by Jill Shalvis
“You didn’t want our help,” Olive said.
“It wasn’t that,” Brynn said.
“Then what?” Olive asked.
She’d avoided this conversation for years, and for a very good reason. She hated to say or do anything that would hurt them, and this would hurt them. “It wasn’t just me having a hard time. You two faced criticism and shunning for bringing a child into your world.”
Olive and Raina looked stricken. “You knew?” Raina whispered.
Brynn nodded. “I hated what you were going through because of me, and didn’t want to add to it. Changing schools wouldn’t have helped any of us. It would’ve felt like giving in.”
“First,” Olive said, “you were never at fault. Never, baby.”
Brynn held her gaze and felt the love. So much that she couldn’t speak.
“Can you tell us what the real reason was that you didn’t want us to help you get info on your father?” Olive asked.
Brynn let out a breath. “I didn’t want you to think that you weren’t enough. Or have any regrets about having me.”
Raina burst into tears. Olive’s voice sounded thick with emotion as well. “I never regretted a single thing about you,” she said with the intensity of a mama bear.
“You’re our whole world,” Raina said. Or at least that what’s Brynn thought she said, though it was hard to tell, because when Raina cried, only dogs could hear her.
“I finally let you try my magic mascara this morning and you’re crying it all off,” Olive said, not sounding all that steady herself. “Stop.”
Raina swiped at her tears. “You can’t just tell someone to stop crying. It only makes them cry harder.”
Olive hugged her and looked over her head to Brynn. “I’m so sorry you felt you had to protect us. We should’ve been the ones protecting you. It was our life choices that led to this happening to you.”
“How you choose to live shouldn’t matter to anyone else,” Brynn said fiercely. “You are who you are, and I love you both so much.”
At that, she had all of them crying, and no one cared very much about their mascara. Finally, Olive got a box of tissues and pulled out more banana bread. “I’d get out the gin, but it’s seven in the morning.”
“You’ve spent too much of your entire life trying to please everyone,” Raina said to Brynn. “And that’s got to be exhausting. I think it’s time to please yourself.”
“What would please me is to find my father. Not for me. I mean, let’s be realistic. He didn’t sign up to be a dad, and I don’t need one. But Kinsey needs a donor. I’m going to get tested too.”
“I’ve still got a friend at the fertility clinic,” Olive said. “I’ll see what I can find out.”
“Thanks,” Brynn said gratefully. “I was so afraid I’d hurt your feelings.”
“Never.” Olive cupped Brynn’s face. “But that’s not all that’s weighing on you. There’s something else.”
Wasn’t there always . . . “I’m . . . having a lot of feelings that I didn’t intend to have.”
“Well, that’s normal,” Raina said. “Kinsey’s your sister. No matter how complicated your relationship has been over the years, blood ties bind us.” She smiled. “Even when we don’t know they’re there.”
Olive was watching Brynn’s face, and she slowly shook her head. “She doesn’t mean just Kinsey. She also means Eli.”
“How do you know?”
Olive smiled. “Hard to miss the chemistry between you two. When you look at each other, the air crackles.”
“He’s wonderful,” Raina said.
Olive nodded. “But he’s also a man. And where there’s a penis, there’s trouble.”
Brynn choked on her banana bread.
Raina laughed so hard she just about had a coronary.
When Brynn left for work a few minutes later, her lunch bag was bursting with leftovers. Her heart felt just as full, because, one, she was going to find her and Kinsey’s dad, and, two, she’d called and gotten an appointment tomorrow to get her blood test. Life was looking up.
BRYNN’S MORNING IN the classroom didn’t go quite as smooth as visiting her moms. Suzie had “borrowed” her best friend’s pencil box, broken it, and then lied about it. Matt pushed his best friend into the sprinklers on the playground grass, and then told everyone he peed his pants, and so on. Also a new girl joined the class after moving into town. When Brynn asked her if she wanted to tell everyone her name and share anything, she’d said: “Hi, my name’s Charlotte and my daddy has a baby that my mommy didn’t have and now we’re living in Wildstone with my grandma.”
