Page 24 of Daring You

“It’s good to see you, too, Lil! C’mere!” I say.

Once I shed my coat, I splay out my hands for Lily, but Locke retreats with a frown. “Subway. Hands. Wash.”

“Yessir,” I say, but make sure to blow Lily a kiss as I walk around him and into the kitchen. Her head is a halo of blonde curlicues, and her eyes as bright as a summer morning sky. She’s everything good that could come from the Hayes family.

“Ah!”

“I’m coming!” I say, and turn on the tap and rinse my hands. “Is Carter around?”

I pass the small kitchen table and notice it’s set up with brunch fare, croissants, danishes, and muffins laid out among eggs and bacon. A bowl of fruit is the centerpiece, and I’m fairly certain it has a drizzle of honey.

All Carter’s doing, because there’s no way Locke would think of garnishes.

“In the bedroom for a sec. She’ll be out soon,” he says.

I dry my hands and go back for Lily. She enters my arms smoothly, giggling and digging her fingers into my mouth.

“Ack—when’s she gonna grow out of this one?” I ask though her baby fingers.

“When people stop making funny faces while she does it,” he says. “Coffee?”

“Please.”

I perch Lily on my lap as I sit on the sole couch in the main room, tattered by Locke’s college use, and now a victim of Lily’s various excretions, crayons and finger-paint included. But I watch carefully as Locke makes his way to the coffee maker, noticing the lack of limp and how he breathes so much easier. The months of physical therapy after his accident—well, the accident after his big accident—has improved his walk so much, but I’m a fool to think it’s only exercise that has given him the long-forgotten bounce to his step.

A toilet flushes and I jiggle Lily on my knees, mentally pep talking myself into nothing but a cheery smile for Carter. If anyone is going to realize the crap-attack that is my life, it’s her, and I’m determined to keep Mike and I’s breakup as private as I can for as long as I can.

We already postponed our wedding meant to happen in October of last year, and that put enough detective in Carter’s stare. I’m not used to friends, or confiding in other women.

The bathroom door opens, cutting off my thoughts.

I forget how to smile.

“The best part about your bathroom,” Ben says to Locke as he ambles out, “is how you have a candle in there now. What’s it, pumpkin frost or some shit?”

“Like I care.” Locke scoffs. “All I know is, my home smells a helluva lot better with a chick in it. You should try it sometime.”

“Unlikely,” Ben mutters, and I wait for it. I brace for the moment when his attention slides over and he notices me, still as a snowman on the couch with a wriggling Lily on my lap.

Here it is. His blues, a shade lighter in the sky than mine, hit me, and I quell the skitter at my spine. Whether it’s revulsion or chemistry, I don’t bother to decipher it.

“Oh. Hey,” he says in a monotone.

“What are you doing here?”

I don’t give him a hello. He doesn’t deserve it.

Ben cocks a brow. “I was invited to brunch with the Hayes’. Guess you were included in that.”

I place Lily on the floor with her Disney Princess dolls and stand. “I have more right to be here than you.”

“All right, you two,” Locke says after a well-versed sigh. “Boxer gloves down.”

I have no idea why Ben hates me now. If anything, I’m the one who should harbor all the resentment. In the years between that time and now, Ben made a few half-hearted attempts at an apology, sometimes sincere, sometimes drunk, and I rebuffed every effort.

Mike’s last words hit me: I regret wasting all this time on a cold, dried-up, skinny bitch.

Maybe that’s exactly what I am. I level Ben with a stare.

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