The Josh and Kat Trilogy: A Bundle of Books 1-3

by Lauren Rowe

  “Awesome,” Jonas writes. “So when do you think you’ll move in?”

  “Three or four weeks at most,” I write. “Don’t forget to send me a housewarming gift. Patron is greatly appreciated.”

  “Pretty weird you didn’t tell Kat you’re moving,” Jonas writes. “She looked really upset about it at the karaoke bar.”

  My stomach twists at the memory of that horrible night. “Yeah, thanks for blabbing about that, motherfucker. That was super awesome.”

  “How the fuck was I supposed to know you hadn’t told Kat you’re moving? And why exactly didn’t you mention it to her, btw? I’m still not sure I understand your thinking on that.”

  “I just didn’t wanna get her hopes up,” I write, but even as I tap out the words, I know they’re douchey.

  “Well, mission accomplished, huh? I’d say Kat’s hopes are definitely way, way down.”

  I roll my eyes. Does my brother really need to remind me how badly I fucked up with Kat? That’s my job—to remind Jonas when he fucks up with women.

  “Was Kat really pissed at you?” Jonas writes.

  “Worse than pissed. Crushed,” I write, my heart squeezing.

  “Poor Kat,” Jonas writes. “The Faraday brothers strike again.”

  “More like DAD strikes again,” I write. “He’s the gift that keeps on giving.”

  “No shit,” Jonas writes. “I don’t know how either of us is ever supposed to know what’s normal behavior when it comes to women. You, especially. He fucked with your head the most.”

  “My head? No way,” I write. “You got it way worse than me, bro. Ten times worse.”

  “I don’t think so. He hated my guts, but he loved you. Is it better to be told you’re worthless every fucking day of your life or that you’re better than everyone else? Either way, you’re fucked. At least I got to escape to the ‘treatment center’ for months at a time over the years. You were stuck there with him, day after fucking day.”

  I stare at my phone. I’ve never thought about it that way. Holy shit. I think Jonas might have a point. I was Dad’s golden boy, his heir to the Faraday throne, and Jonas and I both knew it. All these years I’ve felt guilty to have garnered so much of Dad’s favor and attention—but did I actually draw the short straw, after all?

  “You might have a point,” I write. “I never thought about it like that.”

  “I’ve got more than a point. I’m right as rain. I’m the smart twin, remember? Never doubt me.”

  “You wish.”

  “Hey, I’m not the one who didn’t tell my hot girlfriend I’m moving to her city,” Jonas writes. “DUMBSHIT.”

  I scowl at my phone. Jonas knows I’ve got no comeback to that. “Yeah, I fucked up,” I write.

  “So did Kat break up with you when she found out?” Jonas writes.

  “No, but almost,” I write. “I salvaged it. I made her play Scrabble with me until she forgave me.”

  “Scrabble?” Jonas writes.

  “Fun game, as it turns out, if you get creative with your words.”

  “Hmm. I see what you mean. I’m already thinking about all sorts of four-letter words I could play.”

  “There you go.”

  “So everything’s good now?” Jonas writes. “Kat’s happy again?”

  Typhoid Joe coughs violently across the waiting room and I momentarily look up from my phone. Fuck me. I hate not telling Jonas what’s going on with Colby. I never hide stuff from Jonas. But there’s no fucking way I’m gonna throw a dark cloud over the biggest day of my brother’s life.

  “Everything’s great,” I write.

  “Good. Don’t fuck it up again, Josh. Kat’s a great girl.”

  “I’ll do my best. The question is whether I can avoid fucking it up when I don’t realize I’m fucking it up?”

  “I feel you. Just think, ‘What Would Dad Do?’ and then do the opposite,” Jonas writes. “That’s pretty much my true north.”

  “Good advice.”

  “Hey, so what’s up with the MacKenzie deal for F&S?” Jonas writes. “Last loose end. Dying to make that fucker go away.”

  “Dude. I don’t give a shit about the MacKenzie deal or anything else relating to F&S,” I write. “That place can burn to the ground as far as I’m concerned. Sayonara, fucker.”

  “I’d agree if it weren’t for Uncle William. We can’t leave him hanging. Plus, the payday on the buy-out’s gonna be sweet if we set it up right.”

