Beyond Words: The Hutton Family Book 1

by Brooks, Abby

  She said we just dove right into our relationship, that we skipped the awkward part where we got to know each other. I wasn’t so sure she was right. We were still very much strangers. We were still wearing masks.

  * * *

  Two weeks passed and the nightmares came and went. This morning, I overslept and hurried through getting ready, though I wasn’t sure why. I had nowhere to be other than here, and Wyatt and I would get to work when it felt natural. Old habits, I guess. Once a Marine, always a Marine. I would never feel good about sleeping in again.

  The kitchen was the happening place to be by the time I got downstairs. Cat sat at the table, hunched over her phone while scraping a spoon around a bowl of cereal. Taylor and Emma leaned against the counter, sipping coffee and chatting about their upcoming days. Caleb hovered over a pan of scrambled eggs, and Harlow sat across from Cat, strumming a wandering tune on her guitar, pausing from time to time to jot something down in a notebook open on the table. I paused in the doorway and Cat looked up. Her hair was piled messily on top of her head, and tan legs barely covered by tiny shorts crossed elegantly under the table. She gave me a knowing look as I took in the crowded area.

  “Welcome to the party,” she said as I snagged the seat next to her. Caleb offered me some eggs, claiming he made too much, which I happily accepted. His eyes were notoriously bigger than his stomach.

  “Whatcha studying so closely?” I asked, peering at the screen on Cat’s phone.

  She made a show of covering it up. “Hey! No peeking!” She gave me a look before shrugging and showing me what she’d hidden: a map of the surrounding area. “I want to explore this evening, but I hate getting lost, so I’m trying to get an idea of where to go. I’ve been here almost two weeks and only know how to get to the store and to my mom’s.”

  “Ahh…the adventure of exploring a new area by planning out all your destinations in advance.” I scooped a healthy bite of eggs into my mouth and chewed while Cat sputtered a series of excuses. I placed a finger over her lips and her eyes went wide. “Tell you what,” I said. “I’ll show you around, but I get to drive the Jeep.”

  She removed my finger from her lips and gave me a playful look. “So that’s how you think it works, huh? Now that we’re friends, you just get to lay claim to my vehicle?”

  “See. I knew you were a fast learner.” I tapped her on her temple and went back to my eggs. Our friendship had progressed quickly in the random moments our paths crossed during the day. In the hall outside our rooms. On the beach as she headed off to work her magic on a client. In the kitchen as we made meals. I’d learned her schedule and planned my path so we’d be most likely to meet. If I was honest, that was the reason I hurried through getting ready today, so I wouldn’t miss her before she got busy.

  Cat rolled her eyes. “What makes you think you even know how to handle my Jeep?”

  I put my fork down and stared at her, incredulous. Pink flared across her cheekbones, highlighting her eyes. I loved it when she blushed. It made her even more beautiful. “Oh gee,” I said, scrunching up my face. “Let me see. It couldn’t be all the time I’ve spent in Humvees and Growlers. On second thought, your Jeep is definitely more than I can handle. I’m glad you mentioned it.”

  Cat gave me an exasperated look. “I think I might like it more when you’re all intense and glowery. At least then you’re not busy being a dick.”

  “Such language,” I said, smiling wickedly as I shoved another bite of eggs in my mouth. She made a face and went back to her phone. I watched her for a few minutes before she finally turned back to me.

  “Fine.” She sighed deeply. “I suppose I can let you drive the Jeep.”

  “Oh no.” I held up my hands. “Don’t do me any favors.”

  She slapped me on the arm, an adorable smile playing across her face. “You’re terrible.” She turned to Caleb. “Is he always like this?”

  Caleb grunted. “He’s going easy on you.” He dropped her a wink and she laughed before turning her attention back to me.

  “I’ll be done with my last client around six. I’ll give you the keys to the Jeep, but you have to promise to take me somewhere delicious to eat. Take it or leave it, Hutton.”

