by Grant, Pippa
“Yep. Same old obnoxious Wyatt,” she says with a grin.
“Same old stubborn Ellie.”
She rests her hands on the edge of the tub and leans her chin on them, watching me dry off. “Provided we don’t die, we’re never going to be bored, are we?”
“I might be.”
She gets me with a surprise slap to the ass, then shrieks as she slips under the water.
I give her to the count of one-half before I’m grabbing her arm and pulling her up.
“Okay?” I ask.
She blows and spits at the bubbles around her mouth. I grab my phone and angle it toward her like I’m going to snap a picture, and she rolls her eyes with a laugh. “Go ahead.”
“Nah, I don’t—”
“Oh, no. I want you to remember this for the rest of your life. Get in here. Selfie with me.”
When I get down on my knee, she scoops bubbles onto my head and dribbles them on my nose.
And we’re both smiling in the picture.
“Crazy woman.” I wipe her face with the towel and set out another on the floor for her when she gets out. “You hungry?”
“You know what sounds good?”
“Banana pudding?”
“Tea. I have chamomile sometimes to help me fall asleep when I’m achy.”
“With banana pudding?”
“We’re out.”
I put a hand to my heart and stagger. “You’re right. We can’t be together. We’ll run out of banana pudding and die.”
She throws the towel at me with a laugh. “Shush and go heat me some water, powder monkey.”
“Yes, ma’am, Calamity Ellie.”
While she takes her time getting out, I toss on sweatpants and a T-shirt, fill a tea kettle and turn on the burner, then head downstairs to get her shoes. Tucker’s left his security blanket down here again, so I take it upstairs too, all the way to his bedroom, and pull out pajamas for him since he’ll probably be dead on his feet at this hour.
Hope he had fun.
I’m on my way back downstairs when I smell it.
Smoke.
“Wyatt?” Ellie calls, and there’s no mistaking the panic in her voice.
Nor the blare of the smoke alarms that suddenly explode in the house.
I tear down the stairs and land in a cloud of smoke just outside the kitchen. Ellie’s in here, coughing, and flames are erupting from the stove. “The towel!” she shrieks, then coughs again.
Fuck.
I snag the flaming fabric and fling it in the sink, then turn the faucet on. “Get out,” I tell her. The smoke’s not too thick—I don’t think anything else is burning—but the smoke alarms are still going off and the towel’s still flaming in the sink.
I turned on the wrong fucking burner.
I turned on the wrong fucking burner.
And there was a fucking towel on it.
And I nearly burned Beck’s house down.
After promising her that would never happen.
“Hi, yes, there’s a fire,” I hear her say. “It’s at… Oh my god, I don’t know the address. Beck’s house. Beck–Beck—what’s my last name? Yes! Beck Ryder’s house. On the mount—yes!”
The alarms are screeching. She grabs my arm. “Wyatt. Out. Both of us. 9-1-1 says we have to get out. Now.”
I spray the last of the embers and check the stove, which is off. “It’s out, Ellie.”
“You are not going to die in a house fire on my watch, goddammit, get the fuck out!” she shrieks.
She doubles over, coughing, then says, “Yes, we’re still here,” and that’s when I hear it.
The high-pitched panic.
“Ellie—”
“Out!”
She’s in a bathrobe, and she’s limping hard. The haze isn’t thick enough to mask it. “Please get out,” she adds, and now there’s a choked sob in her voice, and fuck.
I sweep her up and head for the door. “Okay. We’re getting out. It’s okay.”
As soon as we’re outside, she twists. “Let go.”
Tears are streaming down her face.
“Ellie—”
“No. No. Don’t. Back up.” She retreats down the sidewalk to the driveway. The yard is too sloped for her to head there, and the limp is breaking me. “Yes, we’re outside. We’ll stay out.”
She’s crying.
Ellie’s crying.
Ellie never cries. She tells those tears to back the fuck up and get out of her way.
But she’s crying. On the phone with a 9-1-1 operator.
