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Ryker, in full-face makeup and plastic barrettes, executed a military-looking pivot and was out the door as fast as if his ass were on fire, with Adele and Harvey lumbering down the stairs after him. When she turned, Bryce saw her nieces standing there, mouths agape.
“And for you, I expect your rooms to be spotless and the makeup put away. No dinner until it’s done, and no dessert unless it’s done well.”
Cecily’s eyes narrowed, and Addison’s lower lip began to quiver.
“B-but, Mr. Ryker said we could.” Fat tears rolled down Addie’s face. “An’ he looked bee-autiful! Why are you making us clean like Cinderella?”
“Because she’s the evil step-monster,” Cecily growled. Then she took her sister’s hand, leading her into their shared bedroom. “C’mon, before she makes us sweep the fireplace, too.”
“I’m not a step-anything. I’m your aunt. And we don’t have a fireplace,” Bryce called as they ran to their room. “But there’s bathroom floors to clean if you’re going to get sassy!”
The sound of June snorting made Bryce spin to glare at the tween.
“That went well.” June’s green gaze, so like Bentley’s, hit her guilt like a searchlight. “Making friends and stealing hearts, Aunt Beamer.”
Bryce snatched the iPhone from her. “I’ll add this to my steal, then. Cell phones are a privilege, not a right, and you just lost this privilege for the rest of the week, Smarty-McFarty.”
“It’s not fair!” June shrieked, then raced to her room, slamming the door with enough violence that the picture of Bentley and Heather fell off the wall, landing with a crash of glass.
Bryce stomped over, snatched the frame off the floor, and took it to the kitchen, scraping the broken bits of glass into the garbage.
Suddenly, hot fire laced her index finger.
“Shitwaffle!” She set the broken frame on the kitchen table, racing to the sink to wash her finger. Blood welled up along with her tears as she washed out the cut, the pain in her hand less than the hurt in her heart. Ripping off a mass of paper towels, she wadded them around her finger.
Then she slid down the counter to sit on the floor.
Shame, embarrassment, and the sickening feeling of failure congealed into a lump at the pit of her stomach. Bentley and Heather grinned down at her from the table, a large, triangular shard of glass pointing at their happy expressions as if to highlight the differences between capable people and her.
“Now what am I supposed to do?” she whispered, glaring at her brother’s smiling face. “I’m ruining everything. And it’s all your fault. I hate you for leaving me in charge.”
Then she put her head in her hands, and cried.
Chapter 8
Sometimes Ryker hated living in a town where everyone knew everyone else’s business. Like now. Only two hours after being kicked out of Bryce’s apartment, his brothers were banging open the door to his garage gym and interrupting his chest and biceps workout for what had to be some sort of intervention.
“Ah, we’re back in town just in time to catch you doing the glory muscles. Again.” Zander ran a hand through his shaggy locks as he crowded over the weight bench, examining how many plates were on the bar. “And you’re lifting like a bull, man. You need a spot?”
“Your leg looks swollen.” Drake’s keen eyes never missed a thing. “Is that why you’re not wearing your prosthetic? I thought you went to your prosthetist guy, Jeff, last month. Didn’t he adjust it for you?”
Ryker shifted his position, eyeballing his socket, which he’d left leaning against the bistro table by the Volkswagen front end. After getting home from Bryce’s, he’d swept the barrettes out of his hair, carefully dumping them into a compartment in his toolbox. Then he’d changed into shorts and a T-shirt and taken off his prosthesis, eager to have his leg free. He’d used his crutches instead, hoping to ease the blistering pain at the front of his shin about three inches below his knee, almost at the end of his residual limb. The hot spot screamed for attention, despite his prosthetist’s best efforts to carve out a bubble in the prosthetic to protect him from the outcropping of HO bone growth there.
“I don’t need a spot, Zan. And Jeff did adjust my leg.” Ryker answered his brother’s questions truthfully. Drake was an expert at sniffing out lies, and it was best to give a lie of omission versus an untruth unless he wanted his brother poking his nose in his business more often. Which he did not. “I had a couple hours free to work out, and I didn’t want to sweat inside my liner, so I took it off. What’s up?”
Although he didn’t come right out and ask “Why are you freaking here?” his tone implied it, and his brothers both picked up on it.
“We just got in from checking out an abandoned sanitarium for a potential reader event Kate and Imani are planning, and figured we’d swing by.” Drake peered at Ryker’s residual limb. Ryker knew he was seeing the red, irritated skin on the front of his shin where the bone had decided to grow, the cells there basically on overdrive, growing a useless, cauliflower-like offshoot on what remained of his amputated tibia. “You sure you’re okay, Ry? Your leg is really red. Mom called and said she’d heard there was some sort of dustup.”
“I’m fine.” Ryker bent his left knee back and forth to show his brothers his leg still worked. “There wasn’t a dustup. I was helping…a friend, and things got—”
Zander put out a hand. “By the blue eyeliner smeared all over your eye, and the…interesting shade of blush stuck to your sideburns, we get you, bro. No need to explain, and we are here for you in this transformational journey. What pronouns should we use, going forward?”
“Dick,” Ryker cursed at him. He swiped at his eyes, then his sideburns, growling at the evidence still there—evidence of another moment where he’d tried to do the right thing and it blew up in his face.
“Roger that. Dick/Dickish. Unusual choice for pronouns but fitting.” Zander sidestepped Ryker’s fist, and Ryker glowered at him.
“I’m not changing genders. Bryce’s nieces got bored, and I let them…You know what? It’s not any of your business.”