Right before lunch, already exhausted, she and the kids made a big sharing circle. “Okay,” she said, holding the talking stick. “So we had a bit of a rough morning, testing some of our friendships, but I think we overcame it. The thing about friends is that you have to treat someone the way you want to be treated. There’s a message in the way you treat people.” She thought about how Kinsey had treated her back at summer camp compared to how they were now.
Okay, so there wasn’t all that much difference. The difference was in Brynn. She was far less willing to put up with crap. “If someone hurts your feelings, it’s okay to tell them. A good friend will apologize. Be friends with someone who can admit their faults and tries to be the best friend they can be to you.”
Everyone nodded sagely.
She smiled. “Okay, let’s switch gears to share time. Who’s got something they’d like to share with everyone?”
A few minutes later, after some cringe-inducing sharing, Brynn became aware of someone in the doorway, and knew by the little quiver deep in her belly that it was Eli.
“Hi,” he said as all thirty-three heads turned his way.
“Hi!” all thirty-three heads said cheerfully.
“Class,” Brynn managed, focusing on the guest pass pinned to his shirt instead of his eyes. “This is Eli Thomas. He’s a marine biologist.”
They all just stared at him, not sure what “marine biologist” meant.
“It means I get to play in the water with the sea lions,” Eli explained.
The kids all boggled at that, and oohed and aahed. Eli grinned, and Brynn found herself doing the same. “I don’t want to interrupt,” he said. “I was just trying to leave lunch for Ms. Turner.” He had a pizza box from her favorite pizza place.
The kids cheered over this, and Brynn couldn’t help but both salivate and smile. “I already brought my lunch. Leftover enchiladas.”
“Raina’s?” he asked hopefully. “Because maybe we could arrange a trade.”
“A deal?” she asked playfully.
His eyes darkened. “Yes.”
“If you want to join us in share circle, we can swap after we finish here.” She scooted over to make room for him. “Where were we?” she asked the kids.
Carly raised her hand for the talking stick. “Tabitha called me the b-word.”
Brynn looked at Tabitha. “Did you call Carly the b-word?”
Tabitha shook her head. “‘Motherfucker’ doesn’t start with a ‘b.’”
After a stunned silence, during which Brynn didn’t dare look at Eli or she might laugh, she reprimanded Tabitha’s use of bad words, and then they all had a long conversation about acceptable words and unacceptable words. Brynn said one more person could share if no unacceptable words were used. That was a new and very hard-and-fast rule.
Carly raised her hand for the talking stick. “My mommy made a new rule too. Now we have to knock and wait before entering her bedroom on account’a sometimes my daddy’s giving her special medicine in the morning.”
Brynn grimaced and risked a glance at Eli, who looked like he was choking on the laugh he was clearly holding back. “Maybe that’s enough for today,” she said.
“Ms. Turner!” Suzie was bouncing up and down. “You share something. Like yesterday, when you told us the reason that you smile more now. It’s cuz you like someone.”
“Ok
ay,” Brynn said, blushing, standing quickly, back to avoiding looking at Eli. “I think we’ve definitely shared enough for today—”
“One more!” Cindy yelled enthusiastically. “From the sea-lion man!”
Eli looked down at the talking stick after it was passed to him. “Okay, something to share . . .” He looked around at the kids. “Well, I’ve got a new friend. And at first it was really scary because making new friends can be scary . . .”
Everyone nodded. They completely understood this.
It was adorable.
So was Eli, sitting on the floor in the sharing circle, holding the talking stick.
No, wait. He wasn’t adorable. He was . . . amazing.
“Does your new friend hold your hand when you get scared?” Suzie asked. “Because that’s what a good friend would do.”
Eli looked at Brynn. “Yes.”
“Do they want to eat with you and share their stuff?” Suzie asked. “Because that’s what my best friend does.”
