“Dru?” Oliver pictured his baby sister, forever tagging along after him, Travis, and Brad—the Three Musketeers, Selena had dubbed them.
“My . . .” Brad turned to Travis. “You didn’t tell him?”
“Tell me what?”
A fresh batch of memories attacked, images of Oliver’s kid sister and his then best friend. Dru and Brad were dancing together when Dru had been a high school sophomore and Oliver, Travis, and Brad were seniors. She and Brad were slow dancing way too close while the spring formal’s band played “Endless Love.”
Oliver’s head was going to explode.
“Brad and Dru were engaged last Christmas,” Marsha explained. “After he came home to help his grandmother.”
Brad.
And Dru.
Whose crush on Oliver’s best friend had been so big, she’d been the first to guess that the boy she’d fallen for had hooked up with Selena. She’d been the one to break the news to Oliver and had been just as devastated as he was. She’d sworn to never forgive Brad.
“When Vivian died,” Marsha added, “she left Dru the Dream Whip to run. Your sister and Brad have been doing a fine job with it. They’re living in the Douglas house now, exactly the way Vi thought they always should have.”
“Seriously?” was all Oliver could manage.
Brad’s good-natured vibe dimmed at Oliver’s underwhelming response. What? Was Oliver supposed to congratulate the guy who’d helped Selena kick him to the curb, because Brad had moved on to Oliver’s sister?
Marsha laid a comforting hand on Brad’s arm. “Joe’s resting better this morning. We’re still waiting to hear from someone about what’s next. They ran more tests and scans early this morning. Another EKG about an hour ago. Tell Dru to head over to the house whenever she can this afternoon, and thank her for running Teddy around. We should know more by then about what the next few days will be like. But at least Oliver’s agreed to stay for a while.”
Travis grinned. “Well, hell, man, that’s great.”
Brad looked like he wanted to agree. Oliver saw the precise moment the other man decided that keeping quiet was a wiser course of action. Marsha crossed her arms at the lot of them.
“Seriously?” she mimicked. She looked ready to knock their heads together, the way she’d frequently threatened to when they’d been kids. She never had back then, but there was a first time for everything. “Tell me you boys aren’t planning on keeping this up the entire time Oliver’s back.”
“Why don’t I stop by later?” Brad suggested. “I’ll have some time when my shift is done, unless Dru needs me to cover the restaurant. Unless . . .” His attention shifted to Travis. “I don’t want to make more trouble for anyone.”
“Come by anytime you can,” Travis said.
“Thank you,” Marsha added, “for taking such good care of Dru and the Whip through all this, so Dru can be wherever she needs to be.”
“Anything I can do.” Brad included Oliver in the offer.
“I’ll walk you out.” Travis steered Brad away.
“Brad and Dru?” Oliver asked his mother.
“You need to talk with Selena,” Marsha insisted.
After the stunt she’d just pulled, her gentle reprimand finished pissing him off. “I need to focus on helping you and Joe. Other than that, I should probably steer clear of conversations that tempt me to take my sister’s fiancé apart again with my bare hands.”
He rubbed the side of his nose. A delay tactic when he was close to doing or saying something he’d regret. He was supposed to breathe deeply and regroup. He sneezed instead.
“Bless you.” Marsha rooted in the pocket of her cardigan. He’d never known her not to have a spare tissue whenever someone needed one.
He stopped her, keeping his hand on her arm until she looked up. The worry in her gray eyes damn near broke his heart.
“Let me take care of you and Dad right now. Please, let the rest go.”
“Dealing with Selena—and Brad, too—is one of the best things you can do for your father and me.”
“Not if you want me to stay.”
He would handle diving headfirst into his family. Somehow he’d still find a way to walk once his job here was done. But how did he do that if he opened the door any wider to reconnecting with Selena? He’d treated her like shit twice already because he didn’t trust himself to get closer and be able to find his way out. Some part of him was still so stuck on her, he’d come close to punching Brad—just for breathing near her.
