Busted (Stacked Deck Book 11)

by Emilia Finn

  At a gentle knock on my door, I pause the movements of my hand for half a beat.

  My stomach drops and swirls with nerves. But figuring it silly, I keep going and murmur, “Yeah?”

  I don’t look away from the window. I don’t trust my face not to be pink and splotchy, and my eyes, no doubt, are puffy and exhausted. But just because I don’t look, doesn’t mean I don’t know.

  “Hey, Daddy.” My lips quirk up into a semblance of a smile. “Come on in.”

  “How’d you know it was me, huh?” He closes the door with an almost silent snick, then crosses my room and sits on the floor near my feet. He presses his back to the wall, tilts his head back, and smiles when I lose my stance on not looking. “Morning, Little Bit.”

  “Morning.” I go back to drawing, to keep my focus on something other than my broken heart. “You not running today?”

  He shrugs and lets his eyes drift closed. “In a minute. Whatcha up to?”

  “Drawing.” It’s been my go-to answer my whole life. Always truthful, always convenient. “Did you need something?” I don’t mean to rush him along, but I don’t have the energy for small talk either. “What’s up?”

  “Could ask you the same thing,” he says and lets his lips wrinkle into a smile when I look. “You’re all over the place, Emma. In my home, at the apartment with the twins. At work. At the gym. You’re this chameleon who is always everywhere, always fitting in, and yet, I’m not sure you ever tell us what’s truly on your mind.”

  “I tell people what’s on my mind all the time,” I counter. My pencil becomes heavier, my lines, darker. “It’s like, my calling card or something. I’m not sure anyone who knows me would accuse me of being meek.”

  “No, not meek,” he accepts. “But you keep your deepest, darkest secrets to yourself. Why, baby? Because you’re afraid of what we’ll think?”

  I scoff. It’s fake and spit-y, and a total defense mechanism. “I don’t keep things from you, and I never care what people think.”

  “So you let Rob take the rap for your bad behavior your whole life because…?”

  “He offered?” I snicker, but the sound is hollow and watery. “He was there, Daddy, and everyone had already made up their minds. It just happened, and no one said anything to undo it, so I ran with it.”

  “Convenient.”

  He lifts one arm to rest it against my knee. My father is the original hugger, the toucher, the guy who needs to be near those he loves so he can breathe.

  I guess I got that from him.

  “I picked a fight with Mrs. Crab in seventh grade,” I finally admit. “I was a total bitch to that teacher, and put zero effort in so she’d think I was dumb as dirt and get sick of me. I did it purely to get booted out and forced to repeat that year.”

  “So you could be with the twins?”

  My hand pauses, so the strokes I’m making on a phoenix’s tail stop midway. “So I could be with Rob,” I specify. “Luke is awesome. But Rob is where I needed to be.”

  “So you landed yourself in detention for a year, failed your grade, cost us a fortune in tutors, because we wanted to help you, and in the end…”

  “I knew all of the work Crab set for me,” I snicker. “I had to fake dumb, or risk spending the rest of my high school life in the wrong grade, with the wrong people.”

  “Pain in my fuckin’ ass,” Daddy grumbles.

  He’s spent two decades thinking his offspring consisted of one psycho, and two angelic daughters – albeit, one of them isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. Turns out he was right about Bry, but his daughters are crazy too, and the real insult is, we get that from our mother – the very woman he considers a saint above all saints.

  “So…” he starts after a moment. “The fact Rob lived next door to you, walked with you to and from school, sat with you during lunch, and again at the dinner table at night…? That wasn’t enough for you to accept being in different grades?”

  “Seeing him most of the day wasn’t enough.” Smiling, I go back to drawing. “It was really hard for me to explain back then, even to myself. But it’s like I couldn’t function without him, I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t concentrate. I spent every minute that I was without him thinking about him. So after a few years of that, I figured out how to change it.”

  “At which point, your grades soared, and I was able to breathe easy knowing my daughter wasn’t dumber than a crayon. I mean, I still would’ve loved you, Little Bit, but fuck.”

  I laugh. “Not dumber than a crayon. Plus, Miss Laine is a really good teacher, so it worked out in the end.”

  “And now?”

