Chapter 5
Chapter five
Kelsey
“Bryn, go sit by your boyfriend,” I say, shooing her out of the seat on my dad’s right. “I’m left-handed. I’ll bump elbows with everyone else if I don’t sit there.”
“I feel like you make that a bigger deal than it actually is.”
“No, it’s real. Plus, I don’t want to sit between Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumber. Their hulking shoulders make me feel like I’m being suffocated.”
My parents invited a group over for dinner on my last night in town for a small going-away party, and between my parents, my two sisters, Jameson, Lila, and JT, the table is full.
“You’re clearly Tweedle Dumber,” JT says to Jameson.
“That’s the nicest thing Kelsey has ever said to me,” Jameo says in response. “I mean, I’m pretty sure she complimented my shoulders. I’ve been working so hard on them lately.”
JT flexes next to him. “We have been bulking up nicely.”
Everyone at the table, including me, laughs as Lila reaches over and squeezes JT’s shoulder, causing him to giggle.
“Why are you not somewhere golfing?” I ask the hulking brutes. I swear, for professional golfers who supposedly play in twenty to thirty tournaments per year, these men are always around.
“We start up again next week. We’re in California, which isn’t a bad place to be in early January.”
“Are you going to see your folks while you’re out there?” I ask JT. His relationship with his parents is rocky at best—likely because they are the worst humans on the planet—but he still wants to have them in his life no matter how many times I suggested he just cut them out completely.
“One dinner.”
“I’m going to go with him,” Jameo pipes in, shooting me a knowing look.
And, fine, he’s right. I was going to tell JT not to go.
JT has worked really hard to get himself to a better place in the last six months, and I’m worried seeing his parents will cause him to regress.
I don’t want him to put himself, or Lila, through that again.
I’m sure he talked to his therapist about it before agreeing, so I should probably let the expert do his job, as much as I hate it.
Though, how much does his therapist actually know, anyway? Maybe I should run a background check on him and reach out to a couple of sources in the area. Just make sure he’s as good as JT thinks he is.
“Not to worry, Kelsey. You won’t have to miss us too much. We’re still planning to see you in Sydney in a few weeks,” JT says from across the table, pulling me back from my wandering thoughts.
“I still can’t believe one of your tournaments lined up with a concert,” I say.
“Have you asked about getting us tickets?” JT asks.
“No. And I’m not going to. I’m not going to use my position for favors before I’ve even started.” I hold up my hand at the question on his face. “I’m not asking once I’ve started either. I don’t like asking for favors. Plus, you two buffoons can afford a couple of tickets.”
“But four tickets together are so hard to find!” JT exclaims. “Jaxon’s concerts sold out months ago.”
I glance at my other sister, Izzy, at the use of Jaxon’s name. We, like most of the people in town, don’t use it often, and especially not around Izzy. She seems to be okay, though, if not a bit quiet.
“So you two decided to tag along?” I ask Lila and Bryn.
“Yes,” Lila responds. “And Bryn and I talked about meeting you in Melbourne and then reconnecting with the guys in Sydney. It’ll give you and me time to connect about other clients, and you can show me the ins and outs of being the on-site head in case we get the full contract or another contract like this in the future.
I want to be able to help you. I don’t like that you have to do it all on your own. ”
I know it’s smart to train someone else on my team to handle managing something as complicated as the security for an entire stadium concert, even if the venue supplies the majority of the actual manpower, but I also know myself, and there is no way I’m going to give up the reins for something as important as this.
“Sounds good,” I reply anyway.
We talk about my upcoming trip for a few more minutes until my dad directs the conversation away from my impending departure, and I let my mind wander, mentally double-checking the list of preparations I need to have done before tomorrow morning.
I shovel another forkful of spaghetti into my mouth as I try to decide whether I need two pairs of black tennis shoes or if the one I currently have packed will be enough.
While I’ll spend most of my days in blazers and dress pants with a pair of chunky-heeled boots on, I refuse to be in something I can’t run in during the concerts.
If something were to go wrong, I need to be able to jump in at a moment’s notice, so black pants, a black polo, and black tennis shoes it will be.
I don’t miss much about the military; it was just a good way to pay for college and bulk up my résumé—a female officer in the Marines is impressive no matter what industry you’re going into—but I did appreciate the simplicity of knowing what to wear to work every day.
I grab one last slice of homemade bread as my mom walks by, starting to clear the table.