  I pause. Jonas is right. The MacKenzie deal itself isn’t that rich, but we each stand to net close to half a billion in cash in the buy-out of Faraday & Sons by a huge conglomerate if we leave the company on strong legs, everything in place. “Okay,” I tap out. “I’ll work up the MacKenzie deal this week and put it to bed.”

  “Thanks,” Jonas writes. “I’d do it myself but Sarah would kill me if I worked while we’re in Greece.”

  “No. Don’t do a fucking thing. Just get engaged and bang your new fiancée every which way for the rest of the trip. I’ll handle it.”

  “Roger that. Thanks, Josh.”

  “Now get some sleep, bro. You’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

  “Today, actually. I’m ten hours ahead.”

  “Oh yeah. Well, get some sleep, either way,” I write.

  “I don’t sleep, remember? Sarah says I’m a droid.”

  “Man, she’s got you pegged.”

  “In more ways than one.” He attaches a smiley-face emoji.

  I roll my eyes. “Try to sleep for a bit, Jonas. You gotta be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when you bore Sarah to fucking tears at the top of Mount Olympus.”

  “I’m not gonna bore Sarah to fucking tears at the top of Mount Olympus, motherfucker—I’m gonna bore her to fucking tears on the shore of the Aegean down below.”

  “Either way, you need to rest up so you can bore her to fucking tears EXCELLENTLY, wherever the fuck you do it.”

  “I sense mockery in that all-caps word.”

  “Correct, sir.”

  “Oh man, I’m so excited,” Jonas writes. “I’m about to become the happiest asshole-motherfucker alive.”

  “So you keep telling me, Jonas. Over and over and over.”

  “Sorry. I’m just so happy. It’s a new feeling for me. I don’t quite know how to handle it.”

  I grin broadly at that. “I’m happy for you, Jonas. It’s pretty crazy. I never thought I’d see the day when either of the Faraday boys would ask a woman to be his wife. You’re shocking the hell out of me, actually.”

  “I’m shocking the hell out of myself. It’s awesome! Hey, you think maybe you’ll shock the hell out of us, too? And maybe soon?” He adds a winking emoji and a cat.

  “Hell no. Asking any woman to be my wife isn’t in my life plan, dude—even a woman as awesome as Kat. You’ll just have to represent for both of us.”

  “With pleasure,” Jonas writes. “I can’t wait to call Sarah my wife.”

  I roll my eyes again. “Good night, Jonas. Have fun tomorrow (today). Text me right after you ask her. I’ll drink a shot of Patron in your honor.”

  “I will. Well, actually, I won’t text you RIGHT after I ask her, if you know what I mean.” He attaches another winking emoji and a muscled-arm emoji.

  I chuckle. My brother is such a dork. “Hey, Casanova,” I type. “What’s with all the emojis? I didn’t know you even knew what emojis were.”

  “I didn’t until recently, but Sarah uses them all the time. Funny, right?”

  I chuckle. What has this woman done to my dorky-ass brother? Jesus God. She’s made him even dorkier than ever.

  “Get some sleep, Mr. Emoji,” I write.

  He sends me a thumbs-up emoji in reply and I laugh.

  “Josh.”

  I look up from my phone to find Kat walking into the waiting room, her face stained with tears. I leap up from my chair, instantly twitching with dread. Oh fuck, please God, don’t let Kat be here to tell me Colby’s dead.

  Kat beelines
to me and, without saying a word, throws her arms around my neck, presses her body into mine, and loses herself to wracking sobs.

  Ninety-Two

  Josh

  I wrap Kat in a tight embrace and hold her to me for several minutes, kissing her hair, rubbing her back, my heart pounding in my ears, dreading whatever’s about to come out of her mouth.

  Finally, Kat breaks away from me, wiping her eyes. “Sorry,” she says. She pulls me down to sitting. “I’ve been holding it together pretty well for my mom, but seeing your face made me lose—” She suddenly clamps her hand over her mouth.

  “Kat?” Holy shit. She seriously looks like she’s about to hurl. “Kat?” I ask again, my skin prickling. I’ve never seen someone react to grief by throwing up before.

  Kat takes a few deep breaths and groans like she’s eaten a piece of rancid meat.

