by Cari Z
“Uh…surprise,” I said, hating that I sounded so small saying it. This was it. Now he was going to—
And then he blushed, blushed as he stared at me, and I thought, Oh. Hey. Maybe this isn’t over before it begins after all.
Chapter Three
Max
Oh my god. Little Nicky had become Dominic, a man with a couple of inches on me, broad shoulders like his brother, and a face that had gone from the heart-shaped cherub of his youth to a sword-wielding Archangel Michael. He looked a lot like Hal now, actually, except without the permanent lumps across the bridge that were the results of a few broken noses. His hair was a couple of shades lighter and a little longer, with just enough curl in it that it would wrap around my fingers if I ran my hands through it.
Or if I grabbed it. Not hard, just enough to—
“Max. Max!” Hal snapped his fingers at me, and I blinked.
“Sorry,” I said, belatedly realizing that I’d been staring at Dominic for the past ten seconds without speaking. “Right, sorry. I’m—” Stunned. Stricken. In awe. “I’m tired,” I finished, because there was honesty and then there was being frank to the point that it was uncomfortable, and I didn’t want to make Dominic or Hal uncomfortable.
“Tired?” Hal caught my chin with his hand and turned my head to the side, looking at the bruised half of my face with concern. “Or maybe you’re concussed. Do we need to get you to a doctor?”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not concussed. I hit the airbag, not the steering wheel, and I wasn’t going all that fast in the first place. I’m just a little banged up.”
“Max was in a little bit of shock,” Dominic told Hal. “But I’ve been keeping an eye on him, and there’s no concussion.”
I was touched that he’d been looking after me, but Hal only frowned, no doubt focusing on the shock part. “There’s an urgent care place not a mile from here. It wouldn’t be out of the way.”
“Hal.” I pulled his hand off my face but didn’t let it go immediately. Hal was a worrier, and naturally tactile. When I’d come out in high school, everyone had assumed Hal and I were dating, we were so close. That assumption couldn’t be farther from the truth—Hal had wanted to talk about nothing but girls and football, even when he had his arm slung around my shoulders or his feet buried under my legs on the couch.
Dominic, on the other hand…
What was I saying again?
“I really am fine. It’s just some bruises and a few scrapes, not worth going to a doctor for. If I feel worse in the morning,” I continued, already knowing what he was going to say, “I promise we can go then. But after the long drive, and the meeting I spent all morning getting ready for…” I shrugged. “I really am just tired. And I need to get back to the city tomorrow.”
“Yeah, you mentioned that earlier, but…” Hal shared a look with Dominic I wasn’t sure how to interpret. “The weather is supposed to get worse before it gets better. Plus, with your car being broken, you’re not going to make it back to the city until Monday.”
Shit. I shut my eyes and resisted the urge to snap, because the universe really didn’t seem to understand just how little I wanted to be in Edgewood for an entire weekend. I wanted to go back to how things had been five minutes ago, when Dominic was just the incredibly good-looking cop who’d picked me up off the side of the road and shared dinner with me, instead of the brother of my best friend who I hadn’t even recognized. I wanted to see the girls and sleep in the cozy spare room, make pancakes for everyone in the morning, then get back to work securing this client and my future with the firm.
Looked like I wasn’t going to get what I wanted, and that was no one’s fault. If I had to stay in Edgewood, at least I’d brought my laptop and could still get some work done. “Fine. That’ll give me extra time to get my car to a mechanic and find a rental. But I’m definitely leaving on Monday.”
Hal clapped his hand on my shoulder—gently, for him, but it was right where the seat belt had dug in when I hit the snowbank. I held in my wince, though. I didn’t need another push toward urgent care. “The girls will be thrilled. Let’s get back home, huh? You can get a shower and jump into bed.”
“Sounds great,” I said then turned to Dinah. “What do I owe you for our dinners?”
She and Dominic began to protest at the same time. “No, honey, it’s on the house—” “Really, I can’t let you—”
“What’s that?” I held a hand up to my ear. “Forty dollars? Damn, prices have gotten steep around here since I’ve been gone.”