I slather butter on the slice as Izzy hops up to join her, grabbing the plates from in front of JT, Bryn, and Jameo.
I follow her, still chewing the chunk of bread, with the rest of the plates.
I deposit them in the sink for Izzy to wash.
I tend to help Mom cook, and Izzy usually helps with the dishes.
Bryn, like the youngest child she is, rarely helps with the cooking or the cleaning unless asked directly.
At least when she’s at my parents’ house.
When she was nomadic and living with me regularly, she did her own dishes, so she’s likely not a lost cause.
“You’re sure you don’t want to join the whole crew in Australia?
” I ask Izzy. I know she probably doesn’t, but I want to make sure she knows she can come if she chooses to.
It would be a lot for her to face her old best friend for the first time in a stadium with 83,000 other people.
Or maybe that would make it better. She wouldn’t even have to talk to him.
“I don’t think so.”
I wait, pretending to be very interested in one of the dark veins that runs through the white granite countertop. Izzy doesn’t do well with long, awkward silences, so I like to use them to my advantage when I’m trying to get her to tell me something.
“It feels like a lot,” she finally says when it’s clear I’m not going anywhere.
“True,” I say. “But you can handle a lot.”
She rolls her eyes at me. “I don’t need a speech about how I can do hard things.”
“Apparently not. Seems like you already know it.”
“You don’t think it would be too much?” she asks. “For me to be there?”
“Not if you don’t let it be.”
“I’m not quite as good at being strong as you are.”
I snort. “Well, I learned the hard way what showing weakness does.”
“You seem to forget I was there when Lila first started her new job with you and was struggling with her new role. You gave her a whole speech about needing to ask for help and how it doesn’t make you less of a person,” Izzy says, scrubbing the pan I used to heat the spaghetti sauce.
“And I fully meant that,” I say. “But it’s different when you’re the owner, the leader. You know that. Lila has me to help her. I have to know the answer. There isn’t someone else I can turn to.”
My sister’s thick eyebrows pull together. “You have a lot of people in your life you can turn to.”
“Totally,” I agree. “They just don’t know anything about security.”
“Hey! I finally put a six-digit passcode on my phone,” Izzy teases. “I think I could add a lot to a security conversation.”
“Whatever you need to tell yourself,” I say, grabbing a thin white towel out of the drawer to dry.
After a few moments of silence, Izzy turns to me and says, “I’ll think about it.”
From the uncertain look on her face, I know she means coming to a Jaxon Steele concert, so I offer a simple nod, continuing to dry the larger dishes as she washes them by hand.
Once Izzy starts rinsing the smaller dishes and loading them directly into the dishwasher as she goes, I leave her alone, heading toward the sound of the TV coming from the living room.
As I walk into my parents’ living room, the one I grew up in, I look for a place to sit, annoyed to find couples subtly cuddling on both couches.
Even my parents seem to have decided to join in, my mom snuggled up against my dad’s side as he rests his arm over her shoulders.
Bryn and Jameo are on the couch next to them, my sister’s head leaning against Jameson’s bicep, their hands intertwined on his jeans-clad thigh.
I sigh, focusing my attention on the other couch, the one JT is taking up the majority of.
“How is Denver already down by two touchdowns?” I ask, shoving JT’s feet off the end of the couch.
He lifts his head from where it’s resting in Lila’s lap, a wildly inappropriate place for it to be in my parents’ living room, giving me an annoyed look.
I shrug. Where else am I going to sit?
He leverages his large body into a sitting position, pulling Lila into his side. “Thompson threw a pick-six two minutes in,” he responds to my question about the score as I curl up in the seat he vacated.
Less than two years ago, a send-off dinner would’ve just been me, my parents, and my sisters. I knew what spot at the table was mine, what seat on the couch would be left open for me.
I ignore the slight tightening in my chest at the sight of everyone in my life pairing up, moving on from the way things used to be.
Change is good. And I’m about to cause the biggest change of all, leaving for seven weeks to undertake the most important contract of my entire life.
The one that could finally put KH Security on the map.
The one that would allow me to grow and expand into the company I’ve always wanted to lead—the one I was on the cusp of leading five years ago, before everything happened.
I focus my attention on the game, not interested in letting my thoughts dwell on the past. I learned from my mistakes. I started over in Wild Bluffs. Reflecting on it is not going to change anything.