Exception

by Mariah Dietz

  Coen laughs, selecting a glazed doughnut.

  “Your order should be arriving anytime.” Jackson glances at his watch.

  Joey stares at Jackson’s hand on my shoulder, taking a large bite of his doughnut.

  I didn’t realize it was their order that required us to open the store an hour earlier. I’m surprised my dad didn’t elect to be here, since he seems to idolize both of the DeLuca brothers.

  “Jelly Bean, you want to cover the front while I help count pallets when they get here?” Jackson asks.

  “Are you sure?” Guilt has me feeling obligated to offer, but staying in the front, where there’s air conditioning and doughnuts, sounds far more appealing than checking skews in the heat while a delivery man steals glimpses down my shirt each time I bend over.

  Jackson nods. “Absolutely.” He turns to Coen and Joey. “You guys want to come on back with me so you can start loading them as I get them marked off?”

  Coen nods and follows Jackson a couple of steps before they both stop. “You comin’?” Jackson asks, looking to Joey.

  Joey shakes his head. “In a few. I need to speak with Jelly Bean for a minute.”

  Chapter 12

  Joey

  I wait until their footsteps finally reach the back of the store before I reach forward and tug on Kennedy’s braid. “Look at you rocking the southern look.”

  “I thought you said I look like a librarian.”

  “You do. A southern librarian.” I pull her hair again.

  “Didn’t you matriculate past the first grade?” She bats at me when I reach for her hair a third time.

  “Why do they call you Jelly Bean?”

  Kennedy huffs quietly, like she’s debating telling me, then reaches below the counter, and pulls out several bags of jelly beans, which she drops upon the counter. “Growing up, they were my vice.”

  I laugh. “Looks like they’re still your vice!”

  She shakes her head. “These are from customers and probably my mom.”

  “They’re glad to have you back.”

  “Sometimes old habits die hard.”

  “You being the old habit or the jelly beans?” I ask.

  She shrugs.

  “I’d be called Bolognese if someone named me after my food vice.”

  “Not doughnut?” She arcs her eyebrows over her black-rimmed glasses.

  “Watch yourself. If you dive into the deep end, you’re going to end up swimming with the sharks.”

  She tilts her chin, pursing her lips, which are the shade of the pink jelly beans on the counter. She stares at me for a beat and then looks away, storing the candies below the counter again.

  “What?” I ask.

  She shakes her head.

  “No. What were you going to say?”

  “I just find you difficult to read,” she says, trying to make another huff sound like a laugh. “Everything about you is a contradiction. I don’t know if you’re flirting with me or threatening me.”

  “Maybe it’s both?”

  “See!” she cries. “That doesn’t clarify anything!” Kennedy brings her hands between us; they’re outstretched with question, making a point before her words can.

  “You’re who invited me to play games,” I remind her.

  “A game. One game,” she says, raising a single finger. “I invited you to play one game with me in an environment made for playing games.”

  “Some psychologists believe that life is an illusion. That our brains are constantly creating new illusions and problems for us. Maybe life is just one giant game for us all to play?”

  “All I know is that I know nothing.”

  My smile falls, having expected her to roll her eyes at me and tell me I’m obnoxious, and instead, she quotes Socrates. Kennedy stares at me, and suddenly she doesn’t look like a woman in over her head, but a woman carefully carving her life’s path.

  “Are you coming over later with the crew that’s helping install the insulation?”

  “As much as I will miss that messy and hot job, I will not.” She turns to a short stack of papers on the desk.

  “Work?”

  Kennedy looks at me with a sly smile. “Sometimes you sound like you’re trying to become my friend.”

  Sarcastic retorts about how we bridged friendship last night when she let me remove her top are tickling my tongue, but the vulnerability I see in the way her skin bunches between her eyes has me keeping my mouth shut. After seeing what Grace had done to herself and the way her dad acted at dinner, teasing her has become less appealing.

  “I’m serious. I’ve heard you know your way around tools better than most. Why won’t you be coming?”

