Lukas #2
I move past her and into the kitchen, beelining for the sink to scrub my hands and forearms to an acceptable level of clean.
Leaning forward, I cup the tepid water in my palms and splash some on my face.
I blindly reach for the nearest kitchen towel, water dripping off my skin, when my mom snatches it from my grasp.
“Now, I know you weren’t going to use one of my embroidered towels to wipe your face,” she teases, pressing it to her chest. She slides open a drawer to her side, rifling through it to pull out a worn brown one with some of the threads dangling.
She tosses it to me, and it lands against my shoulder.
“No, ma’am, I’d never do that.” I wink, using the cloth to dry my arms and face. “Dean is washing up. I invited him to lunch.”
Her eyes light up at that. “Oh, good! I’ll have Theo grab another chair for us. Theo!” she calls out, and I hear him respond from the office that’s situated outside the kitchen. “Grab a spare chair from the basement, will you, sweetie?”
“Anything I can help with?” I look around the kitchen, at the scattered pots and pans that line the counter. I’ll be helping with clean-up duty, for sure.
“You can grab one of the chickens and bring it to the table, please.”
I nod, carefully sliding the platter of chicken legs and thighs off the counter and onto my palm. I move into the dining room, setting it in the center of the table just as Harper and Grayson arrive. She’s tugging on Grayson’s arm, and there’s a faint blush on his cheeks.
“What’s going on here?” I prod, and Harper looks up at me with stars dancing in her eyes.
“Can I tell him?” she asks, and Grayson nods.
“Tell him what?” Theo chimes in, coming up behind me with a spare chair.
One by one, my family members file into the room, each moving around to their respective seats. Dean stands in the doorway, hands tucked into his pockets, and I turn to him, nodding as I pull out the chair where he can sit.
“Grayson is getting married!” Harper squeals, jumping up and down while tugging on Grayson’s arm.
My mom gasps, and Theo starts clapping. Pops stands, about to hug Grayson, I’m sure, when Grayson puts up his hands to halt everyone's excitement. “I’m not getting married—not yet. But I did bring our great-grandma’s ring to the jeweler to have it fixed up and sized for Holly’s finger.
Harper is just getting a little ahead of herself. ”
A little of the excitement dies, but not by much. We all know that Holly is going to say yes, and she’ll soon be an official member of our family.
“Damn, Gray.” I move forward, reaching out to slap him on the back. “That’s awesome. Congrats, man. She’ll say yes, for sure.”
“I don’t know,” Theo teases, leaning back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head. “I’m still on the market.”
Harper rolls her eyes at him. “Yeah, you are, but asking Holly to marry you would mean settling down with one woman forever, and you’re too much of a dingbat to understand that.”
She playfully scrunches her nose at him, and he brings up his middle finger, faking an itch to his eye that only a few of us can see.
“Enough about me,” Grayson says. “Let’s talk about Lukas and why I overheard him calling someone ‘baby’ on the phone and asking if he could come see them.”
The room falls mostly silent as all eyes fall on me. Asshole.
“Oh?” my mom prods, her hand nervously tugging at the braid that hangs over her shoulder.
They all know that I’ve been sort of talking to Mags.
They know I was leaving her voicemails and that she had answered, but we were still in rocky territory.
I got home late last night, having missed family dinner since I went straight to Candi’s to pick up my little princess.
Pops’s chair creaks as he adjusts, his elbow resting on the backrest.
I pull out my own seat next to him, reaching forward to grab my water glass. “Oh, that?” I pause, taking a slow sip. I make a show of setting the glass back down, spinning it just-so on the coaster. “Oh, that was just Magnolia. I saw her yesterday. She says hi to everyone, by the way.”
My mom gasps once again, a hand flying to her heart.
Theo raises his hands to clap them above his head. “Well, shit. It only took, what? Six months of you hounding her to have her give you the time of day? I’m proud of you, little brother.”
“Are you back together?” my mom asks tentatively.
