Devious Wingman: A Cocky Hero Club Novel

by Hagen, Casey

  “That’s nice, honey,” my mother said, her bottom lip quivering and my blunder unnoticed. “Well, would you look at the time. I’m just going to get this cleaned up.”

  “I can help—”

  “Nope, I’ve got it,” she said, grabbing the serving tray and heading inside.

  Helplessness took over as I watched her go. “I’m sorry, Dad. I didn’t mean to upset you guys. It didn’t feel right to keep it from you,” I said, my voice barely a whisper.

  “You didn’t do anything wrong, angel,” he said, brushing a hand over my hair before pushing himself out of his chair with a groan as though dropping Falcon’s name had aged him an additional decade.

  I grabbed his hand. “Is Mom going to be okay?”

  “Your mom will be fine,” he said, giving my fingers a reassuring squeeze.

  He started to pull his hand free, but I held on tighter. “What about you?”

  “I’m good, angel. But I’m more worried about you. How did you feel seeing him?”

  Angry. Desperate to lash out. Like every one of my secrets laid bare.

  Full of yearning.

  Hungry as hell.

  “It needed to happen. I guess, less worried. He was a part of us too,” I said, admitting the hard truth none of us had acknowledged out loud.

  “He is a part of us, Emory. It doesn’t matter how far he wanders from home—from us. He’ll always be a piece of this family,” he said, giving me a smile.

  A smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

  9

  I grabbed my overnight bag from the car, a bag I carried at all times because weddings were damn unpredictable. I never knew when I might have a last minute stay to oversee changes or worse, talk down crazed couples and overbearing family members. Always be prepared, my unwavering rule in this bridal business almost always worked in my favor. This time though, it bit me right in the ass as it kept me trapped in my misery, scrambling for an escape I knew didn’t exist.

  Tiptoeing through the living room, I froze like a kid snooping, at the sound of my parents’ whispers coming from their bedroom. I listened not to overhear the words, but to gauge the distress in my mother’s voice.

  In a matter of seconds, their conversation fell silent before I could figure out how much damage I’d done with the grenade I’d dropped on our dinner conversation. Leave me and my incredible sense of timing to ruin a perfectly incredible kabob afterglow.

  Hell-bent on a hot bath, I spun on my heel and froze. The strap of my bag slipped from my fingers as I stared, fixated on the image before me. A familiar picture that had been quietly put away with all of my brother’s photos after his accident.

  Ethan and Falcon stood side by side in crisp shirts, slacks with perfectly pressed lines, feet parted and in line with their shoulders, their hands folded behind their backs after their graduation ceremony from basic training. Neither smiled, but the pride alive in their eyes—you could practically touch it even after all these years.

  Weaving on my feet, the long-ago day flared to life all over again in my head.

  The heavy humid scent of fresh rain that had fallen an hour earlier knocking the pollen out of the sky. The still-damp blades of grass and how they grazed the side of my foot through the openings of my sandals with each step.

  The way Falcon tugged my ponytail and said, “You clean up good, kid.”

  I’d been twelve to his eighteen. The feelings for him only just beginning to bloom from admiration to yearning, filling me with equal parts embarrassment and curiosity.

  But the true significance of the picture was Ethan with Falcon. Choosing to bring their son out of the darkness again, choosing that picture above all of the other favorites they’d adored and coveted through the years, it whispered the story of the torment in their hearts even after all this time. Confirmed the pain etched into their features when I said his name.

  They missed him too.

  He lived and breathed somewhere out of reach and they longed for him.

  The tangle of emotions roiling in me clashed like the bodies in the pit of a punk concert. With a hand over my stomach, like I could hold it all in, I walked down the hall, stopping at Ethan’s door. The silence swallowed the empty space in the hallway and became so loud my ears hummed with it. I laid my palm on the wood, wondering how it looked behind this door now, if they’d packed him away yet.

