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“I want to surprise the boys.”
“Surprise the boys? Are you buying them a house?”
Keaton, Knox, and Ford all owned homes in Whisper Lake. She knew because she’d sold them, so that left Seb. Was she going to buy Seb a house here? Was Seb going to live in Whisper Lake?
“No,” Elaine shook her head. “I’m buying me a house. I’m moving to Whisper Lake.”
“Oh, that’s…amazing. Yes, of course, I can show you some properties.” Kennedy dug in her purse to find a card and tried to hide the disappointment that she felt that Seb wasn’t going to be the newest Whisper Lake resident. She felt ridiculous that that was where her head had gone.
She needed to look at his behavior as a whole, not just replay all the things he’d said to her when they’d spent the night together. Actions spoke louder than words, and his actions were that he wasn’t even interested in being her friend.
“But I want it to be a surprise,” Elaine continued.
“Oh, how fun. Okay, um…” Kennedy pulled her card from her purse and handed it to her. “Here is my card, and if you want to give me your contact info, I will email you and get all the details about what you’re looking for, your budget, and all that good stuff.”
“Great!”
Kennedy handed her phone to Elaine who punched in her email and phone number.
“When is a good time for you?” Elaine asked as she handed the phone back to her. “The sooner the better.”
“Does tomorrow afternoon work?” Kennedy was working in the Snack Shop until noon, but she was free after that.
“Perfect! It was lovely to see you again, Kennedy!”
“You too, Mrs. Savage.”
“I told you, sweetie, call me Elaine.”
Elaine wrapped Kennedy in a warm hug. She hugged like a mom would hug. Or at least, how Kennedy thought a mom would hug. Her own mom had never been very affectionate, and neither was Nana.
Kennedy’s alarm went off. She forgot she’d set a ten-minute reminder that she had a call.
The women said their goodbyes as Kennedy made the short drive back to her house. She couldn’t help but think how lucky Laura was that she was going to have Elaine as a mother-in-law.
The woman was a force to be reckoned with and from what Kennedy had heard, she’d welcomed both Laura and Chrissy, who was married to Ford into her family with open arms.
That wasn’t something that she’d specifically written on her list of qualifications, but she hoped that if she was ever lucky enough to find her person, her mother-in-law would be as welcoming as Elaine Savage was.
19
Music blastedas he drove down the long road to get to his brother Ford’s house, where his nieces and mom were staying. The home was about ten minutes outside of town. Ford had moved there after he won the lottery and took an early retirement from construction. He’d picked that house because he wanted to be a hermit and the only other home in a five-mile radius was an abandoned ranch-style single-story that hadn’t been occupied in over ten years. It turned out, Ford’s loner-lifestyle was short lived. Six months after purchasing his house, Chrissy, who is now his wife, moved into the abandoned dwelling with her four kids and rescue dog, infiltrating his solitude.
A smile lifted at the corners of Seb’s mouth thinking about how funny it must have been for Ford to fall in love with a woman who had not one, not two, not three but four kids. Ford had raised his twins as a single father after their mom took off when they were three. And that was after he’d spent all of his teenage years raising Keaton, Knox, and Seb.
Ford had stepped up. He’d made sure that everyone ate, had clean clothes, and for the most part did their schoolwork. That last one had always been an issue with Seb. He tried to do his homework, but it just never made sense to him. He couldn’t read and comprehend like other kids in his class. And he was always distracted and anxious. He’d gotten into trouble on purpose. He’d talk in class, curse, write inappropriate things on the blackboard, ditch classes, he’d do anything and everything to get suspended because school had been so miserable.
Drawing was the only thing Seb was good at. He always had been. Ford still had some of his drawings from when he was like four. As a kid and preteen, he hadn’t realized he could make a career out of it. He just thought it was a hobby. That all changed one day when he was hanging out at the park because he’d ditched school. He was sitting on a picnic table doodling on a paper and a guy who ended up being his mentor, saw what he was free handing. He asked him what he was doing, why he wasn’t in school. Seb told him he hated school. Instead of lecturing him, like most of the other adults in his life had, he asked him if he wanted a job for no pay. Seb thought the guy was fucking with him, but he introduced himself as Ezra Hawk and explained he owned a tattoo shop and Seb could be his apprentice.
Seb would never forget walking in on his first day and having to clean the bathroom, mop the floors, answer phones, get coffee, unclog the toilet, make copies, basically do anything and everything the artists needed. The other three tattoo artists who worked at Ezra’s shop called him bitch-boy. And Seb loved every second of it.
He was only fifteen at the time, but he’d already lived with years of extreme anxiety because he had no idea what he was going to do to support himself when he became an adult. He hadn’t had a life plan like his older brothers and cousin had.
Ford had always been athletic and been able to fix and build anything. Maybe it was because he’d been the oldest, so he’d had more time learning from their dad, or maybe it was just a natural ability. He’d gotten a full-ride scholarship for college to play football, but left early when he found out that Tish was pregnant with the twins. He’d joined the Marines, gotten out and done really well in the construction field.
Knox was a genius. That wasn’t just a figure of speech. He literally had a genius-level IQ. He had also known from the time Seb could remember, that he wanted to follow in their grandad’s footsteps and join the Navy. Which he had done on his eighteenth birthday. He became a SEAL and retired last year after serving for twenty years.
Keaton had always been obsessed with MMA. He started wrestling when he was five then started taking jiu-jitsu at age ten. By twelve he had several stripes on his belt and had also started training as a boxer to round out his skill set. He’d started competing at sixteen and gone on to claim several world titles in MMA in his late teens and twenties.
