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I climb out the passenger side and look through the small window toward the house. “I know we talked about waiting until closer to the season start to move, but maybe we should do it sooner.”
He raises a brow from across the hood. “Yeah?”
I shrug. “Give ourselves a chance to settle in before things get too intense from your end. I don’t know, do something crazy like actually decorate.”
“I like the idea of decorating.” He holds out his arm, waiting for me to tuck myself in for the walk through the breezeway to the house. “Playing with that app for this place was actually pretty fun.”
I smile, remembering the way we curled up on the couch a couple weeks back, using his phone to pick colors for the walls we would never paint. Pretending for a night that this was a space we could keep.
When we get to the back door, I put a hand on his arm. There’s music and voices coming from the other side. “Did you leave the TV on?”
The corner of his mouth turns up as he lets us in. “Nope.”
The fumes hit me first, and then the shockingly bright walls of a hall no longer marred by zebra-patterned paint and Old West runners. “Wha—?”
My feet won’t move and a startled laugh slips past my lips. Because I don’t understand what I’m seeing, can’t wrap my head around the six guys from the team parked in Vaughn’s living room.
My brotherbeing one of them.
He’s sprawled in the corner of the couch, Xbox controller in hand, shouting about how Julia never would have let some shot through. He looks like he’s been there all day, and yet… I’m not getting a B&E-with-a-side-of-vandalism vibe off him.
“Greg,” I choke out. “What are you doing here?”
He cuts a quick look my way and hands off the controller to Popov. “Hey, Nat. Yeah… so umm… We’re hanging out, helping with some painting.”
“Painting?”
He pushes his mouth around until it’s finally muscled into something that looks like it’s supposed to be a smile. “Because we’refriends.”
There is something so wrong with those words coming out of Greg’s mouth. But then he’s walking over to where we’re standing to bust knuckles with Vaughn who asks if Julia made her flight okay.
I blink hard, wanting to be sure I’m actually seeing this. It’s so civil. So surreal.
Greg shifts from foot to foot. “You guys want a beer?”
Quinn walks in from the kitchen with a few bottles caught in his fingers and a streak of paint through his hair. “Step ahead of you. Hey, Natalie,” he says, pulling me in for a one-armed hug.
I’m pretty sure my mouth is hanging open, but the guys are making easy conversation about the moves on the Xbox and what would have happened if Rux played that way during the last game. Greg laughs, and there’s a crinkle at the corner of Vaughn’s eyes. Eyes that keep cutting over to mine like he doesn’t know exactly how I’m going to react.
Is this some kind of going-away gift? Like he wants to be good with the team that means so much to me before we leave for Oregon?
Vaughn takes me by the hand and leads me out to the patio. “Bet you never thought you’d see the day your brother and I made peace, huh?”
I give in to a quiet laugh and shake my head. “I guess if I’d known you planned to do it, I wouldn’t have doubted.” This is a man people should know better than to count out. “But why?”
“Because Greg is important to you. And what’s important to you is important to me.”
I reach up and stroke his cheek. “You don’t know how much that means to me.”
Vaughn’s phone pings and he goes stiff. Pulling back, he holds up a finger. “One sec, baby.”
He checks his phone with a grin as a chorus of distant pings and chirps starts up. What the heck?
“What’s going on?” Only, I’m pretty sure I know.Oregon.
Whoops and congrats sound from the guys inside.
“Looks like my contract has been finalized.”
