by Emilia Finn
“You’d love it if I flew out early, huh?” He steps forward and stares straight down into my soul. “It would be perfect if I went back to school and gave you an open field to hang out with your ex.”
“Oh my God! Get over the ex thing. I’m not sure where you’re getting mixed messages, but I don’t want to hang out with him.” I turn away and head toward the door. “Stay here, leave, do whatever the fuck you wanna do, but if you decide to stick around, stay the hell away from me for twenty minutes. And don’t bring your drama out to my family. They already have bunches of their own.”
I push through the garage door with a little guilt gnawing at my stomach. Reid is my guest here, but I can’t muster the energy to make him comfortable in a strange place right now. He’s a grown man, and this is the second time I’ve been accused of liking the wrong guy when in neither case have I been guilty.
Guys project their insecurities onto me, and I’m the one having to pet their egos and make them feel better about themselves.
I blow through the kitchen entrance of my home, passing Biggie and Mom as they stand at the stove and pretend not to listen to my fight. “Not a word.” I stop behind the kitchen counter and yank the messy drawer open. “Not a damn word!” Every home on every street on the planet has one of these messy drawers where all the random shit ends up at the end of an exhausting day.
Well, it’s ten in the morning on my third day back home, and I’m already exhausted.
I snatch up a deck of playing cards and shove them into my back pocket, and with a glare for my watchful parents, I slam the drawer shut and walk out of the room.
Reid can sit in the garage until he gets an attitude adjustment. Or he can fly out early, and by the time I get back to school, maybe he’ll have changed his tune.
I move through my living room and past my sisters, then out my front door until I’m basically jogging down the steps and across the street. My garage door remains closed as I run up the porch across from ours and swing the door open. We don’t knock around here. Every home is communal for anyone that is part of the family, so I rush through my aunt and uncle’s living room, up the stairs, along the hall, and into Bean’s bedroom. “Get up.” I find Bean laid out on her bed watching YouTube clips on her laptop. I catch a glimpse of heels and butt cheek before I slam the laptop closed, then I toss it aside and drag her out of bed.
“What the hell!”
“Move your ass. Don’t bitch at me about it.” I drag her into the hall and down the stairs. We follow the steps I just took and rush through the living room, and when I swing the front door open, I jump back in fright when Mac stands at the door with his hand lifted to knock. “You can come too.” I grab his hand and drag them across the porch and down onto the grass.
“Smalls?” Uncle Jimmy stands at his door. “Are you gonna break the law?”
“No!” I drag my cousin and friend across Uncle Bobby’s yard and straight through until Bry looks up from his place on the couch. He’s Uncle Bobby’s thirty-years-younger twin, and with his mouth overflowing, and crumbs on his shirt, he looks the part of an overfed fighter. His chest is broad – he has a fighter’s chest – and his hair is messy, like all the hairdressers in town are on strike.
They’re not, of course. But it would seem every male with Kincaid for a surname has a problem with hair maintenance. It’s always too long, too shaggy, too casual.
“Wha’?”
“Let’s go,” I demand, then turn around again and lead my friends out of the house, glancing up to the gray sky as soon as I step onto the grass. Snow is coming tonight, and the air out here is frigid. But the wind is nonexistent for now, so I release Bean’s and Mac’s hands and storm toward the skate ramp we built in the driveway way back when I was barely thirteen.
I learned how to skate on this halfpipe, under the tutelage of my Aunt Britt – the original skater girl. It goes mostly unused now, and has for years, but it still stands, and that’s pretty special in itself, considering only one of the builders was qualified – the rest of us were kids.
It became our safe haven when we wanted independence, but were obviously not allowed to leave the estate without our parents. It became a hangout for the kids, and though our parents could look out their front doors and make sure we were safe, they could rarely hear our words unless we were shouting.
The halfpipe is where most of our crazy plans were made. It’s where friendships were forged, and though it’s been decided Ben has the balance of a baby giraffe and can’t skate for shit, he was here as often as we were. Bonds were formed on these sheets of wood, and it’s those bonds I’ve been without for three and a half years.