  He’d taken the music with him when he died. He’d stolen it clean from my soul. Every single day, Ethan and FAlcon shut themselves in his room after they finished their homework. Bruce Springsteen pumped through our end of the house on repeat while I sat on the other side of the wall and wondered what they talked about in there, teenage boys a complete mystery to a young girl. At some point, the familiar notes and The Boss’ stirring voice became as much a part of my childhood as my brother and his best friend.

  Not a day went by living in this house where I hadn’t noticed the silence echoing from the hole left in our family. At times it grew all-encompassing to the point where I struggled from minute to minute in my suffocating new reality.

  I took a step, my hand sliding off the door as I turned away from the onslaught. Closing myself in my bedroom, I slumped against the cool wood, trying to mentally stuff everything I felt into some sort of compartment where it couldn’t hurt so much, but my heart wasn’t having it.

  Hot water, a few bubbles, and a fresh beer later, I crawled into the tub and let the dam break. Scathing tears streamed down my cheeks and I surrendered to every single one. If I tried to stop them, tried to control the riot inside me, they’d only wreck me more. Sitting there, my arms wrapped around my knees, full of questions with very few answers to be found, my tears baptized me into a new reality. I let the water trickle to hide the raw sound of my past and present meeting each other head-on, both wanting a piece of me.

  How many pieces did I even have left?

  I didn’t even know who the tears fell for…my parents, my brother, Falcon, me, or maybe all of us.

  With the ache lashing at my heart came a swift rush of anger.

  Did he wonder or worry about them? Did he miss them at all? He’d spent more of his awake hours in this house than his own, sharing meals, doing homework alongside us, answering for grades on his report card, and he’d even gotten a few hefty lessons from my dad about how to be an honorable man. How could he walk away from them after all the love they’d given him?

  How could he walk away from me?

  I bit my lip, embracing the sting, hating that I even thought those words.

  If he doesn’t plan to stick around for me, for us, well, fine. But me and my parents, we weren’t a package deal. He could keep them even if he didn’t have more than a fleeting interest in me. They deserved better.

  If avoiding me was the only thing keeping him away, well, fuck him with his bullshit. Fuck him for making me responsible for even more of their pain. If I didn’t have a torrent of reasons to lock my heart away from the son of a bitch before, I sure the hell had them now.

  And still I wanted him…

  What did that make me?

  Pathetic.

  Lying back with a rolled-up washcloth over my eyes, I forced him out of my mind. I chased him away with visions of starting my own business, something no one could take from me. I turned my thoughts toward something I could control. I clung to the thread of hope Soraya sparked in me and in minutes, I could see it all so clearly in my head.

  My name embossed on a velvety luxe business card designating me as the owner and operator. Forever Begins Here—the name started to take root, feeling more right each time I played it through my mind. My mission to truly give couples the wedding they dreamed of without worrying about if those wishes would conform to Vera’s antiquated ideas of what a dream wedding should be.

  Brides and grooms, brides and brides, grooms and grooms, nothing off limits. Every love story had a place to shine at Forever Begins Here, something I was ashamed to say had become noticeably absent from Vera’s
business model over the years.

  Each couple would get their very best start in such an unpredictable world. I may not really have a magic wand, but my clients will think I do after they see their dreams come to life before their very eyes.

  Nothing like driving away the noncommittal Falcon with a good, old-fashioned fantasy about happily ever after, even if I had to borrow someone else’s.

  Finally, when my skin wrinkled and the tepid water sent shivers through me, I dragged myself out. Drying off, I pulled out a pair of underwear and one of my dad’s soft black T-shirts I’d snagged from the laundry room. It reached to my knees, enveloping me like a familiar hug, and for a moment, I could forget I’d grown up.

  I climbed under the covers and hesitated to wake up my phone. If Falcon texted me, I’d be pissed. If he hadn’t, well, I’d be equally pissed.

  Falcon couldn’t win with me tonight, not with my nerves this exposed.