Dinah put her hands on her hips and huffed. “Forty dollars? For two burgers? Does this look like the Ritz to you? Ten bucks a plate, same as it was before. If you’d wanted goat cheese, now, that would be extra.”
“Twenty, got it.” I pulled two twenties out of my wallet and put them down on the table. “Keep the change.”
“Max, no, that’s way too much!”
“Don’t tell me how to tip my favorite waitress,” I told her and held out my hand to shake. “Thanks for the burger. It was delicious.”
“Oh, stop that,” she muttered and used my hand to pull me in for a hug. She was warm, smelled like coffee, and reminded me a little bit of my mother.
Once I let her go, I looked at Dominic, who was frowning at the money. “Please let me treat,” I said to him. “It’s the least I can do for making you go out in this weather to rescue me.”
“Rescuing people is my actual job, Max. I don’t mind doing it.”
It gave me a weird little thrill in my chest to hear him call me Max. “Still.”
“All right, Mister Moneybags, enough.” Hal took me by the shoulder and turned me toward the door. “Let’s get out of here.” He called back to Dominic, “You still coming over tomorrow?”
“Yeah, I’ve got the next few days off,” he said.
“Great. I’ve still got to work a half day tomorrow morning, and with all the fresh snow we’ve gotten, the girls have plans for you, Uncle Nicky.”
Dominic smiled. It made his whole face light up, and I suddenly couldn’t look away. “Tell them to get ready, because I won’t go easy on them like I did the last time.”
“Marnie said you cried,” Hal retorted, opening the door. The merry little jingle of the bell wasn’t enough to distract me from the sudden blast of painfully cold wind. I zipped up my jacket and shoved my hands into the pockets.
“Anybody would cry after taking an ice ball to the face!” Dominic called out as the door closed behind us.
…
Hal’s familiar old Toyota truck was still warm inside, thank God. He grabbed my bag from Dom’s Jeep and slung it into the backseat as I settled in the front. It was a little strange, seeing Steph’s car seat back there. Ariel had always kept it in her car—the family car, she’d called it. Hal’s had been almost solely a work vehicle.
He caught me looking, of course. “She took the CRV with her,” he said gruffly as he shut the door. “Guess I should count myself lucky she bothered to take the car seat out before she left.”
“I’m so sorry.” It was inadequate, like the first and seventh and tenth times I’d told him that over the phone, yet it was all I could think to say. “And she hasn’t…you haven’t talked for…”
“About a month,” Hal said, his lips thin. “She called around once a week before that, and then last time she made it clear she wasn’t coming back, so I just…stopped answering. We communicate via email, mostly.”
Ouch. That had to be hard on the kids. “How are the girls handling it?”
“They’re fine. They’ve got me, they’ve got Nicky, and they go to a counselor the school recommended once a week.” He started up the truck then glanced at me. “You’re not gonna have a problem with my brother being around, right?”
I frowned. “Why would I have a problem with that?”
Hal shrugged. �
�Fuck if I know, but it seems safer to ask outright than to assume things anymore.”
“I won’t have a problem with Dominic being around. He’s your family, Hal. Of course he should be around, especially with everything that’s going on.” He hadn’t been, not for years, thanks to his time in the army. I’d seen Hal’s sister Christine twice in New York, but never Dominic.
“Good. You just seemed a little weird with him back there.”
I didn’t bother to resist the urge to roll my eyes. “Because I haven’t seen him in a decade and he’s changed, a lot. Plus, I didn’t recognize him when he came to pick me up. It’s embarrassing.” And he’s hot, and I didn’t want Hal to know I was having those kinds of thoughts about his little brother. I wasn’t sure I wanted Dominic to know I thought that, either. What were the odds that he was gay?
