Neat

by Steiner, Kandi

And I knew without hesitation that I wanted to do it forever.

  Mom carried the cake in, setting it down in the middle of the table with slices already pre-cut. She distributed small paper plates and my heathen brothers dug in immediately as Mallory took her seat next to me again.

  “Everything okay?” I asked.

  She smiled, unfolding her napkin and putting it in her lap again. “Everything’s fine. She was just threatening to hang me by my neon ponytail if I ever hurt her baby boy.”

  I blanched. “She didn’t.”

  “Oh, she did,” Mallory assured me on a laugh, patting my knee. “But, I don’t blame her. And it was a good talk, one I’m glad we had. I have to prove to her that I’m not like the rest of my family, and I don’t think that’s an unfair request. It’s also not a challenge I’m not willing to take on.” She leaned in, pressing a quick kiss to my lips. “Especially for you.”

  I smirked, squeezing her hand where it grabbed mine under the table just as Mom called our attention.

  “Now, before you go digging in,” she said, swatting my hand where I was about to put the first bit of cake in my mouth.

  “Hey!”

  “I’d like to take a moment to say something,” she said. She clasped her hands gently in front of her, and with the evening light pouring into the house, the silver of her hair shone a brassy gold. “Michael, this is one of the most important days of your life. It is a day you will never forget, a closing of one door and opening of the next. And no matter where this life takes you, I want you to always know that you have a home to come back to, and a family that loves you, very, very much.”

  “Hear, hear,” Jordan said, lifting his glass. The rest of us lifted ours in unison.

  “To Michael,” Mom said, tears in her eyes now. “Our baby boy, a baby no longer.”

  We all cheered and whistled, taking a drink before digging into our cake. Mikey stood and wrapped Mom in a big hug, and as soon as they had both sat down, Noah stood. He seemed nervous, and when I realized he hadn’t touched his cake, I narrowed my eyes, looking between him and the offending slice.

  “Uh, while we’re all gathered here,” he said, clearing his throat. “I wanted to let you all know we have another cause for celebration.”

  The whole table went quiet, and we all knew before he even said his next words.

  He reached for Ruby Grace’s hand, and when she stood with him, it was the first time we’d all taken our heads out of the sand and noticed the rock on her finger.

  “Yesterday, I asked Ruby Grace to marry me,” he said, beaming at the red-haired beauty beside him. “And she said yes.”

  Betty was the first to jump up, wrapping Ruby Grace in a fierce hug as she went on and on about Richard Gere, for some odd reason. Mom was really crying now as she stood to hug Noah, and we all took turns embracing each of them and offering our congratulations.

  “What an exciting day,” Mom said when we were sitting again, dabbing at her eyes with her napkin. She laughed when Jordan offered his, too. “I’m just a mess.”

  “You had to know this was what you were getting yourself into with four boys,” Kylie said.

  Mom chuckled. “Yes, I suppose I did.”

  Kylie was a tiny little thing — maybe five-foot-two wearing heels. She had long, dark, chestnut hair and the classic girl-next-door face. She’d always kind of felt like one of the guys when we were younger. I remembered her playing man hunt with all of us out in the backyard, and had a distinct memory of her knocking one of Mikey’s teeth out when he said something she apparently didn’t like. Now, though, she and Mikey both looked like they were caught in some strange in-between — not yet a man and woman, but far from a boy and a girl.

  It made my chest hurt a little to see them growing up like that.

  She’d been around more that spring, trying to help Mikey break into our dad’s hard drive. It apparently was more encrypted than we knew, though, and she said she could do it, but it would take time.

  Michael took a sip of his water when we were all settled again, clearing his throat with his eyes on his glass. “While we’re making announcements, I guess now is as good a time as any to tell you guys…”

  “Tell us what, sweetie?” Mom asked.

  Mikey looked around the table, and then he sniffed, eyes back on his glass. “I’m going to spend the next few months here in Stratford, enjoy one last summer in my hometown. But, after that, I’m moving.”

