Page 76 of Part & Parcel

He forced Kelly to turn his head and look behind them at his cabin. It was on the smaller side, less than a thousand square feet total. The sloped roof hid the little loft bedroom, and the balcony over the wide deck sat nestled amongst flower pots and rustic greenery. The deck and its rockers were weathered by nearly ten years of living, and the old Jeep sitting under a little carport off to the side had hosted many of their forays into the mountains.

Kelly stared at the cabin, and Nick wrapped his arm around Kelly’s shoulder. “This is home,” Nick whispered. “You found it. We all did, and none of us would have been able to do that if you hadn’t been brave enough to try it first.”

Kelly lowered his head, then glanced sideways at Nick and over his shoulder at the others. Nick couldn’t see the way they were reacting, but judging by the light in Kelly’s eyes, they were all backing Nick up.

“Doc,” Owen said slowly, almost like he wasn’t sure if he should interject in the moment. Nick and Kelly both turned to him. “I wouldn’t have stayed in San Diego if you hadn’t stopped here. If we’d all still been together? I . . . I wouldn’t have had the nerve. And I’ve found my life there. That’s because of you.”

Digger hummed and nodded. “I’d never have gone back. I’d have stuck with y’all. I still would, if you needed me. But I never would have gone back to Louisiana, and I’m happy there. I’m with Ozone—that’s only ’cause you had the balls to do it first.”

Kelly snorted, and when Nick glanced at him he was smiling.

“I blamed you too,” Ty admitted. “For a while, after you left. But it was always me. We all know it was me.”

“That’s not true either,” Kelly practically snarled. “Six, you been blaming yourself way too long for all that. You did the best you could. The NIA wanted us, and you didn’t let them have us. What they did to Nick, that would have been all of us. You were looking out for us, you saved us all.”

Nick watched wistfully as Ty’s shoulders seemed to square a little, like he was shaking off a weight he’d been carrying for too long. Nick leaned closer to Kelly and touched his hand to the small of Kelly’s back, then pressed his lips to Kelly’s cheek so his words would be for Kelly’s ears only. “That’s why we need you,” he said with a tilt of his head toward Ty. “That’s why Sidewinder never died. ’Cause you’re the heart of it.”

He pulled back and cocked his head at Kelly, meeting his eyes and nodding. Kelly was chewing on his lip as he met Nick’s eyes, and then he began to smile when he looked back at Ty.

“Okay,” he said with a curt nod. He smiled a little wider, that sparkle coming back into his eyes as he glanced around at them all. “Okay.”

Nick couldn’t help himself as Kelly seemed to simply blossom right in front of his eyes. He grabbed Kelly by his shirtfront and pulled him closer to kiss him. They were met with a variety of groans, teasing whistles, and threats about getting the bad-kitty spritzer from the car.

Nick could feel Kelly smiling against his lips, and he hummed when he forced himself to step away. His hand was still cradling Kelly’s face, though, and Kelly was still grinning.

“Who wants a meal that didn’t come out of a gas station?” Nick asked the others without looking away from Kelly’s eyes.

“I’ll get the kitties,” Ty said, heading for the car.

Digger grunted and stomped after him. “I ain’t eatin’ those cats, Grady!”

Over the next few days, they put Eli’s letters aside and turned instead to another higher power to dictate their travel choices. The dime Nick had found on the side of the road was deemed the Dime of Fate, and whenever they came to a proverbial fork in their road, they would flip it to decide which way they would follow. The dime saved their lives in the desert of Arizona, preventing them from getting even more lost while they were looking for a cliff that didn’t exist. The dime was how they wound up with mild cases of food poisoning at a restaurant in New Mexico, and also how they almost lost SeymourandDigger over the edge of the Grand Canyon.

Ten days after they left Kelly’s cabin, the Dime of Fate delivered them relatively safely to Las Vegas, where they turned in Helen to the rental car agency, and then continued on to San Diego. There they got to meet Riley Williams, the woman who’d stolen Owen’s heart instead of his security clearance like he’d suspected of her when they’d first met. Kelly was surprised to realize that Owen seemed very serious about her. They spent the night at Owen’s penthouse loft in the building owned by Caliburn Technologies, and Owen finally got a taste of the agony Nick, Kelly, Ty, and Zane had been suffering under Eli’s sexbargo. They left with promises to return soon, when they weren’t under orders from a higher and more insistent power, to get to know Riley better.

In New Orleans they were met at the airport by one of Digger’s cousins with a pickup truck that smelled like fish, and they rode in the back out to the little backwater town Digger had grown up in. They were welcomed in by his mother and force-fed something that Kelly knew they would all regret eating later, and then Digger took them to his new home, an adorable little bungalow in the Garden District.

He’d grown tired of the paranoia, he claimed, and dug up his share of the money they’d all received and finally bought a house. A home.

It was a really nice place, too. It was a duplex, but Digger had purchased the entire structure with plans for renovating it. The only thing he’d done so far, though, was blow a hole in the wall that separated the two units. Nick kept going on and on about the historic details while Digger showed them around, and Digger lit up like a Christmas tree when he started in on the history of the more than hundred-year-old house.

They were still sitting in the living room, drinking and talking about molding and original wood floors when Kelly gave up and told them good-night. He headed for the shower, a last-ditch attempt to ease the kink in his back he’d been suffering from the last couple nights.

Half an hour later, he was moving stiffly when he came out of the bathroom. He’d hoped the steamy shower would loosen up his back, but it didn’t seem to have done much for him. He was going to have to give in and ask Nick for one of his pain pills. He turned and twisted as he patted at his dripping hair with a towel, grimacing as his back teased him with the promise of a few nice pops but never delivered.

“You okay?” Nick asked.

Kelly glanced up, surprised to find Nick there. “Hey,” he said, feeling stupid almost immediately. “I thought you’d still be out there with Digger.”

“We called it a night.” Nick was lurking near the end of the bed, fiddling with the buttons of his shirt. He didn’t raise his head again before adding, “You look like you’re in pain.”

Kelly cleared his throat, hating that he felt awkward with Nick in the room. He had to look back through nearly fifteen years of knowing the man to remember a single time he’d felt awkward being alone with Nick. They’d been in a tiny back room of a church in Jacksonville, North Carolina. And Nick had been removing a dainty golden ring from his pocket to assure Kelly one last time that he knew where it was. Kelly’s heart had stuttered through the moment, and he’d chalked it up to prenuptial nerves.

He remembered the look in Nick’s eyes that day, though. Melancholy with a touch of fear. The day Kelly had said “I do” to a woman he’d convinced himself he loved was the day Sidewinder had begun to unravel. They’d been unraveling ever since. Kelly was beginning to accept that it wasn’t his fault, that things change no matter how much you pray they’ll stay the same. It still hurt him looking back, though.

This trip had been a balm on that old wound, with the entire group back together and enjoying antics like old times. They went hard from sunup until they collapsed in bed, exhausted, with no energy or time to be awkward with each other. Now, Kelly could feel the spaces around them opening up to give them room to breathe. And it was . . . uncomfortable.

When Kelly realized his mind had wandered, he blinked at Nick, and his body flushed with heat. “My back’s all torqued up,” he managed to answer.

---