  I hesitated a beat before I finally clicked through to our thread.

  Silence.

  I sagged against the soft bedding piled up behind me. I could say something. I didn’t have to wait for him. But dammit, it felt too much like surrender, to tipping my hand, to giving him permission to fuck with me any time he wanted.

  It gave him too much damn power over me he didn’t deserve.

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  “Hi, honey,” my mom said, popping her head into the room. “Can I come in?”

  “Sure.” Dropping my phone next to me, I pushed myself up higher against the pillows. I rubbed at my eyes as though tired, but really, if they were still red from crying, I wanted her to think they were puffy from exhaustion.

  She sat on the edge of the mattress and picked at the blue threads of the quilt where the corners of the star had begun to fray. Her eyes still bloodshot, she flashed a bright smile before letting it slip. “You said you saw Falcon. I guess I was wondering…” she began before trailing off and glancing away.

  I laid my palm over hers and stilled her fingers. “Mom, whatever it is, just ask.”

  “How did he look?” She turned her hand over under mine and interlaced our fingers. “Is he still—does he have everything—I don’t know what I’m trying to say,” she said with a frustrated sigh.

  “You miss him,” I said quietly, giving her hand a reassuring squeeze, letting her know she could talk to me about this. I needed her to talk to me about this.

  Tears welled in her eyes, eventually spilling down her cheeks and she nodded. “Yeah, honey, I do,” she said, her voice little more than an anguished whisper.

  I swear if the man were in front of me right now, I’d punch him in the teeth knowing this whole time she’d missed him, his absence only adding to her torment.

  I yanked a tissue out of the box on the nightstand and handed it to her. “He looked good, Mom. Strong. Healthy. Still snarly, but yeah, he looked good. He’s out of the Air Force now. He’s a charter pilot.” I offered her what I could, hoping it would be enough to ease the sadness and worry thrumming through her, yet knowing it would never be enough to quiet it altogether. She’d have to lay eyes on him for that.

  She’d have to hold him in her arms.

  “So you spent time with him?”

  My cell vibrated under my hand. “A few minutes with him and his boss, yes.”

  “Oh, okay,” she said, her shoulders slumping.

  “What aren’t you asking me, Mom?”

  She waved her hands between us and shrugged. “Well, I didn’t know if you and he maybe…”

  I blinked.

  And blinked again.

  My mother was actually trying to go there.

  About me and Falcon.

  I licked my dry lips and searched for something to say. Did she see something between us way back then or was this a random “well, he’s grown and you’re grown, so maybe you two are interested in spending time together” thing?

  As much as I loved the woman, I wasn’t going to offer up more than the bare minimum. If she had specific questions about Falcon and me, she was going to have to spit them out.

  “If he and I maybe what?”

  “Decided to see each other again,” she said lamely.

  Again? She said it like we were seeing each other before. Or did she mean again, in the future again after running into each other? My stomach lurched and my skin grew hot.

  She did not know.

  Did. Not.

  She couldn’t.

  How did I know? My father hadn’t put Falcon in the ground right next to my brother.

  My father was a gentle man, with my mother…and with me. But nice guy or no, Mike Brooks would not tolerate a twenty-two-year-old man messing around with his sixteen-year-old daughter, especially under his roof and in her bedroom. So this had to be some weird wishful thinking on my mother’s part.

  “Are you asking if we plan to go on a date?”

  “Maybe. I guess I’m wondering if you still have feelings for him.” No longer shy, she pinned me with her perceptive mom stare, and I fought the urge to squirm.

  Needing something to do with my hands, I let go of my mother’s, twisted my hair into a bun, and secured the knot with two elastics from around my wrist. “How could I not have feelings for him?”

  Aww, look at me answering a question with a question like an asshole.

  “That’s not exactly an answer,” she said, raising a motherly eyebrow at me.

  Did my eyebrow do that or was it some skill handed out to new moms at the hospital? I crossed my arms, realized I made myself look defensive, and let them fall into my lap.