  Green eyes shift from mine. “My friend’s coming to town.”

  “A friend?” My words come out gruff, almost brash.

  Kennedy nods. “She leaves Monday, so it’ll be a quick trip.”

  I expel a deep breath, far too relieved by the minor yet significant detail that the friend is a woman.

  Shit.

  “Are you guys going to do anything fun while she’s here?”

  “I’m not sure yet. There’s supposed to be an ice cream social tomorrow, but they keep talking about a storm coming.” Kennedy glances toward the front windows. “My friend, Violet, thinks she wants to see the whole town, but I tried explaining to her that we can do that within an hour.” Her face brightens, though she isn’t smiling.

  “Hey! Sorry to interrupt, you guys, but I need Joe to move his truck,” Coen yells from the back of the store.

  I lift my chin and push away from the counter.

  “You got your truck back?” Kennedy steps out from behind the counter and stands on her toes, looking out to the parking lot, where my truck is parked beside Coen’s. Her boots about kill me. Never before coming here would I have ever considered cowboy boots sexy. “Did it all work out okay?”

  “You mean does she still have the indent of your car in the back?”

  Kennedy cocks her head, her eyes narrowed.

  “She’s as good as new.” I reach forward and tug on her braid again before heading out to the parking lot. I pull up beside where Coen is idling next to a large delivery truck and cut the engine when my brother flashes a thumbs-up.

  Coen and I pack several spools of insulation into the back of our truck beds, stacking them three tall and then securing them with tie-down straps.

  “We’ll be back in about an hour or so to get the rest of the insulation,” Coen tells Jackson, who’s going over an inventory list as more pallets are stacked into the back part of the hardware shop that opens with a wide garage door.

  Jackson doesn’t look up or say anything to acknowledge us. As my brother turns to head back to his truck, he lifts his eyebrows. “So much for everyone in this town loving you. You’ve created an enemy for me.”

  I shake my head. “I did nothing to that guy!” I turn back around and see Jackson staring at us. I tip my chin and turn to continue forward, catching Coen’s rounded eyes.

  The ride back to his house is too brief for me to recover from his accusation.

  I drop out from my truck and meet Coen as he closes his driver’s side door. “Why do you think I’ve created an enemy for you?”

  Coen raises his eyebrows and looks at me as if the answer is obvious.

  “What?”

  “Come on. Connect the dots, Joe. You’re smarter than this.”

  “What dots are you talking about?”

  “Kennedy!” he cries.

  “She has zero interest in that guy.”

  “That’s your defense?” Coen smiles and reaches to unlatch his tailgate. “I’m waiting for you to ask me what I know about her and her family.”

  “Why would I care about Kennedy or her family?”

  He laughs. “I don’t know how you got a job as a detective because seriously, when you lie—or try to—your eyes get all wide, and your shoulders become rigid.” Coen shoves me to prove how stiff my posture is.


  “She’s infuriating,” I tell him.

  My brother’s quick smile appears.

  “I don’t know why you’re smiling. After that dinner at their house, you should be warning me away from her. You’re officially failing at your duties that come with being my wingman.”

  “It wasn’t that bad.”

  “Not that bad? I didn’t know if I wanted to punch her dad or pat him on the back.”

  Coen’s smile grows and he nods. “Because you like her.”

  “I’m intrigued by her.”

  “You like her.”

  “She’s like a riddle or something.”

  “You like her,” Coen repeats.

  “Are you on repeat or something? Stop saying that!” I run a hand through my hair. “She’s got skeletons in her closet.” I shake my head.

  Coen’s smile fades. “Who doesn’t? We’re all born with an entire closet chocked-full of skeletons, and our families continue shoving more in there while we add to the pile.”

  “Her sister wants to kill herself.”

  He stops, swinging his eyes to me. “What?”

  “Last night while I was running, I heard someone screaming. Yelling about wanting to die.” I picture the woods, shaded to make it comfortable for a jog, and recall hearing the cries that turned into screams.

