Crazy: Gibson Boys Book #4

by Locke, Adriana

  And about him.

  He is happy-go-lucky, will-do-anything-for-you Peck, but he’s also devastated, untrusting Wesley, who lost his mom because she picked her husband over her boys.

  How did I not think of that before?

  But will he ever trust me? He said that he let others believe what they wanted about his feelings toward Molly because it was easier that way. Easier for his heart in some ways. He never feared that Molly would leave him … because he never really gave her his heart.

  Shit.

  My heart falls to the floor.

  I’m an idiot.

  I should call him and am about to when I pause.

  He doesn’t need me to check in on him and apologize. He needs me to make the choice to stay. To validate us.

  Maybe I need to work out things with my mom first. Navie’s right. I have no clue what my mother or my siblings think about me. I’d already decided. I just didn’t realize it until now. Just as I assume I know what Peck thinks and wants and what my mother thinks. And maybe I’m right. But maybe I’m wrong.

  I flip my phone over and hit the button to call the last number in my call log. It rings twice before I hear her voice.

  “Hello? Dylan?”

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “I was wondering when you’d call,” she says. “Did you get my texts?”

  “About Koty needing money? Yeah.”

  She groans. “I told her you’d send it. Have you?”

  “No.”

  “Well, we need it, Dylan. Can you send a check or wire it or whatever this week?”

  My spirits fall. “I’ll do my best.” It’s probably not worth mentioning that I haven’t had a job for the past two weeks.

  “These siblings of yours will be the death of me. I told them the next time they need money, they’re calling you themselves and trying to talk you into it. I’m tired of begging you.”

  I start to fire back my standard response—a groan and an excuse to get off the phone. But Navie’s words niggle at my brain, and I take a deep breath instead.

  Imagining Mom not seeing me as the fixer of her problems, but being grateful to have me as a resource, I try a different approach.

  “How are things with you?” I ask. “Do you need anything?”

  She doesn’t answer me for a long moment. So long, in fact, that I pull the phone away to see if she’s still there.

  “Do you know how long it’s been since anyone's asked me that?” she asks.

  “Yeah, well, I’m trying a new approach to life tonight. Just testing it out.”

  “I … I don’t need anything, Dylan. But thanks for asking.”

  The sound of her voice—relief, maybe? Appreciation, possibly?—makes me feel warm. I grin.

  “You’re welcome. I need to go though, okay?”

  “Sure,” she says. “Just don’t forget that money.”

  “Okay. I won’t.” I pause. “Love you, Mom.”

  “Yeah. I love you, kiddo.”

  The line goes dead.

  I sit back down and tuck my phone under the blue pillow. I rest my head against it.

  Navie’s words float back through my mind as the stillness of the apartment takes hold. Molly isn’t your competition. You are your competition.

  I mull that over, tossing it around and around. Even when I close my eyes, I can’t stop her words from bouncing inside my skull.

  If she’s right, I’m not only my own competition, but I’m also my own worst enemy.

  I sigh. My entire body hurts. I curl up in a ball on the sofa and try to go to sleep.

  Thirty

  Peck

  “Take it easy,” Walker shouts across the bay. “For fuck’s sake, Peck. You’re gonna tear everything we got up if you don’t stop your bullshit.”

  It’s funny that he thinks I care.

  I was up all night. I didn’t even go to bed. My linens still smell like oranges, and I just couldn’t handle it. Not without Dylan in bed with me.

  It took four hours to decide if I wanted to call her or not. I mean, I wanted to call her. Hell, I wanted to go find her and bring her home with me. But she left. She wanted to. I begged her to stay, and she didn’t. But I called her because I’m a fucking idiot, and her phone went straight to voicemail. I didn’t leave a message because I didn’t know what to say, and I didn’t want to be a stuttering fool—more of a fool than I already am.

  “You’re lucky I’m even here today,” I bark.

  I take a hammer and whack the rim in front of me.

  “I’m lucky?” Walker yells over my second strike of the hammer.

