Bliss Brothers (Complete Series), page 31
“She was, but mostly she’s pregnant.”
He blinks. Once. Twice. “She’s pregnant.”
“Yes, and let’s repeat it out loud until it sinks in.”
“Sorry.” Charlie stares. “She’s…”
“Yes.”
“And you’re…” He raises one hand in front of him.
“God, Charlie, tell me you’re not going to make up a hand gesture for the father right now.”
He lets out a snort of a laugh. “No. I would never do that.” Charlie drops his hand to the side and blows out a breath through rounded lips. “Shit. How are you…you’re not taking it well.”
I give him a big, fake grin. “I’m taking it so well.”
Charlie steps forward and claps me on the shoulder. “All right. Let’s go.”
“What do you mean, let’s go?”
“I mean, you’re clearly headed out for a drive, but you’re not in any state to go alone. I’m coming with you.”
“No way.”
“No time for argument.” He jogs up the hill, putting a few feet between us. “Come on. I don’t have all day.”
“Yes, you do,” I call after him.
“What I mean,” he shouts, “is that you don’t have all day. You have to get your head on straight.”
“How do you know that?”
“I know things,” he shouts back. “Your car or mine?”
9
Driver
“I HAVEN’T BEEN this way in a long time,” Charlie says. He’s settled himself back into the passenger seat. I don’t think of him as a guy who’s faster than a speeding bullet or anything, but somehow he managed to shower and change in the time it took me to pull my car out of the driveway at my place and trundle down the street to his.
To be fair, I’m still in shock. It’s possible I sat there stroking the wheel of my own car for longer than I thought.
Out here on the highway, my shoulders relax and my head can begin the process of clearing. We’re going north, not west or south like I’d normally go, but this road feels as familiar to me as any of the others. This is where I’d go in high school, when even the sprawling Bliss Resort didn’t feel large enough to contain me.
I glance over at Charlie. “You don’t get out much, do you?”
He doesn’t look at me. “I’m busy at the resort.”
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on, then?”
“What’s going on where? We’re out here for you.” Charlie bounces his leg up and down a few times, then forces himself to relax.
“Sure we are.”
Trees whiz past on either side of the road. There was a bit of cloud cover when I left Holiday’s place earlier, but it’s breaking up now, the sun still low in the sky. It doesn’t thrill me. On a day like today, when the things I’m finding out make my pulse pound in my ears, I don’t want the extra sunlight. I want to be able to drive without sunglasses.
“I’ve spent the last year or so trying to figure out what Dad was doing with all the records and the finances at the resort.” Charlie scowls. “It…hasn’t been the job I thought it would be.”
“What do you mean?” Dad was always a jovial guy, proud of the resort and proud of us, Roman especially. He had it together in a way that I could easily find suffocating. There was always a simple solution to any problem one of us was having. I miss him, sometimes so much it makes my throat go tight and hot, but I don’t miss the tone he’d use to deliver those solutions. So many solutions. Not a lot of listening to anyone. “I thought he had a finance department to take care of that.”
“The finance department was one woman named Mary Campbell, and she retired as soon as he died.”
That doesn’t sound right. “I thought there was a…firm. A firm, or something.”
“He had an accounting firm for the taxes, but for some reason, he ran everything through Mary. She was even the one who worked with the accounting firm. From what I can see, Dad signed off on everything.”
“So…how does this affect us now?”
Charlie looks at me.
“When you look at me like that I can tell you’re deciding whether to keep a secret, and keeping secrets like this is fucking stupid.”
“I’m trying to decide whether to stress you out about this.”
“Trust me. Whatever’s going on in your finance department is nothing compared to what happened to me already this morning. Give me something easy, Charlie. Throw me a bone.”
He takes a deep breath and lets out a sigh. “There’s money disappearing from the resort.”
“What? Like…disappearing how?”
“Like every month, when it’s time to compile the records of all the different sources of income and expenditures, it doesn’t add up. Here and there, across a bunch of different accounts. The system they set up—” He shakes his head. “It’s an ad-hoc thing. Dad never moved to modern accounting software, so it’s all these linked spreadsheets that started out based on paper records…”
“So somebody’s embezzling money?”
“That’s the thing.” Charlie’s hand clenches into a fist. “I can’t tell. I don’t think anyone has access to the accounts, other than us.”
My heart stutters and pounds. “Please tell me you didn’t want to come out here to see if I’m the one taking the money.”
“Hell, no,” Charlie scoffs. “Your accounts are the most transparent of them all. You only use one. Unless there’s something you want to admit to me.”
I shoot him a glare that’s so withering he laughs.
“If anyone, it’s Asher. Do you even know where he is?”
Charlie shakes his head.
The highway turns into the main road leading into Lakewood, and I hit the brakes, slowing as we enter the downtown area. “Stop there.” Charlie points at a corner up ahead where there’s a coffee shop that looks sparkling and new. “We’ll get coffee, and then we’ll go back.”
“The Coffee Spot. Cute. Why do I have to go back, again? Driving away seems like the right thing to do.”