  “Oh, I’ll take it,” I said as Cat gathered her bowl and stood. She gave me a mock salute on her way out of the kitchen. Harlow shook her head as she strummed and Caleb laughed into his plate.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You two are something else,” Harlow replied while Caleb vigorously nodded his agreement.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means why don’t you flirt a little harder next time?”

  “Whatever. We’re not flirting. She’s just easy to talk to.”

  “Whatever you need to tell yourself.”

  “I don’t need to tell myself anything. Facts are facts, little sister.”

  Harlow made a face that meant she believed me not at all and I excused myself from the table.

  Being with Cat was easy. Ever since that night on our balconies, it felt like she’d been part of my life for years and not weeks. Her quick humor and sharp mind kept me on my toes. I respected her work ethic and her desire to be better today than she was the day before. I looked forward to seeing her and then spent the whole time checking my phone for an email from Katydid. I felt drawn to them both, attracted to them both, and very, very confused. I needed to believe Cat and I weren’t flirting. That we were just friends. Otherwise, what I was doing was wrong.

  While part of me screamed that Katydid had shown up in my life first, the other part countered that Cat was here now, in the flesh. Even though I had never met Katydid, I knew her in ways I had never known another person, and she had parts of me I thought I would always keep for myself. Cat was wonderful and she was fun and she was real, but my loyalty belonged to a woman I’d not yet met.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Cat

  I sunk my teeth into a giant burger and smiled around the bite, grease trickling down my fingers as I chewed. “Delicious,” I said, my voice muffled by food, not caring even a little bit about manners or being polite. A sandwich this good needed recognized and I knew Lucas wouldn’t mind. He liked me even if I did have too much burger in my mouth.

  “So, I was right?” Lucas swirled a fry through a mound of ketchup and popped it into his mouth.

  “Of course you were right. When aren’t you right?”

  We sat on a picnic bench outside a little hole in the wall burger joint right on the edge of the water. With rickety wood and a hand-painted sign, the place looked more like a shack than a restaurant. To say I’d been dubious when we pulled into the crowded parking lot would be an understatement. When I voiced my reservations, he told me that if a place this dingy could attract such a large crowd, then the food had to be amazing. And it was. Oh man, it was.

  Lucas sat across from me, as relaxed as I’d ever seen him. We were both sweaty and windblown from a long evening in the Jeep and thoroughly infatuated with our adventure…

  …with the food…

  …with each other…

  He cocked his head and grimaced. “I wasn’t right when I thought I was taking us to a great place to go off-roading and it turned out to be a golf course.”

  “This is true.” I swiped my napkin across my hands, then wrestled another handful out of the metal container on the table. “For a guy who commandeered my Jeep with the promise of showing me around, it sure seems like you’ve been figuring this whole evening out on the fly.” I scooped my burger off my plate and took another bite. Lucas shook his head as grease slid across my newly cleaned fingers.

  “I was figuring it out on the fly.” He narrowed his eyes. “Remember the part where I told you I’d been gone awhile? You know, left town as soon as I could to get away from an ever more abusive dad, joined the Marines, and then died in Afghanistan? Hence, the perfect place to go off-roading is now a golf course…?”

  His eyes tightened with his Afgha
nistan statement, but I pretended not to notice. He hadn’t spoken about that day since he told me about it on the boat. The fact that he mentioned it now seemed like progress. “Of course I remember. But I also remember you telling me you would ‘show me around.’” I lowered my burger to my plate and made air quotes, then slurped at my soda. “How did you ever think you would accomplish that when you didn’t know where you were going either?”

  “Well, I showed you the golf course, didn’t I? And I believe it was my fantastic navigation skills that led us to discover this here burger joint.”

  “Whatever, Lucas.” I met his gaze across the table and widened my eyes. “Being lost doesn’t count,” I joked.