  “Are you okay?” I ask, the hairs on my arms standing on end.

  Kat makes a face I can’t interpret and takes another deep breath. “I’m okay,” she mumbles.

  Typhoid Joe across the room lets out a hacking cough and Kat grimaces.

  “How’s Colby?”

  “The tests came back and it was pretty much all good news, relatively speaking. Broken leg, ribs, and collarbone. Ruptured spleen. Smoke inhalation—but not too bad, thank God. He suffered some burns to his left side where the beam was crushing him, but his turnout gear protected him pretty well. Could have been a whole lot worse. No head trauma at all, thank God.” She takes a deep breath. “It’s gonna be a long road to recovery—lots of physical therapy. But he’s gonna pull through.”

  I exhale with relief.

  “But the baby Colby went back in to save?” Kat says, tears flooding her eyes. “She just died in her mother’s arms in the pediatric unit.”

  “Oh no,” I say softly, my heart dropping into my toes.

  “Her parents came to Colby’s room to thank him for what he did to try to save her. He wasn’t conscious so they thanked my parents.” Tears are streaming out of Kat’s eyes and down her cheeks. “They said they were grateful to my brother for giving them the chance to hold their little angel one last time and say goodbye. Oh my God, it ripped everyone’s heart out, Josh. All of us were crying, even Ryan, and he never cries.”

  I nod, incapable of speaking.

  Kat inhales sharply again and suddenly clamps her hand to her mouth. “Shit,” she mumbles. She leaps out of her chair and sprints to the bathroom across the hall, her body jerking with loud heaves as she runs.

  What the fuck? Kat’s puking again? I’ve never seen someone react to grief by puking before—and this is the second time today (the first time being in the locker room immediately after Kat talked to her mom about Colby). Does she have food poisoning?

  Typhoid Joe coughs loudly again on the far side of the waiting room, jerking me out of my thoughts, and I share a “this guy’s gonna infect us all” look with the young woman sitting across from me.

  After a few minutes, Kat returns from the bathroom, her face pale. “Sorry about that,” she says.

  “Do you always react this way to extreme stress?” I ask.

  “What way—by crying?”

  “No, by barfing.”

  Kat twists her mouth.

  “Do you think maybe you have the stomach flu or something?” I ask.

  There’s a long beat. Kat takes a deep breath and flaps her lips on her exhale.

  “Shit,” she says. She shakes her head like she knows she’s about to say something highly regrettable. “Life is so funny. Before today, I thought I had the weight of the world on my shoulders—I really did—or, I guess, on my uterus.” She snorts to herself. “And now, all of a sudden, my supposedly huge problem doesn’t seem like that big a deal.”

  Wait. Did Kat just say she thought she had the weight of the world on her uterus? I open and close my mouth, but I’m too freaked out to link coherent words together. Does that mean . . ?

  Kat levels me with a firm gaze. “Yeah, I’m pregnant, Josh,” she says evenly.

  The room warps. I can’t breathe. No. Blood rushes into my ears in a loud whoosh.

  “I’m sorry to tell you so bluntly, but there’s really no other way.” She clears her throat. “I’m pregnant with your accidental Faraday.” She shakes both fists in the air in mocking celebration. “Yay.”

  There’s got to be some mistake. Kat said she was on the pill. Holy fucking shit, Kat said she was on the fucking pill!

  “I didn’t do it on purpose,” Kat continues calmly. “I swear to God, Josh, this isn’t a case of a ‘gold digger’ trying to ‘trap’ you. It was a complete accident—an honest mistake.”

  My heart is palpitating wildly. I clutch my chest. I feel like I’m having a heart attack.

  “I missed a pill one of the days we were in Vegas,” she continues, “but only because the days and nights blurred together so much while we were there—remember that? And the minute I realized I’d messed up, I immediately took the missing pill. And I really thought everything was okay—I really did, Josh—but just to be sure, I took a pregnancy test a few days after I got home and it was negative, so I figured we were in the clear.” She grimaces. “But then I started feeling sick and my nipples were sore and then I barfed out of nowhere so I took another test, and lo and behold...” She exhales loudly and shrugs. “I’m rambling—sorry. The bottom line is I’m pregnant with your mighty spawn and I didn’t do it on purpose—I swear to God on a stack of bibles—and I’m really, really sorry.”