“Because she’s pregnant, and it’s your baby,” Charlie says, echoing all the things I’ve already been thinking. “You can’t run away from that.”
* * *
HOLIDAY
I’m never leaving this deck chair.
In fact, I may never leave this house. This is a disaster of epic proportions, and I’d rather hide here on Ruby Bay forever than have to explain how badly I’ve botched this. Running away and starting a new life under a false identity is an attractive prospect, but how long would it take for it to feel like home? My mouth goes dry even considering it. I’d never feel totally secure.
It didn’t seem prudent to risk the hammock after last week, so after Driver left I came out and planted myself here. Sophie brought out an iced tea and a bagel and we sat in silence for a long time.
“Well,” she said finally, “I’ve been on the road for days. I’m going to go take a shower.”
“Towels. Guest bathroom. Clean. Blah, blah, blah.”
She laughed. “You’re an excellent hostess.”
“I really am. Even for unexpected guests.”
Sophie grimaced. “I didn’t mean to bust up your whole…situation.”
“My situation was busted already. I just didn’t know it.” I shaded my eyes with my hand. “Go shower. I’ll still be here when you come back.”
“You’d better be.” She waggled a finger at me and left. I don’t know how long ago that was.
The sliding glass door opens behind me and I don’t open my eyes. “Tell me it’s lunchtime. And tell me you brought pie.”
“It can be lunchtime if you want, but I don’t have any pie.”
I sit bolt upright, my eyes flying open. It’s too bright and I have to clap my hands over my eyes. “Driver?”
He’s dressed in different clothes from earlier this morning—a blue shirt that makes his eyes look deeper than the ocean and pressed shorts—and his hair is still damp, like he’s been swimming or showering. He’s probably here to deliver another killing blow, and still, heat gathers between my legs. From imagining him in the shower.
I am a lost cause.
“If you’re hungry, I’ll cook.” His jaw is set, his eyes bright. I feel like an idiot for lying here and stand up, exercising enough care to make sure I’m not going to fall over or throw up. Anything seems possible at this moment.
“Listen.” I lick my lips. “I’m—I should have told you the moment I found out. I was only…” All those reasons seem like shitty excuses now. “I didn’t want to ruin your life with the news, and it was so nice when you were…when you were in my bed.”
He raises his eyebrows and his lips curve in an echo of the way he’d smile at me in bed.
“And I’m not sure it’s a good life for the baby, always traveling.” The truth comes out in a rush, as if I’ve pulled some stopper out of an invisible drain. “And I don’t know if you…if you’re the kind of guy who would want to settle down, or if I’m the kind of girl who can live with it if the father of her baby’s always crisscrossing the country while I’m in New York with the baby, since I got a job. And my job…”
“God, I can’t stand it.”
I tear my eyes away from the deck and back to Driver’s face. “What? Me?”
“I can’t stand how, even though I’m pissed at you for keeping this from me, I still want to kiss you. And make you pancakes, if that’s what you want. I must be a fucking fool.”
My stomach growls. “Honestly, you could…” I swallow a lump in my throat. “You could make me anger pancakes, if that’s what you wanted.”
Driver steps closer and reaches tentatively toward my face. The moment his fingers brush against my cheekbone, I lean into the touch. It’s like magic. The clean scent of him, the careful way he makes contact as if it’s our own secret language…
“I’m not giving up the road,” he says softly.
“I know,” I answer back.
“I’m going to kiss you. We can fight later.”
10
Driver
HOLIDAY TAKES the plate with the grilled-cheese sandwich with huge eyes and her bottom lip caught between her teeth. “This looks so good.” Her eyes meet mine. “Thanks for making it.”
“It’s no problem.” I settle into the deck chair across from hers and put my own plate on my lap. Despite the sunshine warming the deck, the moment feels surreal and strange. One second, anger curdles at the center of my chest. The next, I remember she’s pregnant. In those moments, it’s like I’ve taken an exit off the freeway at the last minute without knowing where it’s going to lead or whether the road continues at all.
Holiday lifts the first half of her sandwich from her plate and takes a bite. Chews. Swallows. She closes her eyes for another bite, and I dig into my own so I have somewhere else to look. There’s no way we can have a real discussion when all I can think about is the way her dress is inching up her thighs or how pink her cheeks are or how she pretended for days on end that nothing was out of the ordinary at all.
“Where’d your friend go?” I saw her through the sliding-glass door a few minutes ago, giving Holiday what looked like an encouraging wave.
“Sophie went into town to do some shopping.”
I want to be petty, to demand to know when Sophie found out about all this, but I’m a grown man and there are bigger things to worry about. “Doesn’t she know the housekeeper does the shopping?”
Holiday huffs a laugh at my joke. “She probably wants to bake pies. That’s what she does for a living.” She looks at me from beneath her eyelashes. “The two of you would get along.”
“Would we?”
“She lives on the road, too. Well—out of a vintage Airstream in Portland. Soph runs her business out of a food truck.” Holiday studies me. “She wouldn’t give that up, either.”
The air is thin out here on the back deck. Was it always this thin, or is it just during conversations like this? “What are you not willing to give up?”
She grimaces. “Home.”