  Everyone stopped what they were doing — forks suspended in mid-bite, hands paused around glasses, all eyes on my baby brother.

  “To New York.”

  There was a very, very small stretch of silence — and then all hell broke loose.

  Mom started crying — this time, they weren’t happy tears. Jordan immediately launched into not making hasty decisions while Noah argued that he couldn’t leave the distillery. I opened my mouth to chime in, but Mallory squeezed my knee in warning under the table, and when I looked at her, she just shook her head.

  “You guys can yell and holler all you want, but my mind’s made up,” he said over the chaos, standing and tossing his napkin down on the table. “I’m eighteen now and this isn’t a choice that any of you get to make for me. So, you can either support me, or not, but either way, I’m going.”

  With that, he stormed across the house and out the front door, footsteps thumping down the porch steps.

  Kylie grimaced, folding her own napkin and setting it on the table beside him before she stood. “I’ll go talk to him.”

  When they were both gone, Mom’s whimpers were the only sound at the table. Jordan reached over to hug her, and Betty smiled, turning the attention back to the good news of Noah and Ruby Grace’s engagement.

  “So, tell us how he proposed,” she urged.

  And, at least for the moment, Mikey’s news was put aside.

  I was still reeling from it all when Mallory and I pulled into our driveway later that evening, and I felt like a zombie opening the car door for her, carrying the leftovers Mom sent with us inside, and plopping down on the couch. Mallory sat next to me, running her fingers through my hair and watching me with worried eyes.

  “You okay?”

  I nodded, though I wasn’t entirely sure. “I just… I can’t believe he wants to move. To New York, of all places.” I shook my head. “This has always been our home. I guess I never considered the possibility that one of us could leave it.”

  “Maybe he’ll change his mind,” she soothed.

  “Maybe. But if he doesn’t, I’ll support him. That’s what he would do for me in the reverse. I should put it on my work calendar now that I’ll be out a couple weeks at the end of summer, just in case he needs help moving.”

  Mallory smiled, moving until she was lying on my chest. “You’re a good brother.”

  We laid there like that for a while, both of us quiet, until a soft chuckle left her lips.

  “What about your other brother? Getting married?”

  I smiled. “That wasn’t as much of a surprise. I knew when he first got caught up with that girl that he’d marry her one day.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Mallory asked, scooting up to look at me. “How’d you know?”

  “He looked at her the way I look at you,” I explained easily, moving her hair away from her face. “Like forever was sitting right there in her eyes.”

  Mallory made a gagging notion with her finger, rolling her forever eyes.

  I laughed. “What? You don’t like the sweet romance?”

  “Not when it’s cheesier than a pizza from Mario’s.”

  “You’ll let me cover you in all the romantic cheese I want to,” I said, wrapping her in my arms while she squealed and played like she wanted to get away.

  We both knew she didn’t.

  “And you’ll like it, too,” I said, kissing her.

  She chuckled. “Fine. But when you and I decide to tie the knot, promise me one thing?”

  “Anything.”

  Mallory g
rinned. “Let me shove cake in your face.”

  I blanched. “But then I’ll have icing all over my face.”

  “Mm-hmm,” she agreed, still grinning as she kissed my nose. “And probably all over your tux, too.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “Sounds messy.”

  “Well, you did agree to let me be the mess in your life,” she reminded me.

  And when she leaned in to press her lips to mine again, I held her there, deepening the kiss with a promise that I’d do anything she ever asked.

  Because what a beautiful mess she was.

  The Becker Brothers will be back this winter.

  Sign up for Kandi Steiner’s newsletter so you don’t miss the release of Michael’s book – Manhattan!

  Didn’t read Noah’s book first and want to know his and Ruby Grace’s story? Read On the Rocks here (available in Kindle Unlimited!)

