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With that, she pushes back from the table and stomps away.
The brothers turn angry glares to Cole. Luna and I meet wide-eyed gazes, her eyes behind black-framed glasses that amplify them, and I can read that she feels like an intruder into this family situation the same way I do. I should’ve given Cole some privacy, but he wrapped his arm around my back several minutes ago and has been squeezing my hip like he wanted me to stay.
“Oh, you dunfuckedup now,” Kyle drawls out, sounding slightly amused at the drama. “I hope you know her Amazon password because you’re gonna need to buy her entire wish list to apologize forthat.” He waves his hands around, indicating the entirety that is Cole.
Cole sighs, watching Kayla make her way through the room and out into the hallway.
He leans over and whispers into my ear. “Wait right here. I’ll be back, okay?”
I nod, and he presses a quick kiss to my temple before following after Kayla. I’m glad he’s going to make amends with her, except when he leaves, I’m stuck with four Harrington brothers who’re staring me down like I’m the enemy.
“What do you know?” Carter demands. His blue eyes are nothing like Cole’s, which telegraph his every thought and emotion, at least to me. Carter’s gaze is cold, calculating, and vaguely threatening.
I bite my cheeks, literally suck them in fishie-style and bite down on them to keep from speaking. My default mode is full-ramble, and that’snotwhat I should do right now. I can nudge, I can encourage, I can highlight Cole’s awesomeness, but anything Cole tells or doesn’t tell his family is his choice to make, not mine.
So I shake my head, begging them with my eyes not to ask again.
Surprisingly, it’s Luna who backs me up. “Leave her alone. Her loyalty’s to Cole, not you, and rightfully so. If you want to fix things with your brother, that’s your responsibility, and Janey’s not a shortcut to figuring him out.”
“Fix things with him? You mean he needs to fix things with us,” Cameron counters.
Luna shrugs as she sadly declares, “Sounds like nothing’s getting fixed, then.”
I think my planCole: Recognize the Awesomenessjust took a sharp nosedive into the failure zone.
CHAPTER22
COLE
“Kayla!”I shout down the hall, but she doesn’t turn around. In fact, I think she walks faster, trying to get away from me.
Going so far as to enter an office, she tries to shut the door in my face, but I push back, forcing my way in. “What the fuck?” I mutter as she finally gives in.
She whirls away so I can’t see her face, and though her back is ramrod straight, I have the sense that she’s hiding tears from me. “Kayla?” I say, quietly this time.
“Just leave me be, Cole. It’s fine. Give me a few minutes. I’ll be back.” Her speech is stilted and nasally. Clearly, she’s crying or on the verge of tears.
“I didn’t know,” I confess. It’s only a few words, and to some, it might seem like the barest of revelations, but to me? It’s significant.
Kayla spins around, her eyes bloodshot and glittery but filled with fire. “You didn’t know what? That we all talk about you, comparing notes on who talked to you last or saw you last because we’re worried about you? That every time there’s a plane crash, shooting, natural disaster, or anything tragic in the whole world, we’re terrified that you’re there because we have no idea where you are or what you’re doing... ever?” She’s pacing back and forth across the room, her voice getting louder and more hostile with every lap.
“Or how many times Mom has called ‘mandatory dinners’ over stupid shit so we can lay eyes on you as proof of life? That Cameron doesn’t tell Gracie you’ll be at her school events because he doesn’t trust you’ll actually come and the last thing that little girl needs is another adult in her life who doesn’t show the fuck up when they’re supposed to?”
She pivots, making another trip back across the room. “Or that we hate that you keep yourself apart from the rest of us like we’re not worth your oh-so-valuable time? That we tell each other all kinds of stuff, but you don’t trust us with anything? I don’t even know where you live, for fuck’s sake. Janey FBI-ed that info, and I wanted to scratch her eyes out for it because you let her in, but not any of us.”
I try to speak, but she cuts me off. “I’m not mad at her for it. I’m glad, actually! Because I want you to have someone who makes you happy, even if it’s not us. But selfishly, I want my brother. I wantus.” She waves a hand around wildly, indicating me and her, and all the rest of my siblings back in the reception. “We all do. Except you.”
Her every word is a stab to my heart. I didn’t know...any of that. I thought they didn’t care whether I was there or not, if they talked to me or not, even if I existed or not. I had no idea they were watching the news and comparing notes, tracking me down, and protecting my beloved niece from me.
I shake my head, trying to make sense of everything I’ve always thought with what Kayla’s saying now.
Kayla gives me point-two seconds to process, and when I don’t spill my guts, she strides toward the door, shoulder bumping past me. “Fucking asshole.”
“Wait.”
To my surprise, she does.
Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, though. That’s the problem. Kayla’s always been there for me. I just thought it was begrudgingly so. Maybe that’s not the case and I only felt that way because of my own misguided perceptions.