  I glance away from my paper and stop on Daddy’s soulful eyes. “Now, what?”

  “You said it was hard to explain back then, even to yourself. Can you explain it now?”

  “Yeah, well…” I go back to drawing. “Now, I know the truth. I, uh…” I clear my throat and grit my teeth. “Daddy, you remember the bit about me being responsible for the pet food factory?” I glance up to catch sight of the vein in his forehead throbbing.

  Yeah, he remembers, and he isn’t pleased.

  “Uh… this is worse.”

  “What. Could. Be. Worse?” he grits out. “Emma Katherine, I’m gonna beat your ass.”

  “I’m in love with Rob,” I spit out, purge it, and deflate when the words are gone. Then I risk a glance into my father’s eyes, and barely stop short of whimpering. “Um… not, like, best friend love, but the other kind. The kind where…” I scrunch my nose, knowing what’s coming next. “The kind of love where, in a perfect world, we would be announcing an Emma and Rob baby, not a Rob and Slut misinformation.”

  “What?” Daddy explodes and bounds up from his place on the floor. He’s two hundred and fifty-odd pounds of ex-fighter muscle. Like Chute, perhaps he’s ‘ex’, but that doesn’t mean he’s no longer large and formidable. “You and Rob?” he booms. “And babies? Are you fucking crazy?”

  I probably should be afraid, or sad, or mad, or… something. But in reality, I smirk and look back down to my paper. “I’m not pregnant, Daddy, so pop a Xanax and sit back down. I’m just saying, now I know why I could never breathe without him.”

  “He’s your cousin!”

  “He absolutely is not,” I laugh. “He’s a family friend. He’s our neighbor. He’s your best friend’s son. What he is not, is related to me.”

  “He’s Fart the second!” he shouts. “He’s… he’s Fart!”

  “And that worked out just fine for the original peacock and Jon Hart.”

  “Yuh! As best friends. I’m not boning the guy!”

  I burst out in desperate laughter that brings tears to my eyes. Wondrously, they’re not sad tears, but happy. “You maybe should try it. It’s… uh… fun.”

  “Emma Katherine Fucking Reilly.”

  “Reilly?”

  “You’re grounded!”

  He thrusts forward and grabs my arm with enough strength that I spring to my feet and hiss as the pinch of my bicep.

  “Daddy!”

  “Grounded!” He drags me across my room so fast that my sketchbook and pencil drop to the floor, then into the hall, onto the ornate staircase, and into the foyer down below. “Kit!”

  “Daddy! Let me go.”

  “Baby!”

  “Aunt Emma?” Lyss walks out of the kitchen with a sucker perched between her lips, and a glass of milk – coconut – grasped between her fingers. “Grandpop?”

  “Alyssa, go home to Mom and Daddy. You don’t need to see this.”

  “Can’t go home,” she says innocently. “Mommy said she and Daddy are having special cuddles for a sec.”

  “Argh!” Daddy releases me like I’ve suddenly become an electrical current. “Stop! Stop it all.”

  “What the hell is going on?” Mom pushes through the front door in a bathrobe and a jumbo mug of coffee in her hands. “Bobby? What the hell are you screaming about at this time of the morning?”

  “Our daughters!” H
is face burns a dangerous red. “Baby! Our daughters do the thing! And Brooke is doing the thing right now. She’s over there with that fucking….” He looks to Lyss, and holds his tongue. “guy! And she’s doing the thing.”

  Mom’s lips twitch. “You realize every single time Alyssa walks through our door alone, Brooke is doing the thing, right?”

  “What?” he explodes. “No! She… I’m babysitting so my daughter can have…” He chokes. “The thing?”

  “Yes, Daddy.” I bury my laugh behind my hand, and wink for Lyss while she stands in obliviousness. “We do these things on a semi-regular basis. It’s kinda what grown people do. Surely, you haven’t forgotten about this time in your life.”

  “‘This time in my life’,” he spins on me, and roars, “I was exceptionally disrespectful in the things I did with women. That’s not something to be proud of!”

  “Tell me,” Mom taps her fingernail against her ceramic mug, and behind her, Tink steps into the fray to watch. “How many women did you spend disrespectful time with before I came along?”