Eli smiled into Brynn’s eyes. “Yes.”
The lunch bell rang and everyone sprang up. They ran, jumped, skipped, raced to their cubbies for their lunches, then headed out to the cafeteria with an aide. Brynn took the pizza box to her desk, turned to the small fridge she had behind it, and pulled out her lunch box for Eli.
He set it down, took her hand, and tugged her around the desk so they were toe to toe. Cupping her face, he gave her a soft, sweet kiss. “Hi.”
She smiled. “Hi back.”
“You’ve had a day so far.”
“It’s better now. Thanks for the pizza. And thanks for letting me be your new friend.”
“Thanks for always treating me like I’m important to you.”
“You are,” she said, and surprised them both. She thought maybe he’d say it back, but he didn’t. In fact, he didn’t say anything for so long that she sucked in a nervous lungful of air.
“I think,” he finally said, voice serious, “that you’re more important to me than you can possibly imagine.”
Warmth and affection hit her, as well as a whole bunch of other things, things that shouldn’t be happening at work. “It’s not been very long,” she said softly.
He gave a low, wryly amused laugh. “It’s been years. Lots of years.”
She shook her head. “Come on. We both know those don’t count.”
“They do.” He took her hand, brought it up to his chest, right over his heart. “I didn’t deserve you then. Still don’t, but here I am, standing in front of you, just a guy who wants to date a girl. His girl.” He paused. “And also eat her enchiladas.”
Her mouth must’ve dropped open because he used the fingers on his free hand to catch her chin and gently lift it as he smiled. “Scared? Or on board?”
That made her smile. Hell yes, she was scared. But looking into his eyes, which were filled with an easy warmth along with a much deeper emotion, made her feel . . . exhilarated. “I didn’t expect you, you know,” she said. “You sneaked up on me and somehow, when I wasn’t looking, you became the thing I didn’t know I needed, but now can’t live without. So . . . definitely on board.”
That earned her a good-bye kiss to rival all the other kisses in the land. When he’d finished, she staggered back, having zero operating brain cells left.
He flashed her a grin. “Have a nice rest of your day.”
Chapter 22
Later that day, Brynn got a group text, including Eli and Max, from Kinsey. She wanted to know if she’d be home after work. Brynn confirmed that she would, and assumed that meant a barbeque, or maybe game night.
But with Kinsey, it could be anything.
When Brynn parked and walked into the house, her boxes were no longer stacked in a corner. They were front and center in the living room, next to the huge bag of Chinese takeout on the coffee table.
And once again, Eli, Max, and Kinsey were waiting for her.
“What’s going on?” she asked, feeling a little panicky. Did they want her to leave?
“We thought it felt like a great night to unpack,” Kinsey said. “To make this place home for you.”
“It is home,” she said.
“Not until you unpack, it’s not.”
Okay, so yeah. She was still afraid to unpack. Afraid if she got too comfortable, it’d all fall apart somehow, like it always did.
“You’ve helped all of us in one way or another,” Kinsey said. “So now you’re going to let us help you.”
“You’re supposed to ask, not tell,” Max said.
“She knows what I mean.” Kinsey looked at Brynn. “You know what I mean.”
“I do,” Brynn said. “But I don’t need help.”
“But . . . you’re going to let us help anyway, right?” Kinsey asked. She slid a look to Max, like, See? I asked, not told.
Max smiled.
Eli took Brynn’s hand. “Only if you want,” he said.
All of them waited for her response. Against her better judgment, she nodded.
So . . . they unpacked her boxes. Max put her approximately one billion books on the shelves in her room. Kinsey pulled out the clothes from her duffel bag and either hung them in her closet or folded them and put them away in the dresser. Eli hung up her pictures on her walls.
At first, Brynn was . . . embarrassed. Why couldn’t she have done this for herself? But then Eli looked at her, saw everything she was feeling, understood it, clearly also understood everything behind it, and hugged her. And that’s when she got it. It was about love, about acceptance.