Actually, from what I remembered of him, the odds weren’t terrible. He hadn’t dated, he’d never been interested in girls—or in guys, honestly—but he’d been young. Fifteen to twenty-five was a huge jump in a person’s development. Probably almost nothing I knew about “Nicky” could apply to “Dominic” now.
“It’s a fuckin’ godsend that he’s back,” Hal confessed, turning his truck out of Dinah’s parking lot and onto the main road. “He’s real good with the girls, and he wasn’t around a lot before this, so he’s still kinda novel to them. Makes them want to listen to him, better than they listen to me sometimes.”
“He sounds like just what they need.”
Hal jammed the shifter into third gear. “What they need is their mother, but me and him are what they got. It’s better than nothing, I guess.”
I remembered how hard it had been to go from having two parents to rely on to just one. It hadn’t been easy on my mother to go it alone, either. I hated that she and Hal had that in common now. “The girls adore you,” I said firmly. “You’re their rock. You always have been.”
Hal didn’t speak for a few minutes, just kept his eyes on the road and drove. I let the silence linger and looked out at the kitschy streetlights, the thick, clean snow glowing in heaps beneath them, and listened to the sound of the truck’s tires navigating us safely through the mess of it all. “I worry about them,” he said right before we turned down his street. “I worry all the time I’m not doin’ enough. Those kids ought to have more than me. How can I—I’m not their mom, Max. I can’t be what she was to them.”
“Ariel wasn’t able to keep being that, either,” I pointed out as gently as I could. “And that’s not on you. They’ll get used to things being different, as long as some things stay the same. That’s you, Hal, you and Dominic.”
I’d moved on after my father’s immense screw-up and the subsequent divorce, if leaving town and not returning for ten years counted as moving on. The girls would, too, especially with a dad as doting as Hal on their side.
And I’d do my part as well, making sure this short visit was the most fun they had this Christmas.
…
Hal’s house looked very little like the Christmas pictures I used to get from them—the inflatable Santa in his sleigh was missing from the front lawn, there were no reindeer made from fragile white branches perched on the porch, and the only lights illuminating the house were a single strand of blue icicles hung over the door, which was lacking its usual wreath.
Shit. Things were different.
“It’s late, for the girls,” Hal said as he shut the engine off. “They might be asleep.”
“I don’t think that’s the case,” I replied, seeing two little faces peeping through the corner of the big bay window. They vanished when I got out of the truck, and a moment later, the front door opened.
“—phanie! Marnie! Shoes!” a woman’s voice called, but the girls were already down the porch steps, grinning as they ran onto the snowy front walk toward us.
“My feet!” Marnie squealed, bouncing from foot to foot dramatically. “Save me, Max!” She threw herself at me hard enough that I almost fell over, and I was grateful she was too close to see the pained wince that twisted my face for a second. I was going to be hurting for the next few days for sure. I barely had a chance to pick her up before Steph, younger than her sister by three years and a lot slower, caught up, her little hands pawing at the edge of my jacket as she whined.
“My little hellions,” Hal said with a smirk as he came around the truck with my bag in one hand. He picked up Steph and tucked her against his side, managing to keep a hold on her tiny body despite her wriggling. “What were you girls thinking, runnin’ out in the snow like this? You should have stayed inside with Phee!”
“But then we couldn’t have said hi to Max,” Marnie said, her voice full of duh undertones.
“You could have said hi to him once he was inside.”
“It’s not the same! And he always meets us in front of his building in New York!”
I did, but only because they wouldn’t make it up to my apartment any other way. I hadn’t realized it had become something of a ritual in the girls’ minds. “Thanks for coming out to say hello,” I said, kissing Marnie on top of her head. Steph made an unhappy sound, so I leaned over and kissed her, too. “I’m freezing out here, though! Let’s go inside, huh?”
“Okay!” Marnie pushed out of my arms and ran back inside, mincing the whole way and groaning about her too-cold toes. I exchanged a look with Hal that encompassed a whole conversation, starting with I would have carried her.
I know, but she apparently wanted to walk through the snow. Kids, huh?
