by Sidney Bell
“It sounds so easy,” Cal admits. Anya points at the bowl of popcorn sitting on the coffee table, and Cal obligingly leans forward to get it for her before adding, “It can’t be that easy.”
“Probably not. We’ll deal.” Zac shrugs.
“Fine. But after this, it’s someone else’s turn to have drama,” Cal says. “I’ve had enough to last for years. I’m tired of being a hassle.”
“You’re not a hassle,” Anya says, and Zac doesn’t know why Cal gets her sweet voice so much more often than Zac does, but he can’t make himself mind. Cal always goes soft and pink when she talks to him that way, and Zac really likes that look on him.
“I mean, you are,” Zac says, full of fake apology, and Cal elbows him. Gently, because PJ’s eyes are falling shut. “But we love you anyway.”
Cal’s expression goes soft. “I love you both too. So much.” He’s super earnest about it, because he’s a goober. Zac rolls his eyes, because that kind of earnestness isn’t rock-and-roll at all, but he can’t help that his chest goes warm and achy at the words all the same.
Cal sees through him, of course, and smiles as he takes Zac’s hand, lets his thumb run over the plain dark-silver band that Zac’s wearing. They decided early on that they would all need new wedding bands to exchange under the trees in their backyard during the simple ceremony they shared for this new marriage. Not that Anya and Zac disliked the ones they had. But they wanted Cal to see that he wasn’t merely an addition to their existing marriage—he was an integral part of the whole. Anya cried a little at taking her old one off, and Zac almost had too, surprised by how wrong it felt to have a bare hand.
At least, it felt wrong until Cal nervously showed them the new bands they’d all be wearing. Instead of going to a jewelry store, he found a custom jeweler and arranged for her to melt down the platinum from Zac’s and Anya’s old bands and combine it with the melted steel from a guitar string from the celebratory guitar Zac bought when Hyde won their first Grammy. The old metals had been alloyed with fresh platinum for their new bands. So now all three of their rings were a mixture of every promise any of them ever made to each other.
Cal actually asked if that was all right, told them they could get something else if they were mad. The dumbass. But he figured it out when Anya completely lost her shit, sobbing and pressing ecstatic kisses to his face. Zac was stunned stupid at the thoughtfulness of the gesture, though in the end he resorted to giving Cal wild kisses too.
“You okay now?” Anya asks Cal.
“I think so.”
“You are,” Zac tells him, because he refuses to accept any less. He puts his feet up on the ottoman beside theirs and studies all their toes—his bony ones, Cal’s longer ones, Anya’s painted soft pink on the right foot, and neon blue on the left, because she can’t reach her toes anymore and her men stepped up to help.
There’s a little dab of sea green on her right ankle too—PJ’s contribution.
“I don’t know what I’m going to tell them is all,” Cal says. “The specific words to use to describe what we’re doing, I mean. How do I even phrase it?”
“You tell them the truth.” Zac lets his feet tell Cal that it’ll all be okay, even as Anya’s tell him the same. “We’re a family.”
* * *
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Acknowledgments
As usual, thank you to my beta readers: Sasha Gore and Connie Peckman. Thanks go to my husband as well, because he found a way to answer music-themed questions like, “But what instrument would Cal play? He’s a goody-goody, does that help?”
About the Author
Sidney Bell lives in Colorado with her amazingly supportive husband. She received her MFA degree in Creative Writing, considered aiming for the Great American Novel, and promptly started writing fanfiction instead. More realistic grown-ups eventually convinced her to try writing something more fiscally responsible, though, which is how we ended up here. When she’s not writing, she’s playing violent video games, yelling at the television during hockey games, or supporting her local library by turning books in late. Visit her online at www.sidneybell.com.
Forgiven
by Garrett Leigh
Chapter One
Mia
Sandgrove Country Park was my entire childhood. Even years after I’d left Rushmere, I still missed the scent of the Christmas tree farm buried in the forest there. How it smelled festive all year round, even in summer, and I recalled with perfect clarity my mum bringing us to choose the cheapest tree to brighten up our budget celebration. Add in Safeway frozen turkey and a slice of Mr. Kipling cake, and I’d been the happiest girl in the world.
I missed that girl too.
With one last breath of earthy pine filling my lungs, I walked back to the dodgy Astra I’d bought on eBay when I’d got off the ferry in Dover last night. I’d driven till dawn to get home—a place so strange and familiar—but the sign for Sandgrove had reeled me in before I’d reached Rushmere, and now I was finding it hard to make myself leave.
On cue, my phone buzzed.
Gus: where are you?
I ignored him. Buried him again, like I had over and over for the last five years, pretending I hadn’t missed him too. I leaned against my car and tilted my face to the bright spring sky. Five more minutes.
Sandgrove had always had a way of sucking up my time, but eventually even the clean air and birdsong couldn’t block out my phone blowing up in my pocket.
With a heavy sigh, I got in the car and called my annoying little brother back. “I’m on my way. What are you hassling me for?”
“I’m not hassling you, sis,” Gus said. “I was worried. You said you’d be here an hour ago.”
I wondered when he’d turned into my mother.
And when I finally made it back to the house we would share on the outskirts of town, I wondered too when my gangly younger sibling had turned into a strapping hottie.
“You’re a man,” I said stupidly.
He cocked a dark eyebrow and enveloped me in a strong-armed bear hug. “Je ne me souviens pas avoir prétendu être autrement.”
He’d missed my point, but that was fairly standard when it came to Gus and me. I talked, he shut me down, then we reversed our positions and pressed repeat. At least, that’s how things used to be. I didn’t know what we were anymore.
