All Rhodes Lead Here

by Zapata, Mariana

  “Was it really bad?”

  Rhodes nodded, his attention forward, eyes glassy. “They had to LifeFlight both of them to Denver.”

  “That’s terrible. I’m sorry,” I said, lightly touching his elbow.

  His throat bobbed, and I had a feeling he hadn’t even registered my touch.

  “That’s so rough. I hope they’re okay. I hope you’re okay too. I’m sure that’s hard to witness.”

  He wrung his hands almost subconsciously, picturing or thinking about who knows what, before finally shaking his head and saying in a troubled voice that pierced at my heart, telling me exactly how deeply the accident had gotten under his skin, “It’s hard not to picture it being Am.”

  “I’m sure.”

  He finally glanced at me, and that glassy gaze was still there, so were the lines on his forehead. “It probably doesn’t help that it’s his birthday.”

  I just nodded, unsure of what to say to reassure or comfort him. So I waited a second until I went with the first thing that came to mind. “When is your birthday?”

  If he was surprised by my question, his face didn’t register it. “March.”

  “March what?”

  “Fourth.”

  “How old are you turning?”

  “Forty-three.”

  Forty-three. I raised my eyebrows. Then processed the number again.

  If it weren’t for all the silver in his hair, he might look a lot younger. Then again, he looked exactly like the hottest forty-two-year-old I’d ever seen, and that was not a bad thing. Not by far.

  “What are you?” he asked out of nowhere. “Twenty-six?”

  I grinned at the same time he happened to glance down. “Thirty-three.”

  That amazing silver head jerked. “No, you’re not.”

  I winked. “Promise I am. Your kid has a copy of my driver’s license.”

  Those gray eyes roamed my face for a moment before flicking even lower. The lines on his forehead were back. “You’re thirty-three?” he asked in what sounded like total disbelief.

  “Thirty-four in May,” I confirmed.

  He looked at me again, and I was pretty certain his gaze hung on my chest for a second longer than before. A very long extra second. Huh.

  We were both quiet as we went up the deck and into the house. Johnny was standing in the kitchen, holding a can of beer with his eyes glued to the TV. On the couch, Amos and Jackie were sitting together, watching TV too. Some action movie was playing. There were three boxes of pizza sitting on the kitchen island.

  And all three heads swiveled to look at me—and Rhodes by default—the second we stopped between the kitchen and the living room.

  “Hi, birthday boy,” I called out, a little more shyly than I would’ve expected. “Hi, Jackie. Hi, Johnny.”

  “Hi, Ora,” the teenager called out as Jackie hopped off the couch and came over to hug me, Johnny’s greeting ringing out too.

  We were good together, but she had never really hugged me before, probably because of the awkwardness. Secrets and lies could do that to people.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Amos got to his feet and headed over too, looking like he wasn’t totally onboard with the idea but resigned. I was winning this kid over slowly but surely. Just as Jackie pulled away, he gave me one of those little half smiles that I could only guess he’d learned from his dad and said, “Thanks for helping with the cake.”

  “You’re welcome,” I told him. “Want a birthday hug?”

  He hunched his shoulders, and I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around him, feeling his thin ones go up too, patting me on the back gently and awkwardly.

  He was too precious.

  When he stepped back, I thrust the card at him. “This was the best I could do on short notice, but happy birthday.”

  He didn’t even really look at the card before taking it after glancing at Jackie. He opened it, his gaze moved across the inside of it, and his gray eyes flicked up to me. Then he surprised the shit out of me.

  He smiled.

  And I knew in that moment that the second he hit his next growth spurt, this kid was going to have the same effect his father did on humanity.

  Someone was going to need to protect him from the sexual vultures.

  Then again, if he developed his dad’s scowl, maybe not.

  He was just a sweet kid for now.