  Want more Kandi Steiner? Check out her bestselling sports romance – The Wrong Game. Here’s a little sneak peek inside!

  Gemma

  This is not the conversation we were supposed to have.

  On the drive home, I saw every word that would form. I saw how they would be born, first in my mind and then in my mouth, each one standing strong and brave as it slipped from my lips and landed on his ears.

  I knew what I’d say. I knew what he’d say. I had a plan.

  My particular brand of anxiety was having an ungodly amount of stress over that which I could not control. It’d been this way since I was a young girl, and it’d only worsened with age. I made lists, and plans, and deadlines. I gave myself goals, and when I met them, I celebrated only long enough for me to decide what I would tackle next on the list.

  It was all about being in control.

  So, unlike a normal woman discovering her husband’s infidelity, I did not cry or scream or throw objects across the room when I learned the truth. No, instead, when I found the first sign of his indiscretions, I made a check list. And I checked items off that list with a mixture of both dread and satisfaction.

  Perfume that wasn’t mine staining his shirt? Check.

  Text messages from an unknown number, slipping through the cracks of my husband’s technology-ignorant fingers onto our shared computer, but missing from his phone? Check.

  Hotel rooms booked on a card I shouldn’t have known about, one I only discovered by receiving the statement in our teal mailbox? Check.

  We painted that mailbox together, by the way. It was one of the first things on the list I’d made when we bought our house. We’d both been covered in that teal paint — the color I loved so much in the store, but actually rather hated once it was splashed on our mailbox.

  But it didn’t matter the day we painted that mailbox.

  On that day, my husband kissed my paint-splattered lips and told me I was the only woman he would ever love.

  And I believed him.

  My husband was the kind of man who looked at me so adoringly, who said the sweetest things, that I was certain I could have tossed him into a pit of gorgeous super models and he wouldn’t have so much as even looked at them, let alone touch them. In fact, he’d be searching for me, calling out my name, seeking me out.

  My entire relationship with him, I’d believed every word he’d said — perhaps blindly, it would seem. I believed him when he cried the day he asked me to marry him, and when he told me over breakfast one morning that no one in this world made me happier than him. There was never any reason to suspect him. There was never any reason to not feel safe.

  And yet…

  The last little box on the list I made when I first suspected my husband was cheating on me was visual proof. I had the clues, the emails and texts, and late nights with no alibi. But it wasn’t until I followed him, until I saw with my own eyes that his hands could hold another woman the way he held me, that his mouth could kiss hers, that his smile could beam for someone other than me.

  And when that box was checked, I still didn’t cry. Or scream. Or throw anything, though I did debate shoving my heel down on the gas pedal of my car and leaving it there as I drove toward where they stood, kissing and laughing, pulling luggage out of my husband’s car.

  No, instead of letting emotion rule me, I did what I do best. Just like with the rest of my life, I made a plan.

  I focused on what I could control.

  I could control me, what I would say, what I would do. I could control who I told, how our families would find out, how we would go about the divorce. I could control who got what, how assets were split, and where we each would stay as the signatures were scrawled against cold, lifeless pieces of paper that would end our young marriage.

  I could control how I would tell him that I knew, and could temper my emotions as I told him.

  Perhaps all of this was why, sitting across the table from my husband, my heart was beating rapidly, loud and thunderous in my ears as it threatened to bang right out of my ribcage. It could have been why my breath was shallow, my eyes dry from not blinking, my mouth clamped shut without a single word to offer, though I had so many planned in my head.

  I had a plan. I knew how this conversation would go. I had everything in control.

  I know about her. I know what you’ve done. I’m leaving. We’re done.

  But my uncanny sense of control and my ability to make a checklist didn’t matter once I actually sat down at our kitchen table across from the man who’d lied to me for years.

  Because he spoke first.

  And everything changed.

  “Gem,” he rasped, his voice broken under the weight of his words. “Gemma, did you hear me?”

  “I heard you,” I managed.