“If you’re going to give us a hand with everything else,” Marsha insisted, “you’re going to have to at least talk with Selena. She lives next door. Brad and Dru are engaged. He’s over at the house all the time, pitching in as much as your sister does. And—”
“Hold on.” Oliver’s vision narrowed to one suddenly obvious detail. “Before you sent me out of Dad’s room to talk to Travis, when you knew Selena was there . . . You were stalling. Brad was already on his way. Dru called ahead, right? Damn it, Mom. What were you thinking? Throwing the three of us back together without at least warning me, while Dad’s in the next room fighting for his life?”
“Take it easy, man.” Travis stepped beside their mother. His gaze was the kind of intense that must put the fear of God into people he confronted on the job. “Mom’s trying to help.”
And maybe she was helping. Oliver’s first confrontation with Selena and Brad was done. The surprise of it was behind them. But that’s where this ended. Selena’s sweet face and sad, hurting eyes while she’d apologized for their disastrous end that had been as much Oliver’s fault as hers . . . What was the point of repeating that, just so they could all hurt some more?
“I’m sorry,” he said to his mother. “But, please. Lay off whatever the two of you were angling for upstairs.”
Oliver’s fist clenched at the memory of Brad’s friends again handshake. The man was going to be his brother-in-law, which meant at the very least Oliver had an uncomfortable conversation ahead of him with Dru. He had no bandwidth left for additional drama.
“If you won’t go find that girl for your own sake,” Marsha said, sounding dug in, “do it for our family.”
The wanting place inside Oliver ripped wider open. He rubbed a hand across his face.
“I need some air,” he said. Except Marsha’s complexion had turned deathly white. He grabbed her elbow. “Mom? Are you okay—”
“Dr. Kask,” she said over Oliver’s shoulder.
He and Travis turned to see a middle-aged man in a lab coat heading their way from the elevator bank.
“You’ve met Travis,” she said to the fifty-something doctor with a fifty-something comb-over. “This is Oliver, another of our boys.”
Comb-over looked up from his clipboard to acknowledge Oliver and Travis. His attention tracked to Marsha and held. The clipboard dropped until it was in front of his waist.
“The charge nurse thought perhaps you’d headed to the cafeteria. I wanted to speak with you and Mr. Dixon together before I went off shift.”
“Okay.” Marsha’s voice was hushed, as if whispering might soften the blow of whatever the doctor had to say.
“We have your husband’s test results back. Unfortunately, they’re not what we’d hoped. He’s not responding to the medication well enough for that to remain our only course of action. This morning’s electrocardiogram isn’t showing enough increased blood flow. Given the significance of the blockage to his left coronary artery . . .”
The doctor glanced at Oliver and his brother as if they should find somewhere else to be. Neither of them budged.
“I need to discuss a few options with you and Joe,” Comb-over said.
“Options?” Travis and Oliver asked in unison.
“More invasive alternatives, to get blood flowing properly to the patient’s left ventricle. Interventions that will increase his oxygen levels and reduce the degree of permanent damage done to the heart muscle.”
“The patient
?” Oliver bit out. The man sounded like a walking, talking textbook.
“I’m sorry to be so technical,” the doctor said to Marsha. “Occupational hazard when I spend most of my days with other doctors, poring over lab tests and research. We’re wasting muscle, Mrs. Dixon, the longer we wait to try something else. I’m afraid there’s no clear recommendation for me to make. There are two procedures that offer you similar potential results, with different sets of risks and probability for complications. It will take me some time to explain them. But I’d like Joe scheduled for surgery later tonight, first thing tomorrow at the latest.”
Marsha turned to Oliver and Travis.
“I’ll let you know what your dad and I decide as soon as I can,” she said, ready to battle onward. “Travis, could you give your sister a call? Let Dru know I might not make it to the house this afternoon. You kids talk to the younger ones on your own if I can’t.”
“Sure,” Travis said.
She left for the elevators with Comb-over. A flash of panic shook Oliver—a premonition that he might never see his father again. His next calming breath did little to loosen the dread clogging his windpipe. He shook it off.