“Why are we here?” Bean steps onto the wooden platform beside me and rests her hand on my shoulder. “What’s going on?”
“Sit your ass down. All of you, sit down.”
“Is she having a mental breakdown?” Bry eats his sandwich, spitting crumbs all over the ground, and watches me with wary eyes. “Should we call the crazy hospital?”
“No! Sit down.” I yank the playing cards from my pocket, then grabbing Bean’s hand, I drop down and sit on the wet timber. “We’re bonding like the old days, and we’re not getting up until the sickness goes away from my stomach. Sit your asses down and love me.”
Mac chuckles, but he sits beside Bean and lays back so he rests against the vertical part of the pipe. He’ll turn twenty-one this coming May, seven years post heart transplant, and soon after his birthday, he’s due to attend his hearing with the fighting board. He and Bean have been working on his fitness ever since he was cleared to train a few years back, but though he’s come to the board time and time again to beg for a chance to fight, they say no.
You’re too sick.
You’re too much of a risk.
You’re too young.
Come back when you’re twenty-one, and we’ll reevaluate.
He comes of age five months from now, which is the exact month I sit my finals and flee that godforsaken college for good. Just a week after I come home, we fly out again to go to his hearing, and – in theory – take him out after for a celebratory beer and enough hot wings to choke a horse.
Five months from now, Mac goes pro, and we’re all going to be there for it. With or without Reid, I’ll be graduating college with a business degree I’ll never use, and when I come home with all of the fitness I left with, my gym schedule will skyrocket, and I’ll be going pro.
I already have the invitation Mac does not.
My name gets me through doors that his can’t, so now we’re just waiting for time. Time to grow older, to grow stronger, to graduate from a stupid school I don’t want to be at, and to make that debut we’ve both been working so hard for.
Bean is beginning her third year at school, so she doesn’t get to step up until she’s done, and because of the degree she chose – nursing, of course – it might be a while before she gets her chance at a belt.
If ever.
“What are we playing?” Bry shoves the last of his sandwich into his mouth. “Also, it’s cold as fuck out here. Where’s your brain, Smalls?”
“We’re playing poker. And stop being soft. You embarrass the family.”
“Ouch.” His eyes widen, but his chest bounces with muted laughter. “Is it the twelfth of the month, or what?”
“No.” I toss the empty card box at his head, but my bad mood makes way for a smile when he bats it away with lightning fast reflexes. “Five cards each.” I toss them down for each of us, and when, as a group, we quieten and take a look at our cards, my stomach finally begins to settle.
“Why’d Grandma say Turdsky at breakfast?” Bry studies his cards, but his eyes flicker up to me. “She said it to Roid.”
“Roid?” I frown. “You mean Reid?”
Bry chuckles. “No, I meant what I said. Why’d she say ‘Turdsky’?”
“Her boyfriend from high school?” Bean lounges back on the timber beside Mac, but she’s careful not to show her cards. F
riendships and loyalties go to hell once the cards come out. “His surname was Tosky, you remember?”
Bry scowls. “No. Why the hell would I remember my grandmother’s ex boyfriend’s surname? That’s gross.”
Bean rolls her eyes. “She told us that story a couple years back. She was basically betrothed to some fuckwit, Tosky. Shane, I think his name was. But Grandpa Bry hated him.”
“For obvious reasons,” I add.
“And so, with all that Kincaid wit we’ve been gifted with, he nicknamed the dude Turdsky just to mess with him.” She shrugs and looks to me. “I guess she’s saying Reid is your Turdsky.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I grumble. “Why can’t everyone just mind their own business?”
“Because that’s not what we do ‘round here,” Bry declares.
“So she’s calling Reid your Turdsky, which means he won’t be sticking around. It means your Bry is somewhere else.”