  Lucas studied me, the levity slipping from his face. “We’re all lost, babe. All of us. If anyone tries to make you believe he knows what he’s doing, he’s full of shit. Every day is nothing more than trying to find your way forward. The trick is figuring out how to turn the confusion into a good time, otherwise life is going to suck.”

  The man had a point. Even when my life was on the right track and moving in the right direction, I had no clue what I was doing. Looking back, I’d fallen out of love with Nash a long time ago, and he’d fallen out of love with me years before that. As much as I told myself my job at Utopia had been so I could start working as a masseuse without having to figure out how to run a business at the same time, a part of me wondered if Nash had been right after all. Maybe I had been stalling…

  “For the record,” Lucas continued, “I completely disagree with your word choice. We weren’t lost. We were discovering. It’s all in how you sell it, Cat. Christopher Columbus was lost as hell, but he knew how to spin it and now the man has a national holiday.”

  “He knew how to spin it?” The image of Christopher Columbus spinning his accidental discovery to the king and queen of Spain made me chuckle.

  “Anyway, are you really going to tell me you didn’t have fun tonight?” Lucas lifted an eyebrow, daring me to be honest.

  I pursed my lips, as if I was weighing options. The truth was, I had a blast. We took the roof and doors off the Jeep and drove until we got lost, then drove some more until we found something interesting. I sang loudly to whatever came on the radio while my hair whipped in the wind. Every time I looked at Lucas, I caught him already staring at me and I loved what I thought I saw in his eyes. We were wild and free, but I felt completely safe, like no matter how many wrong turns we took, we’d end up exactly where we were supposed to be.

  “See?” Lucas pointed a fry my way. “That’s what I thought.”

  I dropped my jaw. “I didn’t even say anything.”

  “You didn’t have to. The look on your face said it all.”

  “Uh-huh. And now you’re a mind reader?”

  “I am. It’s one of the many surprising and wonderful things you’ve yet to discover about me.”

  I pushed my plate away and folded my arms on the table. “I see.”

  “You don’t yet,” Lucas said with a look that made my knees weak. “But you will.”

  The night was hot and humid and sweat trailed down my back. The hair at my temples curled and I watched as Lucas came to life in front of me, stepping out from behind the troubled Marine and showing me the man he was inside. We talked about whatever came to mind, teasing and laughing during the silly stuff and leaning in close and lowering our voices during the serious parts.

  Once again, our conversation wandered around that day in Afghanistan. He explained not one, but two bombs that nearly ended his life and then fell silent. I watched him battle the memories, then visibly shake them off. He skipped the rest of the details, and continued his story after he woke up at Landstuhl Medical Center in Germany. He told me that Harlow couldn’t bring herself to visit him in the hospital once he made it back to the States because of their dad.

  I shook my head. “That says everything about your father,” I said. “It had to kill her not to be there for you.” Lucas looked uncertain and I hurried on. “I know it probably didn’t feel all that great on your end either, but the fact that Harlow couldn’t bring herself to face your dad in order to be there when you needed her? I mean, that speaks volumes. The five of you would do anything for each other.”

  All the light bled from Lucas’ face. “Anything except come see me the day I died.”

  His words were hollow. They hit me hard and I sat back, stunned by what I saw in his eyes. Silence invaded the space between us and I felt like a stranger. Like I’d crossed some invisible boundary and spoken when I should have stayed silent. I thought we’d come past that. I thought we had gotten to a place where we could start being honest with each other. Apparently, I was wrong.

  The last two weeks at the Hut had been just as wonderful as they were confusing. While the Huttons had welcomed me with open arms, making me feel like part of the family, my friendship with Lucas had deepened. While his mood still darkened now and again, the more time we spent together, the more he let the light shine through his scars. If I had my way, I’d never see the darker side of him again. I wanted to be the light that chased away his demons.