Marsha would have made damn sure Joe had the best doctor for the job, even if the guy had the bedside manner of a chunk of computer code. She and Joe would make the right decision. And, surgery or not, Joe would be fine. He had to be. Then he and Marsha would pick up the pieces the way they had after every other setback they’d faced. Oliver’s whole family would.
A firm grip closed around his shoulder and yanked him from his thoughts, spinning him to face his equally worried brother.
“You’re coming with me,” Travis said.
“Mom and Dad will be awhile.” Travis shoved Oliver toward a hallway to the right of visitor reception. “Let’s go.”
Oliver rounded on him. “Hands off, man. I’m not going anywhere but back upstairs.”
“I’ll text Mom. She’ll join us if she’s finished with the doc before we’re back.”
“Back from where?”
“Hell freezing over.”
Travis kept a firm grip on Oliver’s shoulder as they walked. Oliver’s options narrowed to cooperating or starting a brawl.
“That ass kicking we’ve been talking about?” he said. “Considered yours kicked.”
“Looking forward to it.”
Something was slipping inside Oliver, more out of his control by the second. Listening to that doctor talk medical options reminded Oliver of how he laid out system specs to a waffling client who had a mother of a design mess on their hands. By that point it usually didn’t matter what decision was made. Oliver was already focused on the inevitable fallout. Either option was just as likely to blow up in their faces.
Only this time it was his dad’s life on the line. Not some faceless IT application he felt no attachment to beyond getting paid.
“Let me go, Travis. Seriously.”
“Not until I’m done ruining both our mornings. We’re settling a few things.”
Travis, biceps bulging beneath the short sleeves of his uniform, hustled Oliver down a hallway a sign said led to the cafeteria. People were staring.
“I asked Brad to wait for us,” Travis continued. “You two are going to have it out before you spend another moment with Mom. Before you see Dru. I’ll contain the carnage, enough to keep your ass out of jail this time. But you’re giving him the benefit of the doubt, or I’m throwing you in a cell myself.”
“There’s nothing to have out.” Oliver yanked his arm free, but he kept walking.
“That’s right. You both got on with your lives. You both learned everything the hard way. And what does any of it matter now? We’ve all made peace with the crap we pulled when we were kids. The rest is holding a grudge, Oliver, and nobody needs that from you.”
“So?”
“So talk to the guy, without looking like you wanna have his spleen for dinner.”
Oliver treated his brother to an under-his-breath, anatomically impossible suggestion. “I’m just as sick over Dad as you are.”
“I know that. Brad’s worried, too. So let’s get this out of the way, so everyone can focus on what Joe and Marsha need.”
Oliver marched down beige corridors washed with the kind of fluorescent lighting that seemed manufactured to effect maximum gloom. They cornered into the cafeteria and were assaulted with skylights. People. Ambient noise. Oliver squinted through his growing migraine.
Brad was at a just-this-side-of-shabby table, in a corner where he sat with his back to the wall. The rest of the room was packed with a fast-eating lunch crowd. Doctors, nurses, visitors of patients. Groups talking with hushed intensity.
Brad watched Travis and Oliver settle across from him. His resigned expression had taken a definite tilt toward pissed. He was expecting a fight. Maybe he was looking for one.
“I don’t give a shit,” Oliver said straight off. “About you and Selena and seven years ago. I did.” His hand clenched into a fist on top of the wobbly table. “I still do, I guess. And let’s be clear, I’ll knock you from here to next Tuesday if you do anything to hurt Dru again. But I figure she’s a grown woman. She knows what she’s getting into. If you weren’t one hundred percent into her this time, she’d have stomped you into the dirt when you came sniffing at her again.”
Travis’s chuckle loosened some of the tightness between Oliver’s shoulder blades.
Brad scratched behind his ear and stretched his legs under the table. “Your sister did a fine job stomping on me herself when I first got back to town.”
Oliver was cheered by the image. “Go, Dru.”