When Max found her CD collection and made happy love noises, she made the executive decision to let the rest of the embarrassment go.
Eli had opened a bottle of wine with the Chinese food. By the time they finished, they were on their second bottle. And at the end of the night, Brynn was fully, one hundred percent moved in. No one had pushed her to do anything she didn’t want to do. No one had judged her. Well, Kinsey had not approved of her collection of three pairs of shoes—flip-flops, sneakers, and flats—but that had been expected. No one had made her feel bad for not being able to unpack herself. They’d simply recognized she couldn’t take the final step even though she wanted to, and then come forward to help her.
They were her personal superheroes, sweeping into her life, accepting her as she was. Loving her as she was. She’d come to them, ashamed and enforcing her own helplessness. She’d felt unworthy. But they didn’t care, didn’t judge any of that. They showed up for her. Always. Without her having to ask.
She looked around at her stuff now integrated with everyone else’s. She hadn’t known where she wanted home to be, but she was starting to realize home wasn’t a place. It was a where, a where her people were. And her people were here, in Wildstone. Some of them right here in this house.
That made it home.
They’d made it home.
Even better, every last corner of the place now had a memory attached to it, a group memory with the four of them, laughing, joking, teasing . . .
This was her family, the very best kind of family.
THE NEXT MORNING, Brynn woke wrapped up tight in Eli’s arms, held against his warm, firm body in a way that gave hers some serious ideas. It was his fault, she decided. He was such an incredibly intuitive, generous lover in bed.
And out of bed . . .
He had a way of taking her outside of herself. She never knew what she was going to get with him; gentle and tender, rough and erotic, all of it intimate and seductive.
She’d never been with anyone like him. But she had to go. She did her best to slide out of his arms as stealthily as she could. Which apparently wasn’t that stealthy at all because his arms tightened around her.
She let out a low laugh, her hands skimming up his back and then down again, taking hold of two handfuls of the best buns in Wildstone. Maybe in the whole world.
He nearly purred like a big, dangerous, playful cat, and began kissing and sucking and nibbling his way dow
n her neck.
“Gotta get in the shower,” she whispered, and kissed him softly. “I’ve got an early morning.”
His mouth was at her breast now. “I’m good in the shower,” he said huskily.
Which was why it took her forty-five minutes to get out the door instead of her usual fifteen. But Eli had been right—he was very good in the shower.
Body still humming, she drove into town for her appointment. In the waiting room, she grabbed a magazine, but at her every move, the scent of Eli’s soap—which he’d used liberally all over, twice—teased her nostrils. She smelled like him, and her mind kept drifting to the way his eyes had been so intense and focused on her as he’d moved inside her, hands everywhere as he’d whispered naughty, wicked nothings in her ear . . .
When her phone buzzed, she wasn’t surprised to see him calling her. He’d gone back to bed after their shower, saying he had thirty minutes before he had to get up and he needed his beauty rest. So she answered her phone, “Sleeping Beauty arises.”
He laughed softly. “You’ve got no idea.”
She laughed softly. “Did you call for anything in particular?”
“Maybe I just wanted to hear your voice.”
“What did you want to hear?”
“That sound you make when I—”
“Stop,” she said on a laugh even as she blushed. “Besides”—she lowered her voice—“I’d need assistance to make that sound.”
“I’m available when you are.”
Her body got very happy, but someone was calling her name. “Gotta go.” She slid the phone away and was surprised to find Deck standing there in the doorway waiting on her. He was in midnight-blue scrubs and looking badass official with his credentials hanging around his neck along with a stethoscope, and an iPad in his hand.
He remained utterly professional as he brought her to the back and gestured to the chair she was to sit in.
Once she had, he set down his iPad and looked at her.
“I have to do this,” she said.
“So she doesn’t know.”
When she shook her hand, he looked pained but also relieved.
“You’re worried about her too,” she said.