Yeah, seriously. With that, Hal passed me Steph, who stopped struggling as soon as she was in my arms. She wrapped her arms around my neck and turned her face into the fleecy collar of my jacket, and my heart melted.
Mrs. Jackson, Hal’s longtime neighbor, met us at the door. She was an older woman around Dinah’s age, her hair mostly white, wearing a Christmas tree sweater with actual glowing lights on it. “Sorry about that,” she said to Hal with an eye-roll. “I’d have gotten them into their boots before you showed up if I’d known they were going to try and turn themselves into little snow angels.”
“They’re wily that way,” Hal agreed, setting my bag down in the foyer before pulling the lady into a hug. “Thanks for lookin’ after them. I really appreciate it, Phee.”
“Oh, it’s no problem.” Her sigh was a little melancholy. “It’s the other grandparents’ turn to have Vanessa and her kids for the holidays, you know. I miss the chaos.”
“Come over anytime you want some more of it.”
“I’ll do that.” Mrs. Jackson looked my way, but thankfully she didn’t ask any questions. I’d had enough interrogation for one night. “It’s nice to see you again, Max.” There was nothing but real welcome in her voice, and tension I was barely aware was painfully stiffening my shoulders and neck flowed out of me. I had to stop freaking out inside when I met anyone in town who wasn’t Hal or his family.
“Thank you,” I replied. “It’s nice to see you, too.” It actually was—Mrs. Jackson had always been friendly to me when Hal and I were kids, even though her daughter Vanessa had had the worst crush on me—unrequited, obviously.
“Mm-hmm. You all have a good evening. Bye, girls!” She waved to Marnie and Steph then walked out the door and shut it gently behind her.
Now that I was inside the house, I was relieved to see that the Christmas spirit hadn’t entirely deserted the Bell household. There was a tree in the far corner of the living room, so heavy with ornaments, lights, and tinsel that I was a little surprised the branches could hold it all up. Beneath it were a heap of bright, inexpertly wrapped presents, and paper snowflakes, snowmen, reindeer, and candy canes were stuck all over the walls as high as little hands could reach. “This place looks great.” I gave Steph another squeeze before setting her down on the carpeted floor. She smiled up at me, and it was like I could feel my blood pressure going down, just
by being with them. “Did you girls make the paper decorations?”
“Yes!” Marnie shouted from the dining room, where she was wiping her feet off with a dish towel. She had her dad’s thick, curling dark-red hair, spilling out of its ponytail holder in all directions, and his blue eyes and wide smile. “We made some in class and then my teacher taught us all how to make stencils so we could do more at home, and Daddy helped me cut them all out, and then Steph and I spent all day decorating them!” The pile of markers, crayons, glue sticks, and bottles of glitter on the dining room table attested to all the work she and her sister had put into things. “Do you like them?” she continued, trotting back into the living room and stopping in front of me. “I made most of them, and Steph did a few, too.”
Steph pointed at a very, very purple snowflake taped to the bannister of the stairs.
“Yeah, like that one,” Marnie said. “But I did the ones with the unicorn reindeer!”
Unicorn reindeer? Looking a little closer, I could see that some of the reindeer cutouts had not just a set of antlers, but tiny horns taped to their foreheads. “That is incredibly creative,” I told her. “They all look amazing.”
The girls beamed, and Steph took my hand. Her hair was still obediently lying in its braid, a redder shade than Marnie’s, and the face that looked up at me was the same heart shape as her mother’s. The only thing the girls had in common was their eye color and their verbosity—or, at least, that had been true the last time we’d visited. Steph had yet to say a single word tonight.
“I’m so happy you’re staying for Christmas!” Marnie said.
“Mmm, for a while anyway,” I replied, suddenly reminded that I was going to have to call Jessie tonight and cancel our meeting for tomorrow. It was hard to think about work when I was with the girls, but I knew I needed to.
If I wrote a list of what I needed Jessie to do, and worked from my laptop here, I should still be able to get everything ready by Monday.