  And that smile stayed on his face as he pulled out the wad of fives and ones. Then he said, “Hold on,” went to his room and came back empty-handed. His lips were pinched, but his words were clear, “Thanks, Aurora.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “What? I don’t get to see it?” his uncle asked.

  “No,” Amos replied.

  I snickered and another glance at Rhodes showed me his mouth was twisting.

  “Why?” the uncle asked.

  “Because it’s mine.”

  “Can I see it?” Jackie asked, bouncing on her tiptoes.

  “Later.”

  Johnny snickered. “Rude.”

  “Now that Ora’s here, can we eat?” the birthday boy asked.

  Apparently, the answer was yes. There was a stack of plates on the counter waiting already. I took one and moved, going to stand next to Johnny who looked down at me and smiled.

  “Hey,” he greeted.

  “Hey,” I answered. “How are you?”

  “Great, you?”

  “Pretty great too. Did you go out with that waitress after all?”

  He chuckled. “No. She never called me back.”

  “Did you check out someone else’s butt on your date or…?”

  He started laughing.

  “If you two are done flirting, what kind of pizza do you want, Buddy?” Rhodes’s voice came sharp.

  We were flirting? Was he serious? I was just joking. Johnny made his eyes go wide, and I lifted my shoulders, helplessly. Okay.

  And it wouldn’t hit me until much later that no one else had reacted to the “Buddy.” Only me.

  Grabbing two slices of supreme pizza, I sprinkled some parmesan on it before heading to the table where the kids were. I sat next to Jackie, and then Johnny sat on my other side with Rhodes taking a seat beside his son.

  Where the extra chairs had come from, I didn’t know.

  Jackie was in the middle of asking Amos if his grandpa was coming over this weekend or next, and the next thing I knew, the birthday boy focused on me and asked, “Are you doing any more hikes before it snows?”

  I had just stuck a huge slice of pizza into my mouth and had to chew through it fast before I got out, “Yeah, but I need to start checking the weather.”

  “What are your options?” that was Rhodes who asked.

  I told them the names of the two easy trails that were less than two miles roundtrip. Honestly, I was still a little traumatized. I had scars on my palms and knees, damn it. “Why? You want to go again? I was probably going to go on Saturday. Clara’s closing the shop at noon to get the carpets cleaned.”

  “I want to go,” Jackie piped up.

  Three sets of heads turned to look at her.

  She frowned. “What?”

  “You get winded walking to the garage apartment,” Amos muttered.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “We went to do Piedra River, and you stopped half a mile in and refused to hike any more,” he kept going.

  “Yeah, so?”

  “One of the hikes is one mile round trip and the other is two,” Rhodes explained to her, carefully but firmly.

  The girl grimaced, and I tried my best to bite back a smile. “I’ll let you know when I do a shorter one. If I do a shorter one. I guess if I’m still here next year.”

  I was smiling when I made eye contact with Rhodes.

  His jaw was tight. And out of the corner of my eye, I saw Amos was making a weird face. Why were they looking at me like that?

  Before I could think about it too much, Jackie started talking about how unfair they were b
eing because she used to hike all the time, and I focused on that for a while, at least until the urge to pee came at my bladder like a bomb.

  “I’ll be right back, I need to use the bathroom,” I told them, pushing the chair back.

  I headed straight for the half-bathroom I remembered seeing on my other visits over. I peed and started washing my hands, and it was when I reached for a towel that I happened to look down and saw something small and brown run across the floorboard. I froze.

  Leaning over just a little, I peeked around the toilet and saw it again.

  Two little eyes.

  One bare tail.

  About two inches long.

  It darted off, disappearing around the trash can.

  I wasn’t proud of myself… but I screamed. Not loud, but it was still a scream.

  And then I got the hell out of there.

  Honestly, I wasn’t sure I’d ever moved so fast going down the hall, thankful I’d seen him after I’d pulled my pants on and zipped them up, going as far away from the bathroom as possible.

  Which ended up being the kitchen.

