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“It’s Mom.” A pit settled in my chest as I said that, ignoring the rest of what he said. “She’s not going to do anything, and you know it.”
He was quiet. He couldn’t argue with that. “Still . . .” His voice was hoarse. “Come home. I want to spend time with my nephew while I can.”
He knew the deal. When he got out, he was excommunicated. If I went in, it’d be the same thing. They’d threaten me about reaching out to him. He and I would go back to being strangers.
That pit just kept growing and growing. “Give me the morning with Ramsay unless her mom kicks me out.”
“I can give her a call.”
“No. I’m going to tell her what’s going on. My other friends too. They deserve to know at this point. I’m leaving.”
“You want me to be there when you do that?”
That meant a lot. A whole lot. “No, I can handle it, but thank you for the offer.”
We hung up, and after using the bathroom, doing what I could to clean up, I made my way downstairs.
I stopped when I saw who was all there. “What the fuck?”
Ramsay was in the kitchen. Across the island were Clint, Trenton, and Alex. Rounding out the end of the island were Gem, Theresa, Alred, and just coming in through the main door was Kira.
Ramsay froze when she saw me, her eyes big. She had a piece of toast in her hand and dropped it. “You’re leaving?”
The doorbell rang.
Kira rounded to answer it, and Cohen and Amalia were there. Cohen tipped his chin up to me, giving me a tight grin. “Hey, man. You pulled your head out of your ass with Ramsay, huh?”
Amalia was fighting back tears, coming right to me. She threw her arms around me, her head pressing against my chest.
“Hey.” I folded her in and she drew back, her face streaked with tears.
She said, “You can’t go. You just can’t.”
“I—” I scowled at Cohen. “I was going to break that news myself.”
“Sorry, man, but no, I’m not.” He lost the tight grin, staring hard at me. “I overheard our uncles talking, and what the fuck, dude?” He was pissed. “I’m the one who called everyone. You can be pissed at me, I don’t care. I’m pissed at you, but seriously, man. They need to know. They deserve that. Ramsay deserves that. You deserve that.”
I wanted to glare at him, but he was right. Everything was fucked up.
“Save your breath. We already know.” Clint was eating the toast Ramsay had dropped earlier. He waved it at me, grinning before taking another big bite.
“You know what?”
He gestured to Cohen with the toast. “He told us the basic points when he called us to come over. After that, sorry, but it was a whole phone tree happening. Word’s out in the group.”
Fucking hell.
Alex gave Clint an exasperated look before shaking his head. “It’s not even like that either. We know. The three of us. Cohen told us enough to get our asses here, and then I called Miles. He told me the rest.” His eyes narrowed at me. “I’m your best friend and I find out like this?”
“It’s not like that.”
“You have people here who care about you. I care about you. We should know about this shit.”
“Also,” Clint held up his last piece of toast. “It’s cool how wealthy your family is, but we don’t give a fuck. Just saying that.”
“I might care.” Trenton smirked.
Clint snorted. “He’s the one who really doesn’t care.”
Alex spoke as if his brothers hadn’t interrupted, “We’ll do everything we can, anything we can, to help keep you here. You don’t have to fight him on your own. I don’t know what we can do to help, but we’ll try.”
Ramsay had come up to my side, her hand slipping in with mine. She leaned against me, tipping her head up and I saw everything in her eyes. I wasn’t alone. She was trying to remind me of that.
Fuck. Damn. Shit.
I shook my head. “I was going to tell you all anyway.” I caught sight of Kira and Ramsay’s other group. “Or some of you.”
Clint shoved back his seat, coming to stand by his cousin. He had a new piece of toast in one hand and threw his other arm around Ramsay’s shoulders. “I got no problem figuring out some way to immobilize your grandpops.”
Trenton stood too, holding a plate of eggs with one hand and shoveling them in with his other. “Me too,” he said around the food before swallowing. “We’ll put all our thinking caps on today and figure something out. You don’t need to go anywhere.”
I leveled Cohen with a look. “You told them about my mom?”
“Your mom? Just who your grandfather is and that he’s making you return to the family, which means you’ll leave here. That’s all they know.”