  Coen’s brown eyes are stretched, his jaw tight with concern. “Was she trying to kill herself?”

  I shake my head. “When I got over the hill that overlooks the park, the two were falling out of the slide, and Kennedy was on top of her, pinning her down.” I pause, recalling how bizarre it had been. “For a second, I thought maybe Kennedy was hurting her, but then she got up and Grace started screaming again, yelling about how she couldn’t wash something off of her.”

  Coen’s dark eyes grow wider.

  “Kennedy got her calmed down and suggested they go to the pond, which only sort of made any sense. But I followed them just to make sure everything was okay. Then Grace went under. She just dropped. I thought for sure she was going to kill herself.”

  “That’s why you were all wet.” Coen rubs the back of his neck. “Shit.” His hand runs across his face. “Is she okay?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t know. Kennedy told me she’s bipolar, and that things are under control, but she looked scared out of her mind. I think there’s more going on with that family than they let on.”

  “There always is,” Coen says. “Can you imagine what people think when they come to our family get-togethers? You remember that time I dropped the damn salt shaker? I swear Ma’s still praying for me over that.”

  We both laugh at the memory and more that surface with his reminder. “You really should stop bringing Ella around until you guys are married and she’s stuck with you and us crazies.” As quickly as my lips quirk with a smirk, they fall.

  Coen punches me lightly. “Don’t worry.”

  “I just told you how Kennedy’s sister has a mental illness and then used crazy in a derogatory manner.”

  An exaggerated frown paints my brother’s face. “You like her. You like her a lot.”

  “I fucking like her, okay!” I throw my hands in the air. “Let’s get this goddamn shit out of the truck so I can think about something else besides the fact that in a matter of weeks, I managed to jeopardize my job, temporarily moved into a mouse trap, and have developed feelings for a woman who hates me.”

  “You’re being dramatic. She doesn’t hate you.”

  “She doesn’t like me.”

  “Sometimes it’s really hard to tell if I’m talking to my brother or one of my sisters when you start talking about your feelings.”

  “I’m going to fucking punch you. You know that, right?”

  Coen chuckles. “You gave me such a hard time when you learned about Ella—now it’s my turn.”

  “Yeah, but you denied liking her for weeks.”

  “You tried. I’m just better at unraveling the situation. Maybe I should be the detective.”

  I flip him the bird because I’m about to roll my damn eyes at him, something I blame Arianna for. My twin sister can flip someone off simply by rolling her eyes. It’s a gesture that packs a punch.

  “Are you going to ask her out?” Coen asks.

  “No.”

  He pulls his head back. “Why?”

  “For so many reasons.”

  “You’re starting to sound like Arianna again . . .”

  I tick the reasons off. “She lives in a different state. She wants to move back to Boston soon. She drives me crazy. She—”

  “You’re reaching,” Coen interrupts me. “And I get it. I do. Admitting to myself that I liked Ella was harder than admitting it to her. She came with a warehouse of baggage and a son. I had to decide if I was really interested or simply attracted to her, because that kid didn’t need angst and more broken promises and neither did she. And it sounds like Kennedy has a lot of heavy shit that she’s dealing with as well, but those aren’t reasons to run. She’s strong and dedicated to her family and has ambitions and goals—traits that can be entirely too hard to find.”

  “I liked it better when you were being an asshole and I wanted to punch you,” I grumble.

  Coen pats me on the shoulder. “I hear you, man.”

  “How are things going with Ella? I feel like an interloper so much of the time, like I’m constantly in your space. You know if you guys want me to head up to DC for the weekend or just be out of your hair, I won’t take any offense.”

  His dark brows furrow before he shakes his head. “No. Are you kidding? I couldn’t have done this without you. You’re saving my ass by being here.”

  “She seemed a little upset the other day when you had to go into work.”

  Coen expels a deep breath. “I’ve never had to worry about anyone else, you know? My schedule was all about work. If the station needed me for sixty hours in a week, I was there. If they needed me for eighty hours, I wouldn’t even blink. It’s not that I forget about her or Hayden, I just get so consumed in my job.”