  Rhodes was standing by the island, tearing paper towels off when he noticed me coming. A frown came over his face. “What’s—”

  “There’s a mouse in the bathroom!” I squeaked and went past him, pretty much leaping onto the stool beside the counter, then jumping from there to the back of the couch with a frantic look toward the floor to make sure I hadn’t been followed.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Amos stood up so fast the chair he was in fell backward, and the next thing I knew, he’d leaped onto the couch and ended up beside me, his butt propped up on the back of it, legs dangling inches off the floor in the air. Johnny and Jackie either didn’t care or were so stunned by Amos and me, that they hadn’t moved a single inch from the table.

  “A rat?” Rhodes asked from the exact same spot he’d been in.

  I shook my head at him, exhaling hard to try and bring my heart rate down. “No, a mouse.”

  His eyebrows crept up about a half-inch, but I noticed it. “You’re screaming because of a mouse?” Did he have to ask so slowly?

  I swallowed. “Yes!”

  He blinked. Beside me, Amos suddenly snorted deep in his throat like he hadn’t knocked his chair over. Then I noticed that Rhodes’s chest was shaking.

  “What?” I asked, eyeing the floor again.

  His chest was shaking even more, and he barely managed to wheeze out, both eyes squeezing closed, “I… I didn’t know you were into parkour.”

  Amos snorted again, lowering his legs and planting his feet.

  “You backflipped onto the table…,” Rhodes choked out.

  He was wheezing. The son of a bitch was wheezing.

  “No, I did not!” I argued, starting to feel just a little bit… foolish. I hadn’t. I didn’t know how to backflip.

  “You jumped from the island to the couch,” Rhodes kept going, raising a fist to hold it right in front of his nose.

  He could barely talk.

  “Your face… Ora, it was so white,” Am started, bottom lip starting to tremble.

  I pressed my lips together and stared at my favorite traitor. “My soul left my body for a second, Am. And you didn’t exactly walk over here either, okay.”

  Rhodes, who decided that this was what he was going to find hilarious, barely choked out, “You looked like you saw a ghost.”

  Amos burst out laughing.

  Then Rhodes burst out laughing.

  One quick glance confirmed that Johnny was chuckling too, Jackie was the only one giving me a smile. I was glad someone had a heart.

  They were cracking up, totally and completely cracking up.

  “You know, I hope it crawls into one of your mouths for being so mean to me,” I muttered, joking. Mostly.

  Rhodes grinned so wide, he came over and slapped his son on the back while they both kept laughing.

  At me.

  But together.

  And maybe I wasn’t going to be able to sleep tonight now, worried there might be a mouse next door, but it would be worth it.

  Chapter 18

  I was sitting at the table reading when I heard the familiar crunch of tires on the driveway.

  I perked up.

  Amos had mentioned last night while we’d discussed how many rhyming words were too many rhyming words in a song, that his grandfather, Rhodes’s dad, was coming over to spend the weekend. I’d forgotten all about Jackie bringing it up at his birthday dinner. The brand-new sixteen-year-old had claimed he was thinking about acting sick so he could have an excuse to hide in his room.

  The thing was, I hadn’t realized until then that no one really brought up Rhodes’s parents. Amos mentioned his other four grandparents in bits and pieces from time to time, but that was it. I doubted that my own nephews ever talked about me, so I tried not to think it was too strange… but it was strange.

  Or at least I had a feeling there was something there, especially after Am told me that Rhodes’s dad lived in Durango, which was only about an hour away. I’d been with them for months now. Shouldn’t he have come over already? Rhodes and Am both rarely left the house together. Maybe part of it was because he was still grounded, but the strictest part of it was over, I was pretty sure. But it was still off to me.

  I stayed where I was, telling myself not to be nosey and stand by the window.

  But if I could hear them from all the way over here, that was different. I wasn’t really eavesdropping if they just happened to talk so loud I could overhear their conversation, right?