  My own voice mirrored his, broken and raspy, laced with dread. Of course, he assumed it was because of the blow he’d delivered. My sad-eyed, exhausted husband thought he’d broken my heart with his news. But the truth was my dread was born of a different source. It was simply me mourning the absolute conviction with which I’d believed in my plan and its certain success.

  Now, I had no plan.

  Now, my cheating husband and his secret lover were not the center of this conversation.

  Now, my cheating husband had cancer.

  The kind that couldn’t be fought.

  The kind that would end his life.

  Soon.

  It’s okay, I tried to assure myself, pressing a hand to my chest so I could feel how fast my heart was beating beneath my ribcage. Just make a new plan.

  But, as it went with my special brand of anxiety, my plans not working out the way I envisioned them often left me grappling. Suddenly, everything I thought I had on a leash was running wild, and no matter how I tried to talk myself down, I couldn’t. Every time that happened — every time my plan went wrong — my emotions would win, all logic gone, all sense of what should be done lost like a whisper on a breeze.

  “Please,” he whispered, grabbing the legs of my chair and pulling me toward him. The wood made a terrible noise as it rubbed against our kitchen floor, sparking a wave of chills from my ankles to the top of my spine. “Don’t cry, my sweet gem. It will be okay. We’ll be okay.”

  He wrapped his arm around me, one hand cradling my head into his chest as the other caressed my back. Those hands had touched another woman, and they were now touching me, and I wanted to pull away just as much as I wanted to stay there forever.

  He was going to leave me. He was going to leave this world.

  My tears felt like they belonged to someone else as they soaked his sweater, and I tried to decipher where they came from. It didn’t take long for me to realize they weren’t born from one, singular source, but rather from all of them — like a waterfall made of glaciers melting all at once in the first warm wave of spring.

  My husband was cheating on me.

  He loved another woman — one who did not bear my name.

  I would be alone, because I would lose him.

  Only now, it wouldn’t be because of his infidelity. The choice to
be alone would not be made by me standing tall, demanding more, not accepting his affair.

  Instead, he would fade from the Earth and I would remain, mourning him along with his other lover.

  Maybe I cried because, though I had a plan, I secretly prayed he would thwart it. Perhaps I half-envisioned me leaving him, chin held high as I walked away, and half-envisioned him begging me to stay, promising to relinquish his love affair, for our marriage meant more to him than she ever could.

  Regardless, it didn’t matter now.

  Now, I had a cheating husband who would never learn my knowledge of his infidelity.

  Because now, I would never tell him I knew.

  What would be the objective? With a blow as hard as terminal cancer, was there really any point to leaving him now, to letting him fight the final weeks of his life alone? Was there any point to telling him I knew about the other woman he touched, other than satisfying my need to feel in control, to shove my proof in his face and say Ha! I know what you did!?

  Death has a funny way of putting life into perspective for us. And what had once been so important to me — that need for vindication I held so tightly on my drive home — didn’t seem to matter now. There was really only one thing that did.

  I loved him.

  That emotion was easy to pin down.

  And because it was the only thing I could truly grasp, I held onto it tightly, knuckles white and aching. Carlo Mancini was my husband, and I, his wife. He was my everything — and that was still true, regardless of who else he’d shared a bed with.

  So, I pulled back from his embrace, and kissed his lips — lips I always thought would be only mine to kiss — and I told him I loved him. I told him I was there. I held his hand and told him that, come what may, he had me by his side.

  And by his side I stayed, until the very day he died.

  Somewhere in that warped, whirling span of time, I think a part of me died, too.

  I watched cancer wither my strong, commanding husband into nothing but skin and bones. I watched his eyes grow hollow, his lips ashen, his hands weaken where I held them in mine. Every day that I looked in the mirror, I watched my own eyes change, a hardness settling in. I watched a twenty-nine-year-old girl become an old woman in just weeks — weeks that felt like years, but flew by like days.