“It’s my fault,” she sobs. “I ignored the signs.”
“Ellie. Stop.”
Headlights flash up the driveway. The Ryders are back. They stop mid-way to the house, and Mrs. Ryder flies out of the passenger seat. “What happened? What’s wrong?”
“We burned the house down,” Ellie sobs, letting her mom gather her up while the alarm blares inside.
“We didn’t—” I start, but my objection is cut off by the wail of a fire engine’s siren in the distance.
“A fire?” Mr. Ryder asks.
“I set a towel on fire. It’s out. It’s fine. It was an accident.”
“It’s because we—we—”
“Ellie, it’s not—”
Sometimes I wish my hair was long enough to pull it out, because that might help distract from the ice-cold fear settling into my chest.
Both the Ryders look at me, but Tucker leaps out of the car, fear written all over his little face, looking so fucking much like the kid I remember being at his age, and my throat closes up and my eyes sting and I grab him tight. “It’s okay,” I say as he starts to cry too.
“Miss Captain Ellie’s crying,” he sobs. “Is the house gonna burn down?”
“Hey, no, no, everything’s fine.” Everything’s not fucking fine.
“Take me home,” Ellie whimpers. “Mom? Take me home. I want to go home.”
“Honey, it’s late,” Mr. Ryder says.
Headlights flash again, but instead of a firetruck, it’s a fire engine red sports car.
Fucking hell.
“Ellie—” I start again while I hug my son and my best friend steps out of his car and the closest people I have left to parents gape at me in utter confusion.
“We can’t, Wyatt,” she says, her words muffled against her mom’s shoulder but still clear as day to me. “We. Will. Die.”
“We—”
“When’s the last time you ever accidentally set a towel on fire? Never. Ever. Because it’s you. You don’t make mistakes. We are not supposed to be together.”
“Ellie, sweetie, what’s all this?” her mom says gently. “Honey, everyone makes mistakes. The house is fine.”
Beck looks up. “My house is on fire?” he asks.
Curiously. Not mad. Just confused.
Despite the alarms still blaring inside.
“No,” I tell him.
“Burned to the ground,” Ellie sobs.
“It’s not—” I start.
“IT WILL BE. Mom. I want to go home.”
Beck looks at me, shrugs in bewilderment, and then saunters to his sister. “C’mon, Ellie. I got you.”
“She’s in a bathrobe,” I say.
“I’m commando,” he offers.
Tucker’s still crying. The sirens are getting louder. And when Beck helps Ellie shuffle past us, she doesn’t look up when she whispers, “I’m sorry, Wyatt.”
Having my arm gnawed off by a bear with dull teeth would be less painful than the searing ache shredding my heart. “Ellie—”
Beck shuts her in the car, and he, too, doesn’t look at me as he walks around to the driver’s seat. The engine roars back to life, and he pulls out of the driveway thirty seconds before the fire truck screeches to a halt at the house.
“The fire’s out,” I tell the firefighters, but the words are hollow. “Kitchen accident.”
They still file inside.
Mrs. Ryder wraps her arms around both me and Tu
cker, and I wish I was seven again so I could fucking cry too.
Because it’s Ellie.
She’s strong. She’s smart.
And when she’s fucking determined, there’s nothing in the world that will stop her.
And she’s determined that I’m not good for her.
I grip Tucker tighter, because fuck.
One day, he’ll grow up and leave me too. And we still have the teenage years to get through, when he’ll probably hate me.
“I love her,” I whisper to Mrs. Ryder.
“I know, honey,” she says softly. “I’ve always known. She’ll come around.”
I shake my head, but I don’t answer.
Because she won’t.
She’s made up her mind.
And thirty minutes after I thought I was finally in, finally right, it turns out I’m out.
Twenty-Seven
Wyatt
It takes less than an hour for us to get the all-clear to head back inside, but it feels like weeks. Especially with a sleeping Tucker in my arms. He’s dead weight once he drifts off.