My family has always loved Mags, as they should.
We have been friends for so long that they have watched her grow up just as they’ve watched the rest of us kids grow.
When I was deployed, and things were rough, I knew Mags and my mom would call each other, probably needing to lean on one another for support.
When our relationship ended, my mom also lost her relationship with Mags, and I hadn’t really thought about what that must have felt like for her. For either of them.
“We’re not together, no, but we’re … we’re working on it.
” I quickly give them the story about Nana’s sneaky maneuver that landed us both at the rehab center at the same time, then the few hours afterward we spent with Ivy and Candi, and the rough conversations, leaving out the hell of a kiss at the airport.
Harper practically screams, covering her mouth with both hands to stifle the sound. “Oh. My. God. I don’t think I could be any happier. Grayson and Holly are getting married, and Lukas and Mags are back together. I couldn’t be happier if I was the one in love.”
“Yeah, when is that going to happen?” Theo asks, winking at her.
“The same time you stop dating your bar sluts,” she fires back, and my dad groans, coming into the room for the tail end of her sentence.
“This doesn’t sound like proper dinner table conversation.”
“You missed it, Dad,” Grayson says. “Lukas and Mags are back together.”
“We’re not back together!” But the words feel foreign on my tongue.
Because that kiss she gave me in the airport wasn’t the type of kiss you give just anyone.
She didn’t kiss me like it was goodbye. It wasn’t just an I miss you kiss.
There was emotion behind it. Even though feelings have been buried, there are still feelings there, and I’m going to race toward those like hell.
“Congrats, man. The both of you,” Dean says quietly, and I nod over at him. Dean is a man of few words. He’s probably heard the whispers of what happened between Magnolia and me that he can grasp how much it means that we’re talking again.
The front door slams, and I hear shoes get kicked off. They slap against the wall as a pair of feet thunders down the hallway. That’s another set of feet I’ve heard for the last twenty or so years of my life.
“Piper’s here?”
“Yup,” Harper says. “She’s coming over for lunch, and then we’re going to go to the old farmhouse to look at Ivy’s room to see what we can do to decorate.” She taps the tips of her fingers together with almost an evil glint to her eye.
“And I brought paint samples!” Piper squeals, raising a thick stack of colorful cardboard swatches above her head. “It’s going to be an explosion of rainbows and unicorns in that room. Prepare yourself, Lukas Hart. You—”
Her words die off when she looks at her empty chair, noticing Dean sitting idly in the one next to hers.
“Hi,” she fumbles, and he stands abruptly, his chair scraping against the floor as it scootches back.
“Hi.” He reaches for the back of her chair, sliding it back and ushering for her to have a seat.
“Hi,” she says again, an immediate blush crossing her creamy skin.
“Piper, this is Dean.” Harper gestures to the man still standing, his hand gripping the back of Piper’s chair so hard his knuckles are blanching. “Dean, this is Piper, my BFF and honorary Hart sibling.”
“Hi,” he says again, and Harper bites down on her lips, head twisting to look over at Theo.
Theo is trying to be calm, but I can see him snicker behind his palm. My grandma clears her throat, a gentle reminder to him to mind his manners, but as soon as he catches Harper’s glance, it’s over.
Theo reaches his arm across the table with an open palm to Harper. “Hi,” he squeals, mimicking Piper’s voice.
Harper gladly shakes his palm once, her voice deep like Dean’s. “Hi.”
“Hi,” Theo responds.
“Hi,” Harper says through a giggle.
They go back and forth, one after the other, words soon blending together like a group of seagulls calling dibs on a pile of food.
Piper full-on blushes, nodding to Dean as she takes the seat he is still holding open for her. “Thank you,” she says, and he helps her scootch the chair in, careful to slide into his own next to her without brushing against her.
And even though his neck is covered with tattoos, I can see the faintest blush start to crawl up his neck and curl under his ears as he dips his head.
Interesting.