Page 91 of The Route to You

Mom scowled. “Don’t Brenda me, young man. You might think I’m old and useless, but I’m still your mother.”

Grinning, Kyle bent and kissed her cheek. “Mom, you’re the prettiest girl I know. But if I can’t handle a box better than my sixty-year-old mother, I’m in a sorry state.”

“You had an accident!” she said sharply.

“Tell me something I don’t know.” He gave her a patient look. “It was six months ago. Both my doctor and my physical therapist are amazed at my recovery. You have to let it go at some point.”

He started back toward the house, Mom following at his heels. “You aren’t good at taking care of yourself,” she insisted, grabbing his elbow. “Always putting yourself in danger, never eating good, healthy food.”

Kyle breezed into the living room where his dad sat in his favorite recliner, reading a book. “Little help here, Jim?”

“Yes, exactly. Have your father help you move those damn boxes.” Mom left him and went over to Dad’s side. “You should be doing all that, Jim. Not Kyle. He’s going to hurt himself.”

Dad looked over his reading glasses at Mom. “I offered. He said no thanks .”

Mom shook his shoulder. “Just get up and help him already. You’re just being lazy.”

Shooting Kyle a weary look, Dad closed his book, set it aside, and rose. “You’d better let me help before both of us end up having to move to Sloan’s house.”

“And that’s another thing—” Mom started.

Kyle walked out before she could finish, hearing the low rumble of his father’s voice trying to defuse the situation. He headed for the guest bedroom. Elle had upgraded her parents’ home years ago, which had been wonderful for them, and made it easier for Kyle to think of it as their home, rather than his.

When he’d left the hospital and moved in here after Cabo , his family had packed most of his belongings from his apartment and put them in a storage unit, which meant he didn’t have too much to move from here—he’d almost finished.

He’d swing by the storage facility on the way to Sloan’s, grab some basics for a bedroom, and that would be that.

You moron.

The voice of doubt continued to ring through the back of his mind, like it had since he’d agreed to this whole thing with Sloan a few days earlier.

She wasn’t forcing him to do anything—hadn’t offered with a hidden agenda—but he didn’t have to overthink it to know it still probably wasn’t a great idea.

So why was he doing it?

He had plenty of under-explored options. He could ask Elle and Quinn to let him stay in the guesthouse off the back patio—enough space that any lingering tension between him and Elle would be almost avoidable with space.

Or, if he needed even more physical distance from his family, he could call up one of his local friends and see if any of them had a place for him to crash until the apartment was ready.

That would be safer.

But something about this . . . this thing with Sloan—the hold she still had on him, the way she’d charged her way into his life in January, whatever it was—made him feel that he needed to see it through. To whatever end.

A tap on the door brought him back from his thoughts. “It’s fine, Dad,” he said with a sigh. “You really don’t have to help.”

“If I look that much like Dad to you, you might need an eye doctor,” Liddy’s wry voice responded.

He whirled around where he stood, eyes widening.

“Lids!” A grin broke out across his face, and he crossed the room in three steps and caught her in a bear hug.

“Stop,” she said, laughing and tapping him on the shoulder. “Or I’ll have to tell Mom she’s right about you lifting things you shouldn’t.”

He rolled his eyes. “Don’t you have a job?”

“I’m just here for the weekend.”

“And why would that be?”