  “Yeah.”

  His laugh is more of a rumble than anything. It means one thing—he’s pissed. Well, good, motherfucker, because I’m pissed too.

  Walker throws down the cutting torch in his hand and stalks across the shop. I consider that maybe this is the universe’s way of taking care of my problems.

  Death by Walker Gibson.

  I hit the rim for the third time.

  There are worse ways to go. At least that would let me go out with a little dignity.

  I miss her. Fucking hell, I miss her. I’m so helpless to fix this, and the knowledge of that binds me up. I feel like I can’t move. I can’t go. I can’t think or process or figure a way out of this maze.

  “Seriously, Peck. What the fuck?”

  “What the fuck, what?”

  He snatches the hammer right out of my hand. “I watched you do this all morning, and I’ve had it. Either talk or walk.”

  “Oh, look. You’re trying to be funny,” I say.

  He scowls. “I’m not trying to be funny. I’m trying to save your life.”

  “You should be sure someone wants saving before you go playing hero.”

  His eyes narrow and his jaw tenses as he tries to bend me to his will. Usually, I’d cut a joke right here and end up annoying him, and he’d go back to whatever he was doing and leave me alone. Today, though, I’m not in the mood for cutting jokes.

  I just lost my girl.

  Sure, she said we were just getting space. But this space feels like a fucking universe. I don’t like it. I hate it. And I can feel the depths of the divide between us, and I know it’s not going to close.

  The door to the office opens and in walks Vincent and Sienna. They exchange a grin as they see Walker and me ready to square off.

  “Take it easy, boys,” she says. “What’s happening in here?”

  “I’d love to know,” Walker says, staring me down.

  I don’t answer either of them.

  Vincent leans against a work table and slides his sunglasses off his face. He hooks them in the front of his shirt.

  “If I were a betting man, and I do love me some gambling,” Vincent says, “I’d bet my brother here is having girl problems.”

  I consider testing my brother’s mettle these days and throwing a solid right hand. But if I do, Walker will get involved, and we’ll all die.

  Sienna puts a hand on Walker’s bicep. Instantly, he relaxes.

  “Peck, what’s going on?” she asks. “Can I help with anything?”

  “Nope.”

  “Okay, cut the shit. What did lover girl do?” Vincent shrugs when I send him a death glare. “What? I didn’t fuck her. I don’t care what you heard.”

  My right hand isn’t fast enough. Walker’s hand clasps around my forearm, and he jerks me around in a circle to face him.

  “Wanna fight?” Walker asks. “Let’s fight.”

  “Walker …” Sienna sighs.

  “I don’t want to fight you, Walk. I wanna fight him.”

  “You sure about that?” Vincent raises a brow. “You wouldn’t stand a chance. And I was kidding about fucking her. You know that. Chill out.”

  I give him my most befuddled look. “Really? Pretty sure I can take a guy who wears a button-up shirt with fucking flamingos on it.”

  “This shirt is cool.” He lifts a piece of the fabric and lets it billow back to his body.


  Sienna waves her hands in the air. “Okay. Enough of the pissing match. What is happening? Are you having lady problems, Peck?”

  “Yeah. He’s on his period,” Vincent jokes.

  “Shut. The. Fuck. Up.”

  He just laughs.

  “Okay,” I say, turning to Sienna. “I need advice. Wanna give me some?”

  “Sure. What’s going on?”

  I walk around the shop bay, circling wide so as not to get into Walker's or Vincent’s spheres. While I don’t think either one would try to shoot a double-leg on me, I’m not that sure—not sure enough to get in their line of fire.

  “So I have this girl. Dylan. She moved in with me as friends, and I don’t know. She just … stole my fucking heart, Sienna. Yes, we slept together, but it was more than just fucking. And you know … I like her a lot.”

  More than a lot. I love her.

  “That’s great,” Sienna says.

  “Yeah, except she thinks … I don’t even know what she thinks. She moved out yesterday and said she thinks we need some space and that she couldn’t compete with Molly, which is stupid …” I sigh. “What the fuck do I do, Sienna?”

