of dessert for dinner.
“I have a soft spot for the scoundrels.” She steals the last strawberry with her fork before I can get it with mine.
I roll my eyes at her comment and she giggles. I missed that sound and I find myself leaning into it, maybe a little too much. “Hey.” I nudge her thigh with my knuckle to make her look at me. “You wanna go for a drive?”
She pauses, thinking about it, and every single reason that used to stop her ran through her mind, each one solved because the thing that used to give her hesitation is gone.
“Yeah,” she says after a moment, and a feeling I believed long dead surfaces at the base of my chest, just warm enough to heat up my heart and make it race again.
“Yeah?” I ask, almost confused that she even agrees, but she nods to confirm her decision.
“Okay.” I rise from the couch, stepping over a half-sleeping Murphy, who’s in a food coma after cleaning out the entire bowl of potatoes.
Birdie looks up from her slouched position and gives me a careful smile, which I return with a wink as I take Cress’s hand and pull her from the living room.
“Where are we going to go?” she asks as I pop the door for the mustang and let her in.
“Anywhere we want.” I lean on the door frame, staring down at her, and she smiles up at me brightly. In that moment I can see the sparkle in her eye, the one I thought Koa took with him when he died.
The engine roars to life and I whip it from the driveway just to hear the sound she makes in surprise—it brings me back.
The second we hit the highway her window is down and her hand is out, letting it roll over the wind as she closes her eyes.
She lets the rumble of the car and white noise drown everything out.
I don’t say a word, I just let her find peace in it.
Happy enough to be included, even for a brief second.
When she’s finally done, she lets her head roll to look at me, and all I see is sixteen-year-old Cress. Completely unburdened by the trouble that Koa and I bring. She’s full of color, there are no bruises on her body, her eyes still have that light…
“I’m sorry,” I say to her, letting the word roll off my tongue.
“You’re going to have to be more specific, Riggs.
” She tucks a curl behind her ear and I watch the humor leave her expression.
It softens into a ‘are we really going to do this?’ state of mind.
And usually I wouldn’t. Koa was every emotion at any given time.
He filled up all the spaces with himself in such a suffocating way that it became natural to suppress everything.
But she opens every window, she lets all the fresh air in, and suddenly I can breathe.
I hate it.
She didn’t even have trouble with the locks.
“No.” She shakes her head, sitting up in her seat.
Her body tells me everything I need to know about the scolding I’m about to receive and I smile at her.
“No, no smiling.” She points. “Car rides aren’t for arguments,” she tells me off.
“They’re for running away from arguments, cutting out on all the issues.
We never took a drive to fix stuff, we took them to avoid everything just for a little while.
So if whatever you’re about to say is going to start a fight, you keep that mouth shut, Riggs Monroe, because the wind is in my hair and the sound of the highway is numbing. ”
I stare at her for a little while longer, her lips pressed into a scowl.
“Watch the road,” she warns me and I shake my head, unable to argue with her. “It’s not cute.” She huffs.
“Do you want to drive?” I ask and her lips part because she instantly wants to say yes but she closes them again, hesitating.
“That worked when I was sixteen but I’m not ninety pounds anymore and this isn’t as roomy as the Civic,” she teases, looking around the car.
“There’s plenty of room.” I reach down between the door and my seat, popping the lever to slide the seat back. My legs are long enough to still have control, but it gives her all the room she needs to slide over.
“That’s dangerous,” she says, staying put but I extend my hand and click the seatbelt she’s wearing free.
“That’s the point,” I remind her. Her teeth sink into her bottom lip and I nod my head at her to get her to come to me, thinking that there’s no way she’ll ever actually do it. That Cress has been gone for a long time.
I’m just about to give up on her when she climbs to her knees and works herself over the center toward my lap.
I shift around her as she settles in my lap, keeping my eyes on the road.
Her back presses against my chest and I lift my hand off the wheel as she takes it, hesitant to wrap it around her middle but…
The material of her shirt is soft under my fingertips and I feel her tense at the contact, but she keeps her eyes on the windshield timing her breathing so she doesn’t give herself away.
I lean into that nervousness, resting my chin on her shoulder and letting the loose pieces of her hair tickle my face as she finds her courage again.
“I should have fought harder,” I whisper, shifting the car into gear for her and pressing down on the gas. The sun goes down against the horizon and sets the sky on fire around us as the mustang surges forward. “I should have protected you better. From all of this.”
She inhales slowly, focusing on keeping the car steady. There’s nowhere for her to go. She has to stay here, with my voice in her ear, my breath on her neck. She has to listen to what I have to say.
“I let Koa call the shots because I didn’t care, Cress.” I swallow and feel her jaw tighten. “I didn’t give a shit about any of it because he promised to take care of you and that was enough for me.”
I shift again and the mustang rumbles beneath us as it speeds up. At least now it’s keeping time with my heart. I didn't warn her not to kill us, not this time. Because the truth is we could die today and at least I’ll have gotten this off my chest.
“But I was wrong.” My tone drops and her fingers squeeze around the steering wheel.
“His idea of protecting you was keeping you in the dark. He was convinced you couldn’t handle yourself.
It was bullshit then, and it’s bullshit now.
” I flex my hand on her stomach and she goes rigid under my touch.
“He didn’t love you. He loved that he had you—and I didn’t. ”
Cress turns her head and it startles me back just enough to keep our noses from brushing together. She’s so beautiful it hurts. The crooked curve of her nose, the small scar that nicks her top lip, the way her lashes curl up to the heavens and frame her massive eyes. I almost forget to breathe.
“I’m sorry I let him do that to us,” I say, barely audible over the engine.
She doesn’t say anything, her eyes never leaving mine.
“Watch the road, Cress.”
They flicker back quickly, just enough to make sure we were straight and then back to me, to my lips and then my eyes.
“Do it,” I tell her. Every thought she has is louder than life. She checks the road again as I press down on the gas. “Cress,” I snap and she looks back at me. “Kiss me.”
There’s no hesitation this time. She closes the gap like she doesn’t have a say in the matter, and I let her steal every ounce of air from my lungs.
Her lips are softer than anything I’ve ever felt and they melt together with mine like they were made to be there.
I pull her back against my chest even more, my fingers digging into her stomach.
I know I should let her go, I should break away so she can drive, but I press upward into her kiss and take even more. My body is starving for it.
“Riggs,” she huffs against my lips.
I nod. I know better, I do, It’s just I can’t help myself. I groan once. It rumbles up through me and echoes loudly into the car so violently she can taste my annoyance.
“You can’t kiss me if we’re dead,” she whispers quickly, but it does nothing to satiate the fire in my chest so I clench my teeth, nod once, and steal another quick one to tide me over before she turns back to the road.