“Watch those towels,” one of the firemen tells me as they depart.
“Yeah. Got it.”
I get Tucker put to bed, and I’m about to collapse into my own bed in the next room when I realize I left my phone in the master bedroom downstairs before the fire. On the off-chance Ellie’s willing to talk to me, I don’t want to miss her. I hit the bottom of the stairs and realize Beck’s back.
He’s lounging in the living room. Alone.
“Where’s Ellie?” I can’t help it. The question rolls out.
“Cooper’s place.”
“In her bathrobe?”
“Doesn’t really need clothes for sleeping, does she?” He grins at me, like nothing in the fucking world is fucking wrong, and I consider decking him. He might have two inches on me, but I have more muscle.
Plus, hitting something would feel damn good right now.
Maybe.
Probably not.
But it’s worth a try.
“Want a beer?” he asks me.
“No.” I scrub a hand over my face. “Yes.”
“Awesome. What’ve we got? Smells like toast. You hungry?”
“That’s burnt dish towel.”
“Eh. Never liked that one anyway.” He leads the way into the kitchen, digs into the fridge and emerges with two bottles of Sam Adams. “Ping-pong?”
“You know I’ve been sleeping with your sister, right?”
“Yep.”
“There a reason I’m still standing?”
His blue eyes flicker over me, and for half a second, I think he’s going to deck me. “Looks like she already got you.”
“She sneezed.”
“Son of a bitch.” He gets me with a jab to the shoulder. “Keep that shit to yourself.”
I recoil. “Fuck, you do that—never mind. Don’t want to know.”
“Exactly, motherfucker.”
He shoves the second beer at me. “Ping-pong. Now.”
We troop down to the basement, and he flips on the lights. If I wasn’t watching, I wouldn’t have noticed him casting a glance at the water stain in the ceiling.
“Didn’t mean to break your house,” I mutter.
“Fuck, man, it’s just a house. I’ve got more.”
In the game room, he claims the far end of the ping-pong table and tosses me a paddle. “Talk.”
I set my beer aside and serve a ball.
And while we battle it out for superiority in ping-pong—he’s winning, because I have no heart left to put in it—I tell him everything.
Everything.
Starting with Christmas.
He doesn’t say anything for three games after I’m done. It’s past two in the morning. We’re just standing here, hitting a fucking ping-pong ball back and forth, beers gone, the ball hitting the table and our paddles the only sound.
Finally, he tosses his paddle to the table. “You love her?”
Fuck. My chest threatens to cave in. “Yes.”
“Huh.”
A Beck Ryder huh can mean anything from you’re in my seat to clogged the toilet again to oh, good, meatloaf leftovers. “Huh what?”
He shrugs. “All she’d say was Tucker needs him alive more than I need to bang him again. I think you’re fucked.”
“Thanks. Helpful. Real helpful.”
“And Mom’s making pancakes in the morning. Told me to tell you to sleep as late as you want, she’ll make you more.”
I dig the heel of my palms into my eye sockets, because I don’t want pancakes.
I want Ellie to have some faith that we can do this.
But I’m supposed to leave to drive back to Georgia in a few hours, because I go back to work Monday.
“You believe we’re cursed?” I ask Beck.
“Nah. Met too many witch doctors over the years. Your case is too boring.”
He was always unpredictable even before the boy band days. Now, he’s unpredictable with a worldly bent, which is mildly terrifying at times.
“Can you convince Ellie?” I ask.
“You want me to convince my sister that I know more than she does about something? Dude. It’s one thing to say you love her. It’s another to act like you don’t know her at all.”
“The Ellie I know would say fuck the universe.”
His smile drops. “Yeah. Fucking Blond Caveman.”
I start. “You—”
“Her ex. The douche-nugget.”
“Didn’t know you called him that too.” A thought strikes me, and I squint at him. “Was this your plan when you asked me to annoy her?”
“That you break my dishwasher and burn my house down?”
“To hook me and Ellie up.”