“I’m not trying to be a dick, Hol, but that doesn’t make any sense.”
A smile spreads across her face, and she takes another bite of grilled cheese, still grinning.
“What?”
“That’s the first time you’ve ever called me by a nickname.” She picks up the rest of her sandwich and finishes it in three bites. “I didn’t hate it.” Holiday sets the empty plate on the low table next to her chair. “I can tell you hate this, though.”
“I don’t hate talking to you.”
“No—I can tell you hate not being in motion.”
“What gives you that impression?”
“Your face.” She comes over to my chair and takes my half-empty plate out of my hands. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“Out by the water. We can walk here. Look for sea glass.”
There it is—that familiar jolt, like a prompt from the universe. How can the universe be prompting me about someone I’m still so righteously pissed at? Pissed or not, I stand up, Charlie’s words echoing in my mind. I can’t run away from this, or drive, even if this conversation is an endless circling about the heart of the matter.
Maybe we can get there if we’re closer to the water.
We walk out toward the lake, my bare feet sinking into the sand. Holiday’s hair, loose and straight, blows in the breeze. Close to the shoreline she makes a right turn, strolling in the direction of the Bliss Resort. She keeps her eyes on the ground.
“I get it, you know.”
It feels right to settle in beside her and scan the sand for colorful bits of glass. “Get what?”
“I get why you’re angry.”
My instinct is to lie to her. To tell her that I’m not angry. To put a mask of calm on my face and drive away. “How are we supposed to make this work if you can’t tell me anything?”
Her cheeks redden. “I don’t know if we can make it work.”
It’s a wound through the heart, even if we’re essentially in agreement.
“We basically just met,” Holiday says. “I kept things from you, and…”
“I didn’t keep anything from you.”
“No,” she agrees. “You’ve been up front about the things you’re not willing to change.” She bends and picks up a green sliver of beach glass.
“I can’t stay here forever.” The beach breeze does nothing to soothe the nagging sensation of being trapped in place.
“Here, or…any other place?” She straightens up, looking into my eyes, and I feel myself bend toward her on some cellular level. It doesn’t matter how tall I stand. I am always going to feel her this way, even if I have to spend the rest of my life being apart from her.
You can’t be apart from her.
The thought is the same volume as the waves at my feet.
I can’t stay here, either.
“Any place,” I tell her, because it’s the truth. “I can’t stay any place for long.”
* * *
HOLIDAY
This is it—the impasse.
Driver lets the water rush over his ankles as he tells me this, his muscles tensed and his blue eyes the same hazy color as the sky. “Well, I can’t go.” My body rebels at the thought of hotel rooms and endless stretches of road and never knowing who you’re going to meet or what they’re going to do. “I have other plans.”
“And that’s what you want for…for the baby? A rat race life in New York City?”
My stomach turns over. “I don’t want a rat-race life in New York City. I’m hoping it’ll be…a better life than that. A life with some stability. Predictability. People need to be able to predict things. It’s raw, out here in the wind like this. It’s stripping away the shield I’ve built up against the knowledge of what’s happening, and another wave of shock rushes up onto the shore. “Let’s go back inside. I want to go back inside.”
I don’t wait for Driver to answer. I stalk up the beach and take the stairs to the back deck two at a time. The sliding-glass door sticks when I yank at it and it sends panic spiraling through my veins. I want to be inside, and I want to be inside now. One last pull and it flies open, slamming hard against the doorframe.
“Holiday.” Driver’s voice is calm and level. I keep moving into the living room, deeper into the house. Away from the sunshine and the windows and the breeze off the lake. The door slides shut behind me, closing with a soft click. “Wait.”
I don’t wait. I go toward my bedroom. In the bedroom, I can close the door and lock it. I can pull the covers over my head. I can pretend all this isn’t happening.
I reach the door first and fling it closed behind me, but it connects with something. I whirl around to see that it’s Driver’s hand. He steps all the way into the bedroom and closes it behind him.
“I had plans,” I tell him, my voice pitched too high. “I had plans to go to New York and leave all this behind.” I motion to myself, to the woman who wants to be at home so badly she can taste it. “I was going to live a new life. You weren’t supposed to be part of it. You’re—you’re the wrong man for me.”
He takes a deep breath, but says nothing.
“You always want to be gone. That’s—that’s the polar opposite of what I want. If I never had to go on a road trip again, I’d be perfectly happy. I was going to move to New York and make that my permanent base. There’s enough there for a lifetime, but I still know it would never be enough for you.” I put my hands to my head, smoothing down my hair. “Why did it have to be you?”
“I don’t know.” Driver shrugs. “Fate? Destiny? I like the beach. You can’t blame me for that. And you like the beach, too, otherwise I never would have met you in the first place. You know, Holiday, for somebody who insists she’d rather be inside, I’ve met you on the beach plenty of times, out there in the broad daylight. Or moonlight. Whatever it is, there’s no roof between you and the sky. You keep saying you want stability—”
“I do,” I thunder, my voice breaking. “I want—I want something solid, something I can depend on, and it’s so embarrassing. It’s so embarrassing because…”