  So that’s how I reasoned out what I did. I kept my gaze on the words of the book in front of me. But also kept an ear out. I had already spent enough time looking out my window at my brand-new car. I’d gone and traded it in after work the day before. The SUV was bigger than I’d planned on getting, but it had been love at first sight. Amos and Rhodes had both checked her out yesterday and approved of my purchase. Winter was coming, and all signs were pointing toward me being here for it.

  I was thinking about that when I was pretty sure I heard a door being shut, followed by Amos’s mutter of, “Why does he have to stay here?”

  “It’s only for the weekend,” his dad replied, not exactly sounding like he thought two days was that short of time either but trying to convince himself.

  “All he’s gonna do is complain and bring up everything you’ve done wrong, Dad, like he always does.”

  That made me frown.

  “He doesn’t even really like us. He could come over for the day.”

  “We don’t take his words to heart, man. In one ear, out the other,” Rhodes said.

  I perked up at that and let my eyes stray toward the window. What the hell was up Granddaddy Rhodes’s ass? For Rhodes to tell Am not to let his words bother him….

  “It doesn’t make sense why he gives you so much shit for not getting married when he literally married someone that used to attack him?”

  “That’s enough, Am. We know how he is, and luckily, he only comes over a couple times a year—”

  “Even though we live an hour away?”

  The kid had a point there.

  “I know, Am,” Rhodes pacified gently. “He comes from a different time. And I told you before, he’s got a lot of regrets, and it took me a long time to accept that the way he is, is his own way of caring.”

  The kid grunted. “Can we invite Ora over? To distract him?”

  I snorted and hoped like hell they couldn’t hear me.

  “No, we’re not doing that to her.” There was a pause, and I think he might have snickered. “It would’ve been a good idea though. Then it wouldn’t be awkward silence… and it would be pretty funny to see his face.”

  “Yeah, I bet she’d get him to tell her why it took him so long to divorce your mom.”

  The car door slammed shut, and a split second later, a voice I didn’t recognize said, “I have a company who can come re-gravel the driveway for you,
Tobias. I got a headache just from doing this stretch.”

  I blinked.

  “The driveway is fine, sir,” Rhodes replied in a voice I hadn’t heard from him in months. His Navy Voice, as Amos called it once when we’d brought up that first day we’d met and how pissed off Rhodes had been.

  And who the hell called their dad “sir”?

  “Welcome,” Rhodes kept going.

  Welcome?

  I had to slap my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing; I could only imagine what Amos’s face must look like. I wondered if he was turning red.

  I was pretty sure I heard feet on the driveway. “Amos,” the unfamiliar voice said, “how is your mother? And Billy?”

  “Fine.”

  “You haven’t managed to gain any weight? Still not playing any sports?”

  The silence was piercing. Overwhelming. I was pretty sure my ears were ringing.

  “He’s perfect the way he is,” Rhodes spoke up in that same crisp, careful Navy Voice that reeked of whatever careful control he’d built up over the twenty years he spent in the military.

  My sixth sense told me this wasn’t going to go well.

  Like… really not going to go well.

  Mostly because I was going to go beat the shit out of a grandfather for talking about my Amos like that. My sweet, shy friend had to be dying inside now. I knew he was self-conscious about his slim build, and here this fucker went and—

  “Maybe he would be if you’d enrolled him in some when he was younger,” the old man replied. “He could use a cheeseburger or two.”

  I growled and slowly closed my book.

  “He was enrolled in the things that interested him,” Rhodes replied, his voice sounding grittier and grittier with each syllable. “He eats more than enough.”

  The mean “Hmph” had me setting it down.

  My God, this man reminded me… of Mrs. Jones.

  “A little muscle would be nice if he ever wants to get a girlfriend. You don’t want to be single your entire life like your father, do you?” the old asshole asked.

  I shot to my feet so fast, I was surprised I didn’t knock the table over.