  Walker steps between us. His hands are out to the sides. “Let me take this one.”

  “I don’t have time for your bullshit,” I say.

  He faces me, and the annoyance at my antics from moments ago is completely gone. All I see is a sincere desire to offer advice—advice that’ll likely suck ass, but at least he cares enough to offer it.

  “Okay, Walker,” Sienna says. “Go for it.”

  “This I gotta hear,” Vincent chimes in.

  Walker smiles. “First of all, tell me in the quick notes version how Molly is involved.”

  “She’s not. I mean, she came by the house, and I told her not to. That she needed to stand on her own two feet.” I look over my shoulder at my brother.

  He grins. “Great advice, bro. Sounds like a genius gave you that.”

  I laugh.

  “Okay. Got it,” Walker says. “Listen to this, Slugger,” he says to Sienna, then returns his focus to me. “So Molly knows that you like Dylan. You told her basically that you chose Dylan over her. Right?”

  I nod.

  “But Dylan doesn’t know that.”

  “No, she does. I told her that. I told her she was my number one.”

  Walker chuckles. “Man, you gotta make shit crystal clear. Like crystal fucking clear.” He doesn’t flinch when Sienna sticks her elbow in his side. “You have to spell this out for Dylan. Tell her you’re an open book. That you want her—be explicit about it—that you want her to live with ya, if that’s what you want. That you love her. Just like that. I love you. Three words. Look her in the eye.”

  “Aw,” Sienna says. “That’s great advice, baby.”

  “I know.” He grabs my shoulder and shakes it. “You probably think, ‘Man, Walker. I did that shit.’ But I guarantee you that if you had done it just like I said, she’d be back. If, you know, she likes you.”

  “So I haven't been clear enough?” I ask.

  Vincent shoves off the table and walks our way. “Nah, I think he’s right. I’m not really one for females who need a lot of coddling. I don’t coddle. But I do see what he’s saying because women do need that confirmation that they’re wanted. I mean, I don’t get it, but it’s true.”

  Sienna wraps an arm around Walker’s waist and leans her head on his side.

  “Women need to feel like they have a purpose in the relationship,” Sienna says. “We need to be needed. We also want to be seen, and last but not least, we want to feel safe in the confines of that situation.” She looks at me and smiles. “I bet if you think about it long enough, you’ll figure out what you need to do.”

  I scuff my shoes against the floor. “I just panicked. Flat-out panicked. I saw she was leaving, and I just felt like …”

  Vincent looks at me. “Like everyone ends up leaving.”

  I nod.

  “Well, I get it. But I still think you need to do something. Don’t let this one go,” Vincent says. “If not, I’ll go find her—umph.”

  I tackle him low and hard, smashing his back against the wall. If I were really trying to wrestle him, I wouldn’t gotten him a few inches lower and planted his head into the asphalt. But because I’m just fucking around, I grabbed him high.

  “Stop it, you fuckheads,” Walker bellows.

  Vincent reaches around and grabs my hand. I tap his back, and we call a truce.

  Breaking apart, we’re panting and laughing.

  “Damn, you’re quick,” he says.

  “And you’re stronger than I remember.”

  “Okay, enough fucking off. Back to work, Peck.” Walker kisses Sienna’s cheek. She follows him back to the spot where he dropped the cutoff saw earlier.

  Vincent joins me by the truck that I’ve been working on all morning.

  “You really like this chick, huh?” he asks.

  “Yeah.”

  “So how are you gonna get her back?”

  I shrug because I don’t know. I’m not sure if she’s still mine or not. She’s not mine like she used to be—the way I want her. And I want to fix it. I just can’t figure out what to do.

  Vincent rifles through a coffee can of screws. “You need a grand gesture. That’s what you need.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The last girl I was fucking was big into those female-centric networks.” He shrugs. “I’ll learn if someone wants to teach.”