  “Baby! No, we’re not doing that. I just meant—”

  “Someone catch me up?” Tink requests with a wicked grin. “I’m lost.”

  “I think Bobby just realized his children spend special time with people of the opposite sex,” Mom surmises. “Brooke is doing that thing right now. I suspect Bry does it a lot more than everyone else in this estate combined, and Em… well…”

  “Emma spends special time with the Fart twin!” Daddy booms.

  Mom gasps.

  Tink squeals.

  They watch me with wide, shocked eyes, then when I nod, just the tiniest confirmation, they turn to each other amid girly squeals.

  “It happened!” Mom screams. “We did it, T!”

  “I made a boy, and you made a girl, and they love each other!” Tink cheers. “Our evil plans are working out!”

  “What the hell is going on?!” Daddy shouts above the squealing. “This isn’t cute. It’s a crime!”

  “It’s not a crime,” Mom laughs. “It’s two best friends who made a pact back when they were five that they would never part.”

  Daddy turns to me, and snarls, “You made a pact when you were five?”

  “Uh, no,” Tink inserts. “Me and Kit made the pact. We planned to make kids who would marry.”

  “Yeah?” Daddy roars. “Well, ya know what me and Fart promised when we were five?”

  “Nothing.” Mom tilts her head. “You didn’t become friends till you were, like, seven, right?”

  “Don’t nitpick!” Daddy snaps. “The promise was implied. And it was that his sons would never touch my daughters.”

  “How was it implied,” Tink questions with a smug grin, “if you didn’t even know each other yet?”

  “Shut it!” Daddy turns to me. “No! Absolutely not. Now go and get your sister. We’re going to church!”

  But Daddy storms off the porch when his gaze zooms in on the estate gates powering up to open.

  The security pad just inside our front door buzzes, the gates release, and Jon jogs in with Uncle Aiden and Uncle Jack on his flanks. They’re smiling, laughing, riding the adrenaline rush of good exercise, but when Daddy’s impending approach grabs their attention, Aiden and Jack step wide. They distance themselves from the best friends, glance to the porch we stand on, then back to the guys when, just as Daddy is close enough, he lowers his stance and runs shoulder-first into Jon’s gut.

  He slams him to the ground with an earth-booming thud, then they scramble for the upper position. Jon adapts fast, waits for no explanation about why Daddy is mad, and rolls, just as he’s trained his whole life to do.

  “So?” Mom turns away from the feuding friends and back to me. “What the eff happened inside this house in the last ten minutes?”

  “I maybe told Daddy that I’m a little in love with Rob.” I look to Tink, and nibble on my bottom lip. “Um… the get-married-and-have-babies kinda love.”

  Mom grits her teeth and presses a hand to her chest. “So, you didn’t think to prime him or anything? There was no lead up to it? You just drop that news on your father’s head without warning the family?”

  “It just happened,” I snicker. “It was in my head, and in my heart, and then it was said, and Daddy had an aneurysm.”

  “And now they’re fighting on the lawn,” Tink says with a roll of her eyes. “Jesus. That man is so dramatic.” She brings her gaze back to me. “So, you and my son? That’s fun news.”

  “Not me and your son,” I shake my head. “He and I… we had something. But he also has the Grace stuff, and I can’t be a part of that. It hurts too much.”

  “Babe.” Tink shuffles her coffee to just one hand, then reaches out with the other and takes my hand. “I know it hurts. I was a potential grandma for three-point-two seconds, the future played out in my head, then you ran out, and news got back that Grace was lying. Boom, that future went up in dust, and my heart ached.”

  My brows come together with confusion… and possibly a little hurt. “You’re sad Grace isn’t carrying your grandchild?”

  “Not exactly,” she squeezes my hand. “And I suspect my son isn’t sad either. Not about that. But when a person gets that kind of world-changing news, scenarios play out in their mind. The future unfolds, and plans are made… even if the specifics aren’t ideal. Maybe I didn’t like the circumstances, nor did I like the woman, but still, there was a baby involved, and as far as we knew, that baby was one of us. Now that’s gone, and it’s taking us a second to adapt.”