  “I’m sure finding that balance is hard. But you’ve got this. You know where your priorities lie. You’ll get this station trained and running like a well-oiled machine, then it will be much easier to not worry about the badge and this town.”

  “I sure as hell hope so. Ella’s being a trooper, though. I mean, she followed me up here not knowing anyone, and she’s never complained about it. She’s been making an effort to get involved with the town and stuff. It’s not like she needs me. She certainly doesn’t need my money. Hell, she makes more than I do.”

  I chuckle. “You guys are a good match.”

  We unload the rounds of insulation into the detached garage and then head back to Wallace Hardware in my truck for the remainder of the haul.

  “You could ask her to come have dinner at the house,” Coen suggests after sitting quietly for several minutes.

  “You aren’t going to drop it, are you?”

  “Probably not.”

  “You need to. I don’t plan on pursuing anything.”

  “The chief told me that your buddy, the sheriff, is planning on retiring soon.” Coen glances at me, trying to be indiscreet as he waits for a reaction.

  “I believe it. He’s got to be nearing seventy.”

  His wide eyes stare at me, growing rounder with impatience as I attempt to ignore him. “Why wouldn’t you at least consider the position? You could get out of the city, away from the chaos.”

  I shake my head. “I never said I want out of the city.”

  “You would. You will.”

  “Not everyone is crazy about living in the middle of nowhere like you are.”

  “Joe, how long are you going to put yourself through this?”

  I draw my head back and look at my brother.

  “Through what?”

  “Your job, Joe. It’s taken a heavy toll on you. This was a blessing in disguise, if you ask me. You needed to get out of there and gain some pers
pective. When was the last time you went on vacation? Or went a solid twelve hours without calling or texting everyone to make sure they’re all right? I keep waiting for you to add Ella to the list of people you check in on, and I can’t have you doing that. If she gets messages alerting her to be afraid, she’s going to be afraid! I don’t want you paralyzing her like that.”

  “What are you talking about? I don’t send messages to freak anyone out—I’m touching base!”

  “You’re checking in on them.”

  I pull my head back and pause. “I didn’t think this job would follow me home every damn day. I mean, I’ve worked on homicides before that haunted me less than half of these crimes.”

  Coen shakes his head. “I don’t know how you do it, man. I think I’d want to off every perp I ever caught if I were in your shoes.”

  “Believe me, I want to. Last week we caught a guy who had molested twelve kids. Twelve.”

  My brother’s face turns red as he stares at me, his jaw clenched tightly before he says, “I can’t even imagine. I’d kill someone if they even considered touching Ella or Hayden.”

  Between his Italian temper and the love he has for those two, I don’t doubt his conviction, but I loathe considering the possibility of either of them ever being hurt.

  “You won’t have to consider shit like that,” I assure him. “Not here in Haven Point. I told you, you’ll know when someone sneezes in this town.”

  Coen tilts his chin, doubt clouding his thoughts. He reaches for his cell phone and within seconds, has it to his ear, understanding my incessant need to know my sisters and mom are okay. He’s right: I do check in on them. Unfortunately, my paranoia goes much further than my family. Every time I pass a kid in the grocery store or on the street, I wonder if they’re being mistreated, if they’re being fed, if they have a voice and someone to look out for them.

  Now Grace and Kennedy also linger in my thoughts.

  Coen wraps up his quick conversation with Ella as I pull into the back of the hardware shop again. “You should ask her out,” he tells me.

  I shake my head and lift my middle finger. It’s the only appropriate reaction I can think of, apart from yelling the same sentiment.

  “I don’t even know if she’s single,” I grumble the words. It’s a fact I’ve been trying to process since we kissed. I’m always careful to triple-check that a woman is single before engaging in anything more than conversation, but when I’m around Kennedy, my carefully implemented precautions aren’t even a thought because I’m working so hard to know all of hers.