  I work on the lug nuts on the tire as Vincent fucks around.

  A grand gesture. What the hell is that?

  Walker whistles through the bay. He holds open the door to the office, and Sienna goes inside. He motions for Vincent to come too.

  “See ya later,” he says.

  “Yeah.”

  The garage quiets down and allows me to think. A grand gesture. Would that work? Is that something I can do to drive home my point to Dylan? Because I need one good solid try to win her back. If it doesn’t work, then I’ll have to let her go.

  But it’ll work. It has to.

  Thirty-One

  Dylan

  Last night sucked.

  Come to think of it, so did yesterday and this morning and this afternoon too.

  I’ve always been one of those people who doesn’t mind being alone, and I can entertain myself like nobody’s business. But Navie worked all last night and slept all day today until an hour ago when she got up and is prepping to go back to work. I’ve been alone too much. It’s taught me that Navie was kind of right: I am my own worst enemy.

  The dialogue running through my head isn’t exactly kind. It’s not cheerful or positive. But … it’s real. It’s the truth.

  And the truth is that I’m not a whole lot different than Molly. That’s a hard, jagged little pill to swallow.

  It hit me around three a.m., the witching hour. The hour in which songs have been written about its loneliness. The hour that’s not quite today and not quite yesterday, an hour of time that exists to haunt you.

  And haunt me, it did.

  I might not sleep around, as I’ve heard Molly might do. I don’t stop at men’s houses that might have had a thing for me when someone else has moved in and try to play a card to get them back in my graces, as I’m pretty sure she did. I haven’t ever gone up to a woman at a bar and picked a fight or tried to intimidate someone to stay away from a guy I didn’t even like so he’d just like me.

  That being said, I'm desperate for love. I have acted foolishly because I’m scared that someone isn’t going to love me back. And my behaviors probably stem from the way people have treated me growing up, and I haven’t been able to break that mental connection. Just like Molly.

  I laugh out loud. It’s not a sound full of levity or humor. It’s a motion packed with disbelief and sadness and a little disgust.

  I’m not better, no different, than Molly McCarter.

  I take the blue
pillow and press it against my eyes.

  Neither one of us deserve Peck. When I think about the things Nana told me, and how his mother left him and how awful it must have been for him growing up, I realize how strong he is. None of that bullshit has stopped him from opening his heart. But when she implored me to love him …

  “You can’t start or stop love, honey. It’s just there or it’s not, and it’s present between you and Peck.”

  The look in her eyes. It was clear how much she adores here beautiful grandson.

  “Just … love him. Like you, he’s never really had someone love him unconditionally … He’ll be kind. He’ll drive you crazy with his incessant need to make sure you’re all right. Please just be the same to him. For me.”

  I’ve already let Nana down. I didn’t trust him to keep my heart safe. I didn’t love him unconditionally.

  Is that what this is? It’s that I love Peck?

  “Hey,” Navie says.

  She runs a brush through her hair. She’s irritated with me, and I know it. But I’m irritated with myself, so there’s that.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell her. My voice is muffled under the pillow, but she gets the gist of the sentiment.

  “Yeah, well, apologize to yourself.” She puts the brush on the table and works to pull her hair on top of her head. “Are you coming to Crave tonight?”

  “Nah.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Look, you can stay here all you want. My house is … not yours, but you’re welcome here. But, and this is a big but, if you think you’re going to stay here and mope around because you are, in fact, a fucking idiot, then you aren’t so welcome.”

  Her words are harsh, but the look on her face is not. A smile touches her lips.

  “Gee, thanks,” I kid.

  “It’s for your own good. I can’t let you sit around here and add to that HAS Line.”

  “Um, what?”

  “Oh, nothing. I just woke up to six shipping notifications expected to arrive at my house in the next three days.”

  I cringe. “Yeah. But two of those are ice cream. There’s a new Banana’s Foster flavor that really screamed my name.”

  “Oh, so it screamed Hey Fool? Awesome name for an ice cream flavor.”