  “I was so hurt when he chose her over me,” I whimper and step into the hug my mom and Tink envelop me in. “He chose that future over me, and it hurt so much.”

  “He had to choose her,” Mom croons. “She had his baby. He didn’t have a choice at all.”

  “I know that now.” I sniffle and wipe my nose on Mom’s robe. “I know it. And objectively, he did everything right, but that doesn’t take away the pain. I was hurt, Mommy. And the person who hurt me was supposed to be my best friend. I’m finding it hard to get over it.”

  “You don’t have to get over it yet,” Tink says. She steps back and winks for Lyss when she continues to watch us from a few feet away.

  Her mom and dad are fucking just a couple doors away, and she’s out in the cold till they’re done.

  “It’s okay to be mad,” Tink says. “It’s okay to be sad. It’s okay to wanna belt him with the front of your car, because no matter the specifics, he still hurt you. But, honey, you and Rob have the foundations to move past this. You have the most stable foundations of any couple I know.”

  “What if I can’t trust?” I ask on a whisper. “Like, I don’t mean he’s going to sneak or lie or do anything to hurt me again, but my instinct now is to keep him at arm’s length, to keep that wall up, and to not give him the chance to hurt me again.”

  “Babe.” Mom sets her coffee on the railing of the porch, comes back, and takes my hand. “You and Rob are, like…” She thinks on it for a second. “You have the Tink and Kit friendship, and the Bobby and Fart friendship, all tied up into one coupling. You’re the best of us, baby. You’re the smartest, wittiest, craziest, most caring things we ever created. I mean, if you’d said you were into Luke, I might have a different opin—”

  “Hey!” Tink smacks her best friend. “Watch it.”

  “I’m just saying!” Mom laughs. “There’s a difference. But it’s Rob, and he’s been your protector since day one. So maybe don’t write him off based on this year alone. He’s been going through some big stuff. I’ve only been on this ride for…” She looks at the watch on her wrist, and blows out a noisy exhale. “Geez. A day and a bit? It feels like everything is on fire, and it’s only been a day. Rob has been dealing with this for weeks. He’s doing the best he can.”

  Dad does some kind of Tarzan holler at Jon at the end of the driveway. Aiden and Jack watch on. Jimmy, Will, and Jamie have arrived and stand back with their hands on their h
ips, and on the porch a few down from here, Iowa steps outside in a towel only and risks his life.

  I hear snippets of “My daughter!” from Daddy, and “I’m gonna kill you, Fart!”

  “That’s their thing.” Mom takes my hand and tugs me toward the front door. “Come on, honey. Come back inside, we’ll get a little breakfast and talk it out.”

  “Give me the elevator pitch?” I gaze out at the driveway, at all of the people here, and note two who are absent. Because they moved out.

  They left us, and I’m not ready to let them go.

  Glancing back to Mom, I wait for her answer with lifted brows. “If you had only a sentence to fix my aching heart, what would you say?”

  “Time heals all wounds.”

  “Love is patient,” Tink inserts. “Love is kind.”

  Mom snickers. “Love will set you free.”

  “Clichés?” I look to Lyss and shake my head. “I knew I couldn’t count on them.”

  “Maybe you could be like the warrior in Mommy’s book,” Lyss suggests. “Ya know, the one I wrote for you?”

  “The one with dreadlocks and pixie ears?” I ask. “What would she do in this situation?”

  “She has a sword, Aunt Em. She would chop that stupid boy’s head straight off.”

  “Oh shit,” Tink hisses.

  But I throw my head back and laugh so hard that my heart releases just a little bit of the pain it’s held for weeks. Months. Perhaps even years.

  “I think maybe that’s the best idea anyone has had yet.”

  I step forward and pull my niece in so her face rests against my stomach. Arranging my fingers so I show her the sign for I love you, I lean down and plop a kiss on the top of her head before stepping back. I look to Mom, and draw a deep breath. Then I look to Tink and exhale.

  “Chopping his head off will be plan Z, I promise. I’ll start with A.”

  “Which is?” Tink jumps forward and snags my hand when I head toward the steps at the front of the porch. “What’s your plan A, Em?”

  “Friendship,” I say. “That’s who we’ve always been.”