“But I couldn’t let her slip away again.”
“Obviously.”
“She still gives me hell on a regular basis if that sweetens the deal for you.”
It did. Not that Oliver cared to admit it. “You and my sister fighting like a married couple already doesn’t square things between us. But I haven’t been part of this family in a long time. If they want you here, at the house, wherever, then be there. Be there for Dru. Don’t hurt her again, and you won’t have a problem with me.”
“I care about your mom and dad.” Brad braced his forearms on the table. “I care about your whole family. And I couldn’t live without your sister in my life.”
“He makes Dru happy,” Travis said. “Brad’s grandmother was the first to guess how much Dru was still stuck on him. Vi made sure Dru had one last chance to realize it herself. Stick around long enough and you’ll see it, too.”
Oliver stood. He got it. Dru and Brad were tight. No harm, no foul. All better. Except while Brad and Travis talked about second chances, images of Selena’s face kept flashing through Oliver’s mind.
“I’m sorry to hear about Vivian.” He had genuinely liked Brad’s cantankerous grandmother. She’d been a nice old lady, if you liked them brutally honest and loyal to the bone. “She was a real dame.”
“Thank you.” Brad stared at Oliver.
Meanwhile, Oliver couldn’t seem to get moving. He caught his brother checking his phone. Travis shook his head. No update yet from Marsha. Oliver dug into his pocket for his truck keys, then remembered his brother had driven them over. Travis’s raised eyebrow confirmed that Oliver wasn’t going anywhere just yet. Oliver threw himself back into his chair.
Brad had grabbed coffee. He took a long sip from a foam cup. Oliver’s mouth watered. Brad had always drunk the stuff black as sin, wicked strong. Exactly the way Oliver liked it. Except he’d cut all stimulants out of his life and made a commitment to keep it that way.
“You need a line on a local meeting?” Brad asked.
Oliver strummed his fingers on the table, letting the subtext of the question sink in. “Excuse me?”
Brad shrugged. “Sisters talk, man. You’re back. Dru’s worried about you sticking with your program. I’m saving her the angst of asking you herself later.”
Oliver’s threats to pound on Travis held new appe
al.
He owed his brother big time. He’d called Travis eighteen months ago for help, and Travis hadn’t blinked before using his local contacts to muscle Oliver last-minute into a top Atlanta rehab facility. But they’d agreed to keep that and the outpatient counseling Oliver had completed afterward between themselves. Oliver was taking care of himself again. He was following the guidelines of his program—eat better, no stimulants, try to sleep more and work less, let go of the past and focus on what he could accomplish today and why it was important to stay clean.
There’d been no sense in worrying their folks or anyone else over Oliver landing in rehab after nearly blowing a project for a top client. There was definitely no reason for it to be a topic of conversation now with Brad or Dru or anyone else.
“Evidently,” Oliver said to his brother, “sisters aren’t the only ones who talk.”
“It’s barely been a year and a half, man.” Travis plunked his smartphone down, display up. “I thought maybe Dru would see you more. I asked her to let me know if she noticed anything we should be worried about, assuming you stayed in town for a while. Now that you are, there’s a solid local meeting I can hook you up with if you need one. I know a couple of guys who go, good men. Friends who’d keep an eye out for you.”
Brad and Travis calmly waited for Oliver to respond, as if they were talking about where he should gas up his truck.
The Three Musketeers.
Together again.
“Who else knows?” Oliver asked.
“No one.” His brother shook his head. “But I don’t see the point in keeping it a secret. No one’s going to judge you. But if keeping quiet about the fact that you’ve finally laid your demons to rest is what you want, I’ve got no problem with it. As long as being back doesn’t mess with your sobriety.”
Oliver thought of his dad upstairs, Marsha’s reaction to Kask just now, Selena running from facing all of them, his reaction to seeing her . . . There seemed to be demons everywhere he looked. He shifted gears, glaring at Brad.
Let Me Love You Again (An Echoes of the Heart Novel Book 2) Page 5