“Nah. That was Levi.”
I owe another buddy a text. “Levi,” I repeat doubtfully.
“After you showed up at the hospital, he said the only other time he’s seen that look on a man’s face was Tripp, when Jessie had all those complications with delivery.”
“You miss the part where it was my fault she was on the road?”
“Oh, go shove your responsibility complex up your ass. You weren’t the drunk shitbag who hit her, and you weren’t the fuckweasel who dumped her on Christmas Eve. She made up her mind she wasn’t staying at Mom and Dad’s that night the minute she saw you, and we both know it. She just wanted to pick a fight, just like you wanted to pick a fight. It was shitty timing, but it wasn’t your fault. Got it?”
“Yeah,” I mutter.
I don’t know if I believe him yet, but I hear him.
Maybe Ellie’s right.
Maybe we are safer apart.
Twenty-Eight
Ellie
My leg is pounding like a mother, there’s an annoying light shining directly at my eyelids, something smells faintly like moldy gym socks, and there’s a godawful racket coming from outside the doorway.
Sounds like—
Oh, dammit.
Sounds like my brother trying to hit those falsetto notes Levi can reach but Beck most definitely cannot. He’s not bad, but they didn’t add him to the band for his musical talent.
Nope, they added him for the eye candy.
Blech.
He bursts into the room, and I remember I’m not at his house.
I’m at Cooper Rock’s house half a mile up the road. Because Wyatt and I tried to burn down Beck’s house last night.
“Is your house still standing?” I ask, realizing I’m croaking like a frog, and also that I don’t give two fucks.
The universe spoke.
I listened.
And it hurts like hell.
“Damn straight,” he says. “C’mon. Get up. They haven’t found the peg leg yet. I want to go look, but I can’t go without a disguise.”
“Go buy yourself a peg leg.” I shove my head under the pillow, which smells like mothballs, and I really don’t care.
Yum, mothballs.
<
br /> Like death, but mothier.
“You know you broke my best friend’s heart.”
“Talk to the universe. I’m saving his life.” My voice cracks, and I want to hit something, but I also want to roll over and go back to sleep and hope that when I wake up in five or six years, I won’t have residual pain in my leg and Wyatt will have found a safe, kind, motherly type of woman that he’s madly in love with who gives him blow jobs every night after she bakes cookies for Tucker.
Okay, maybe I’m not willing to go that far. I didn’t even get the chance to give him a blow job before fate decided blowing up Beck’s house was more important.
Great.
Now I’m dictating when his imaginary girlfriends can go down on him.
And possibly my eyes are leaking.
And if any fucking asshole woman bakes Tucker cookies—
I squeeze my eyes shut, because Tucker’s adorable and sweet, but he’s not mine.
“Eeeellllliiiiiiieeeeeeee,” Beck whines. “Get uuuuuuuuuppp.” He pokes me in the back.
I let him.
He pokes me again.
I still don’t move.
When he pokes me the third time, and I still don’t react, the fucker sits on me. Right on my back with his bony butt.
“Aaahhlp!” I grunt. “Get off.”
“I missed my sister,” he declares.
“I can’t breathe, you ass.”
He moves to sit on my calves, and now, even if I wanted to, I don’t think I could bend right to punch him. “And what do I come home to? A woman who’s not my sister walking around in my sister’s body. What did you do with Ellie, Fake Ellie? Where’d you put her? Are you from Zygorb? Are you an alien wearing my sister’s skin?”
“You are annoying as fuck.”
“I’m annoying? You’re the one who’s pulling this shitty woe is me, the universe hates me, and for once in my life I’m gonna just lay down and take it because I’m afraid to love somebody who might actually break my heart shit.”
I freeze.
Because that might be hitting too close to home.
“Go. Away.”
“Wyatt’s a good dude, Ellie. And he likes you despite you.”
“And he flies in airplanes for his day job and we can’t even kiss without dishwashers leaking and towels catching on fire and Tucker deserves to grow up with a good dad.”