Gus pulled back to unlock the green front door of the house he’d bought with his half of our mother’s life insurance. I’d never seen the interior, only Facebook photos of the outside, but as soon as I stepped inside, it became clear that he’d made better use of his inheritance than I had.
I spun around the tidy living space. “This is nice.”
Gus appeared behind me with a couple of beers. “You sound surprised.”
“I’m more surprised that you’re cracking open the booze at nine a.m.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t sleep last night, and I’m guessing you didn’t either, so we can call it a nightcap.”
Worked for me. I was already missing my French diet of coffee and red wine. Sipping my beer, I took a tour of the cosy house my brother called home. Fresh and clean, it was beautiful; he’d even put flowers in my room.
“I figured we’d be overrun soon enough, so I’d better get used to them.”
“Don’t talk shit.” I rolled my eyes. “You think I’m going to bring my work home with me?”
“Wouldn’t know. I’ve never lived with a florist, so I don’t know whether to expect rose petals in the bath o
r mouldy daffs in the skip outside.”
“What’s that for, anyway? The skip, I mean. I thought you’d finished the renovations?”
“I have.” Gus stepped around me and opened the blinds, letting more spring sunshine flood into my bedroom. “It’s leftover from when we did the roof. It’s being collected next week.”
Out of habit, I inwardly flinched, picturing the big black van with the name of the local roofing firm plastered across it. I couldn’t remember the last conversation I’d had with old man Jon Daley. His nephew, though? Jesus Christ. Every syllable was etched on my heart, and now that Rushmere was my home again, I’d never been so thankful that my first love—my only love—had abandoned me to join the bloody Navy.
“Mia?”
I blinked. Gus was in front of me, brandishing a stack of clean towels. He pressed them into my hands and I smelled the French washing powder our mother had stockpiled for all those years, distrustful of the brightly coloured English brands our friends’ parents had used. The crack in my heart widened, and I blinked again, harder this time.
Gus slid his arm around me, his skin as olive as mine was fair, his hair as dark as mine was blond. He didn’t say anything, just kissed my forehead, and for the first time since I’d stepped off the boat, England felt like home.
* * *
“It’s not that bad,” Gus said.
I spared him an incredulous glance. “Are you for real? Look at it—it’s a fucking mess.”
Understatement of the year. I glowered around the shithole that was supposed to be Wild Amour, my new shop, with increasing horror. The photos the lettings agent had sent me hadn’t touched the surface.
Goddamn it. I righted a broken chair and ran my finger along the cracked tiles on the wall. I had orders booked for two weeks’ time, and a website advertising national deliveries a day after that. I’d have to work around the clock to get the shop even functional by then, let alone presentable to the general public.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Gus tried again. “Lick of paint and some cleaning, it’ll be fine.”
I didn’t bother spearing him with another “idiot” glare. Leaving him to start stripping away the remnants of the beauty salon that had rented the premises before me, I trudged into the back room I’d intended to use for storing my stock. Another disaster greeted me—this one wet and filthy, and born of a suspicious hole in the ceiling that would need fixing before my industrial refrigerator arrived to fill the space. By chance, a mop and bucket was tucked away in the corner. I trudged over to it, the lunacy of coming back to Rushmere already overwhelming.
Fuck my life.
Gus left me mid-morning to rock up late to his own job. I tried to care that he’d inconvenienced Daley’s Roofing on my behalf, but age-old bitterness was a strange thing, and all I got for my trouble was acid in my chest. Brilliant. Just what I needed, indigestion on top of everything else.
Still, I didn’t have time to worry about it. I’d spent the last of my savings on some hardcore local advertising, and had bookings for two weddings and a christening to plan for, on top of turning the shop into something halfway resembling the once thriving business I’d left behind in Paris.
More bitterness lanced my scratchy throat, but I ignored it and retrieved my sketchbook from my bag. Men fucking me over was a thing of the past. I would make this work—I had to. There was nothing else.
The dogged determination I’d inherited from my mother propelled me for most of the day. I sketched, planned, scrubbed, and cleaned, and by the time five p.m. rolled around, my morning heartburn was a distant memory. Hunger clawed at my insides, and my eyes stung. Beer for breakfast after a sleepless night, and a full day’s work on top had left me a trembling mess, and I needed food fast.
I’d spent years trying to forget everything about Rushmere, but as I locked up the shop and stepped outside, the scent of the nearby chippie called to me like an old friend. I turned my face upwind and a legitimate craving for Mr. Wong’s famous curry sauce hit me like a truck.
I checked my purse for English money and jogged across the road, my feet carrying me of their own volition. The single-minded quest for a cheap dinner was all-consuming, and I was in the fish and chip shop before I could blink, tripping over the step in my haste and stumbling into a broad back.
Dazed, I jerked my head up, and caught sight of Gus at the counter, handing something to the body I’d barrelled into. “Sorry—”
The word died on my lips, along with the last surviving piece of my fractured heart. Familiar brown eyes stared back at me, hard-won forgotten, but never forgiven. Full lips began to mouth my name, but I reared away, evading the work-hardened hands—beautiful hands—that reached for me.
No. I’d endured enough. And he wasn’t supposed to be here. Luke Daley was supposed to be on the other side of the world on a fucking warship, so why the fuck was he standing in Rushmere’s only chip shop with my goddamn little brother?
Copyright © 2021 by Garrett Leigh
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ISBN-13: 9780369701800
This Is Not the End
Copyright © 2021 by Miriam Macrae
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