  “It’s the only one you’re going to get,” I said, the closest I’d ever come to confirming to anyone other than Soraya as to how I felt about Falcon.

  “Will you see him again?”

  Probably, but I refused to give her false hope when he’d proven himself totally unreliable. “It’s Falcon. I just don’t know.”

  “If you do, let him know I…we—” She blew out a defeated breath. “Just come home. He can always come home,” she said, confirming what I figured out when I spotted the picture of Ethan and Falcon together. She leaned forward and kissed my hair, something she’d done thousands of times over the years when she tucked me in. “Good night, baby.”

  “Night, Mom.”

  When the door clicked shut behind her, I unclenched, a lungful of air bursting out of me. I snatched my phone and checked the missed call.

  Falcon.

  Before I could even decide what to do about it, my phone beeped with a text.

  Falcon: Why didn’t you answer?

  Me: Did it ever occur to you I might be busy?

  Falcon: Are you busy now?

  Me: You’re a real pain in the ass, you know that?

  Falcon: I take it that’s a no?

  My phone vibrated with an incoming call and Falcon’s number flashed across the screen. For a second I huddled over it and stared, the digits already locked in my head, and I wondered if I should program him in.

  Nah, I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

  “Why are you calling me?” I asked, throwing myself back on the pillows.

  “I don’t know. This is stupid,” he said, his voice so full of belligerent anguish I almost felt bad for him.

  Until I remembered my mother’s blotchy, tear-stained face.

  That’s all it took for my sympathy to evaporate like morning dew obliterated by the fierce Florida sun. Now I wanted to bite him, and not in the sexy way.

  “There’s that word again,” I said with a growl.

  “I didn’t mean it like that. I just—we shouldn’t be doing this,” he said, his voice full of exasperation.

  My hands tightened on the phone. How long did I have before he abandoned this less than stellar convo and I went back to wondering if these few words between us were really the last ones? “We aren’t doing anything. You called me, flyboy, not the other way around.”

  “Where are you?”

  “In my ro
om,” I said, my gaze on the carpet where I stood that night, where he dropped to his knees before me—

  “The scene of the crime,” he said, the words low and abrasive, heavy with guilt which was absolutely ridiculous all these years later.

  “I never took you for being dramatic. Stubborn, yes. A full-blown horse’s ass most of the time, also yes.”

  “Coming from the single most stubborn person I’ve ever met,” he said, his voice taking on a sardonic bite.

  “Kinda makes you wonder who would win if we go head-to-head, doesn’t it?” I said, dropping the gauntlet, all but telling him I didn’t want this to end, making it clear I wanted to play with fire.

  “I guess it’s a good thing that’s not what we’re doing,” he said.

  “Oh, but aren’t we?”

  “It’s not a good idea.”

  “It’s a fucking disastrous idea. And still you showed up at my house, texted my phone, called me—so who’s the real problem here, flyboy?”

  “You’ve got a surprisingly foul mouth for someone who’s always been so sweet,” he said.

  “People change. You haven’t known me for a long time, Falcon. A really long damn time.”

  Our mutual breathing drew out, the only sound between us.

  “How are they?” he asked quietly, his words completely disarming me.

  My defenses slammed right into place, erecting a wall between his curiosity and my parents’ pain. “Oh, how convenient,” I whispered furiously while keeping my eye on the bedroom door. “I sit here taking the hits and you expect me to feed you information so you literally can get away without investing one single damn thing into a relationship with them. Fuck you, Falcon. How about that?”

  “What hits?”

  I hated how he took what I spewed at him, each time, sparking my sympathy for the wounded boy who’d showed up time and again with bruises he’d never explain. “Never mind. What do you want?”

  I couldn’t confide in him what had happened here tonight. I had to keep this part of me, of my family separate from whatever this was between us. Throwing up a barrier was the only way I’d survive the crushing blow when he walked away for good.