  I feel like I’m gonna hurl. This seriously can’t be happening.

  “I’m not looking to trap you into anything,” Kat says, her blue eyes flickering with obvious anxiety. “Nothing needs to change between us. We’ll just, you know, keep doing what we’re doing—and, at some point, we’ll, you know, happen to have a baby together.”

  I open and shut my mouth, willing myself to speak, but nothing comes out. That was the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard anyone say in my life. Nothing needs to change? We’ll just keep doing what we’re doing and one day we’ll happen to have a baby? Did she really just say that to me? Is she high?

  Typhoid Joe begins coughing and sniffling loudly and I look at the guy, willing him to keel over and fucking die.

  Shit. This can’t be happening.

  I stare at the toddler sitting across from me for a moment. Kat’s growing one of those inside her body—and it’s a Faraday? I run my hands through my hair. This is a fucking nightmare—the one thing I was never supposed to do. Oh my God. How many times did Dad tell me not to make a Faraday unworthy of my name and bank account? A Faraday has to be planned. A Faraday has to be on purpose. “If you’re not careful, you’ll wind up having a crazy-ass kid like Jonas with some gold digger you don’t give two shits about,” my father used to say.

  Kat clears her throat. “So are you gonna say something or what?”

  The room is closing in on me. I can’t breathe. I open my mouth and close it, yet again. Fuck. How many times did my dad make me swear I’d never bring an accidental Faraday into the world? How many times did he fill me with the fear of God about some scheming gold digger using a baby to trap me into making her a part of our “empire”?

  Kat shakes her head, obviously annoyed by my silence. “Say something,” she says softly. But when I don’t speak, her entire body stiffens with defiance. “I’m not gonna get an abortion, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  I don’t know what in my facial expression made Kat think I was about to ask her for an abortion—because I wasn’t. I went to St. Francis Academy growing up, for fuck’s sake. Some things are just too deeply ingrained to change.

  “Say something, Josh,” Kat pleads, her eyes glistening. “You’re killing me, Smalls.”

  “I...” I stammer. “I would never ask you to... get rid of it. That’s not at all what I’m thinking.”

  “Then what are you thinking?”

  Fuck me. I have no idea what I’m thinking, other than
“How the fuck did this happen to me?” Every single fuck of my life, without exception, from minute one, I’ve practiced safe sex. Kat’s the first woman I’ve ever fucked without a rubber—ever—and now she’s pregnant?

  “Hey, look on the bright side,” Kat says. “It’s still early yet. The pregnancy might not stick.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask dumbly.

  “There’s a relatively high chance of miscarriage during the first trimester,” she says, shrugging her drooping shoulders. “Especially, I’d assume, when you ply the poor little thing with booze, pot, and blinding orgasms on a Sybian.”

  I put my head in my hands. Holy shit. This is a nightmare. I can’t believe she forgot to take her pill. I trusted her and she totally blew it. All of a sudden, I can hear my dad’s voice as surely as if he were standing an inch away from me, pressing his lips against my ear. I’ll get the last laugh on that gold digger’s ass and disown you faster than she can demand a paternity test.

  “You’re sure it’s mine?” I blurt.

  Kat clenches her jaw. “I’m sure.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I just meant... how far along are you? That’s what I meant to ask. I know you were with Cameron the week before me, so...” I abruptly shut my mouth. Oh shit. She looks like she’s about to stab me.

  “It’s yours, Josh.” Her eye twitches. “That was a low blow.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, my heart exploding. “That came out wrong.” I cover my ears with my palms. I can’t stop hearing my father’s voice screaming at me.

  The toddler in the waiting room shouts something to his mother about wanting a box of raisins and she gently shushes him. Oh shit. I’m gonna have a kid who screams about raisins in a hospital waiting room?

  When my gaze returns to Kat, she’s looking at me with steely eyes. “Your father really did a number on you, didn’t he?” she says.

  I can’t reply.

  “So are you gonna say something besides asking me if it’s yours?” Kat asks. “Because if not, I’m gonna head back into Colby’s room and be with my family.”