  We talked and we talked and we talked, and while he opened up about his past, I stayed close-lipped about mine. It wasn’t purposeful. I wanted to be as open with him as he was with me, but every time I started to talk about Nash, about the years we spent together, about the day I came home to find him giving the attention I so desperately needed to another woman, I found myself changing the topic.

  The way Lucas looked at me made me feel like I was coming to life and the possibility that knowing my past would change the way he saw me kept my lips tightly sealed. I was afraid that if he knew I wasn’t enough for Nash, he would realize I was too flawed to love.

  I shared stories about my mom. Talked about my dad. Laughed over those awkward years in middle school, but whenever we got to recent history, I changed the topic to him.

  Meanwhile, Skywalker poked and prodded, learning all the things that had shaped and defined me, all the things I couldn’t give Lucas. Skywalker got my deepest thoughts, my hopes and fears, and Lucas got the rest of me.

  There were times I wondered if what I was doing with the two of them was wrong, if somehow, I was being disloyal. The more our relationships deepened, the more I questioned. But since Skywalker was little more than an email address, and Lucas was little more than a friend, I couldn’t see how staying in both their lives was a bad thing.

  Except everything about that statement was a lie.

  There was a man behind Skywalker’s email address. A man with deep thoughts and a big heart. A man who spoke to me like I mattered. A man who took the worst of me and came back calling me beautiful. A man I could easily fall in love with.

  And, sitting here across from Lucas, my stomach twisting and turning, my heart tightening every time he smiled, I knew he was so much more than a friend. I could easily fall in love with him, too. Guilt settled onto my shoulders and I put my burger down, suddenly not at all hungry.

  “What’s wrong?” Lucas asked, folding his arms on the table and leaning forward.

  I smiled. “Not a damn thing.”

  “Liar.”

  I cocked an eyebrow. “Liar? Really?”

  “Yep. I’m psychic, remember?” He laughed, but I could tell by the way his eyes searched mine that he was very aware something wasn’t right.

  “I remember you’re full of shit.” I sucked on my straw but got nothing more than a slurp of watered-down soda. “I just got caught in deep thoughts. I really like hanging out with you.”

  “And that’s a deep thought?”

  “Actually, it is.” I was treading on thin ice, walking dangerously close to a topic I wasn’t ready to talk about.

  Lucas scooped up another fry. “I like hanging out with you, too” he said, and something in the way he looked at me said it was a deep thought for him, too.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Cat

  I woke to Lucas muttering and
moaning on the other side of the wall. As my eyes fluttered open, his sounds set off a carnal flare in my belly. I pressed my ear to the wall, listening hard. Was Lucas pleasuring himself?

  A sense of voyeuristic delight flooded my system as I listened, imagining each illicit act that might warrant what I heard. But, as the cobwebs of sleep cleared from my mind, I realized that I wasn’t hearing Lucas engaged in some sexy moment of abandon.

  I was listening to one of his nightmares.

  Twice before, I’d been woken by him talking in his sleep, his fear evident even though it was muffled by the wall. My initial urge had been to go to him, to wake him and to comfort him. The last time, I made it into the hallway before I realized how epically presumptuous I was being. I had crawled back into bed, imagining all my positive thoughts as a golden field, streaming through the wall between us. It felt a little silly, but I needed to do something and that had been the only thing I could come up with.

  Tonight though, as his murmured exclamations grew more and more frantic, I couldn’t stop myself. I flung back my covers, padded into the hallway, and carefully knocked on his door. “Lucas?” I whispered, aware of the sleeping Hutton siblings and the obviously thin walls on the third floor.

  When nothing happened, I knocked again. The sounds of his nightmare faded and I realized that I was standing in the hallway, wearing nothing but a thin tank top and teeny shorts, checking on a man who probably had more skills than I did at chasing away the demons he fought.

  I was just about to give up and head back to my room when Lucas cracked open the door. “Cat?” His voice was harsh and raw. He leaned on the doorjamb, shirtless, disheveled, and sexy as hell.