“Bet I know where he is,” Mac snickers as the estate gates slowly open. My eyes snap to the dented truck that rolls through, and though I will it not to, my heart stumbles. Not because of the man driving, but because of the truck itself. I spent a million hours riding in that truck…
With my best friend.
I lost my virginity in the back of that truck, and then we did it a second and third and fourth time in the days before I went back to school. I sat in the back and stargazed with Ben. We ate hotdogs in it. And because we don’t have drive-in movies in this town, we took our phones up to the Lookout and watched on those while snuggling under blankets.
My entire adolescence is tied up in that shitty old truck, and because the engine has a distinctive rumbling sound, Reid steps out of the garage and stares hard at my ex-best friend.
I’m mourning the loss of my best friend far more than I ever mourned the loss of a boyfriend. Without the first, we never would have had the second, and despite how much fun the second was, the first is how we began. It was the very beat of our hearts, and the foundations with which we came from.
Ben was a part of the very fabric of my soul, and now he’s out of reach for me.
Heat on the side of my head brings my eyes to Reid’s. He glares so hard that he makes my stomach drop, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I didn’t invite Ben here. I didn’t ask him to come right now, only ten minutes after my words with Reid. And I can’t ask him to leave.
He’s family, and our homes are always open to family.
Ben pulls up in my driveway, no doubt out of habit, and cuts the engine. Everyone who shares my last name feels the tension in the air. Ben sits in the truck for a full minute and stares at the front of my house, while Reid stares at me, and I stare between them both.
“Why’s he here?” Bean whispers. “Who invited him?”
“Probably Gramma,” I glower. “She gets off on fucking with me.” I climb to my feet with an old lady grunt and toss my cards down. I had a full house made up of aces and jokers. I would have won that hand, and now Ben has fucked that up, too. “I’ll go fix it.”
“Don’t step between them, Smalls.” Bean flips to her feet and grabs my arm. “Don’t get knocked out because they’re stupid.”
“I won’t.” I nod toward my front door. Then to Uncle Jack’s. “The cavalry is watching. They’ll run in before shit gets messy.” I dust my hands against my jeans, and scowl when I pat my ass and find the denim wet, but I step off the platform, only to stop halfway across the fifty feet that separate us when Ben walks to Reid and waves him into the garage.
“Oh shit.” My walk turns to a sprint.
They’re going into the garage together. Alone. No way in hell am I letting them kill each other.
I sprint across the street and over my icy lawn, swing the garage door open, only to stop when my nose basically slams against Ben’s and his breath scorches my lungs. “Ben.” I grab his collar. “No.”
He pastes on a fake smile and nods. “Yes. Stay outside.” He tries to push me back and close the door, but I fight him on it. “Evie,” he grunts. “Fuck. Quit it.”
“You’re not allowed to fight my boyfriend, Ben!” I hold onto his shirt like it’s a Jiu Jitsu Gi and we’re on the mats. “Absolutely not.”
“Nobody said we were fighting.” He spins me when I push into him, wraps his arms around my stomach, and picks me up off the ground. I kick my feet into the air and scratch at his strong hands, but all he does is walk me halfway across the lawn and dump me down again. “Stay.”
“I’m not a dog!” I jump up and try to run at him. “Ben! I’m not a dog, and you don’t have permission to fight in my fucking garage.”
“Nobody said anyone was fighting!” He shoves me. Like we’re both men, and he’s looking to take this to the ground, he shoves me until I slam to the freezing grass, then he turns on his heels and moves back into the garage.
The snick of locks is so loud that my stomach drops. And when I look up to find Biggie standing on the porch, I expect him to get mad about Ben shoving.
Instead, he shrugs. “He told you to get out, honey.”
“Biggie! They’re gonna kill each other.”
“Might solve our problems,” he smarts.
I snarl and jump to my feet, but all he does is come down the steps and meet me on the grass.
“Leave it alone, honey. Sometimes shit needs to be dealt with directly. In the whole time Reid’s been here, he hasn’t snapped once. Says he has control of himself.”
“Ben is the poster child for anti-control, Biggie. He’ll snap.”
“Looked to me like he had himself under control. Sometimes men need a chance to talk. Leave it alone.”
Ben
Come To Jesus
I hear her outside. Arguing with her dad, snarling about the injustices she feels hard done by. I hear her bitch about me and my control, and though it should piss me off, what it does is remind me that I need to not kill this motherfucker simply because I have him in a garage full of potential weapons.
I have certain friends – we’ll call them friends of friends – who get creative when it comes to the people they don’t like. Those people haven’t confirmed their methods vocally, but being a cop’s kid, and best friends with Mac, whose daddy is one of those friends, means we hear shit that makes us smile and dream.
I walk by the tools hung on a board on the wall, frown at the tire iron laying haphazardly on the counter, then stop when the toes of my boots touch a wrench on the concrete floor. Aiden Kincaid is not a messy man, so seeing his shit tossed around makes me think I’m not the first person who’s been in this garage today.
I wish I’d taken a second to study Evie closer before tossing her on the lawn. But I take consolation in the knowledge that, if she had been hurt by this fucker, he’d be a dead man already.
“You can’t take a hint, Conner?” Reid tries his damnedest to act like he’s not worried, but a fighter knows a fighter. The stance. The feet. The hands. To a regular guy in the street, Reid might look relaxed, but to me, I see he’s ready to throw down. “How many times does she have to tell you to go away before you listen?”
I show him nothing. Not a single flicker of the emotion that tears through my heart. “I’m not trying to piss her off.”
“She doesn’t want you. She chose me, so you need to take a step back.”
I nod, move forward with slow steps, and spin the wrench between my hands. “I hear you. And I hear her too. She doesn’t want me. I’m not trying to hurt her, Baker. Believe it or not, I never set out to hurt her. Having me and you at…” I pause, consider my words, “odds, hurts her. Her past and her future are in the same place, and unfortunately for me, those two people aren’t the same person. They’re not both me. That’s gonna create tension no matter which way you slice the pie.”
“So you need to fuck off and leave her alone. She came home to see her family, not to see you.”
I chew on the inside of my cheek and nod. “I hear you. I’m gonna be cooler from
now on, so long as I can be certain you’re right for her.”
“You’re…” He stops. Frowns. “What?”
I shrug. “I want her to be mine.” I chuckle. “You have no fucking clue how much I want her back, but it would seem she doesn’t want me. More than my desire to call her mine, is my need to make her happy. If you’re it, then it would only hurt my soul to not like you.”
“So you’re…” His light eyes flicker between mine. “I don’t see your angle.”
“No angle. If you’re the one for her, and you treat her the way you’re supposed to treat her, then I’d like to… well…” I cough. “I won’t say we’ll ever be friends. But we could at least not want to kill each other every time we’re in the same room. Her family and I have history, so no matter what you do or however many different ways you whine about me, I will never leave your life. Around here, family wins. Every time. Which means for the rest of our lives, I’m gonna be at Christmas dinner. I’ll be at the gym. I’ll be around the estate. And if she’s copping shit from you because of that, then you and I will have problems.
“But,” I add. “If you can be cool, and stay happy in the knowledge that she’s yours and not mine, then we can all get along.” I stop at the front of Aiden’s truck and lean against the grill. “Tell me, Reid. Are you the right person for her? Are you good enough?”
He firms his lips and studies my eyes. “Yes. I can make her happy. We’re happy when we’re not here.”
“You’re gonna have to get happy while you’re here too. Because if you make this a chore, she’ll stop bringing you back to visit.” I stare into his eyes and flash a wolfish grin. “First time she comes home without you, I’m declaring it hunting season.”
“She won’t have you.” He stands taller, lifting his chin. We’re almost the same height. The same width. The same weight. Does Evie have a type? Or is she with him because he reminds her of me? “She made her choice, and we’ve been together far longer than you ever were.”