Page 3 of Hearts of Fairlake

“That wasn’t a…never mind, that answers my question. Let’s try an easier one, what did you do to piss off Trevor?”

At that, I gave her a sheepish grin. “Honestly? Nothing. We all had rotating shifts for the night shift, but it’s been more demanding with the festival, and I ended up…kind of volunteering.”

Fairlake’s one-hundred-fiftieth anniversary was comingup, and the entire town was losing its mind in preparation. It would be the only kind of celebration the neighboring town of Fovel couldn’t match, and not just because their town’s anniversary was a different date, but they still had another decade and a half before they even reached a century.

One hundred and fifty years of historywaspretty impressive, and there were families in Fairlake that still had connections to the founders or close to it. Isaiah’s birth family was one of those, though the assholes, for the most part, refused to acknowledge him because of his ‘audacity’ to live his life openly gay. Then again, the Enders weren’t a part of Fairlake anymore, which left only him. Our mayor had apparently privately approached Isaiah to be the family's representative.

It was honestly, in my opinion, a pretty kind offer. It treated Isaiah as a part of the town rather than his entire family and allowed him a chance to snub his family harder than he already had. There was plenty of reluctance on his part for reasons I didn’t fully know or understand, but he still had time to decide. In the meantime, the rest of the town, including myself, were running around like crazy to make the festival greater than any we’d done in the past fifty years.

“I’ll try to pretend like I didn’t hear that you brought this on yourself,” she said, walking away. “Lay back down. I’ll be out of here in a minu?—”

I peered around her, smiling when I saw Amber standing quietly in the hallway, hand resting against her mouth. Over two years ago, I had attended a domestic violence call in the rougher part of Fairlake. The DV had been a homicide by the time I got there, and considering the man’s behavior and the size of his pupils, I guessed that our ‘former’ meth problem wasn’t quite so former.

And there, in that rundown trailer, had been a little girl, barely a year old. From what we’d learned later, Amber hadbeen mistreated, and when she wasn’t being abused, she was being neglected. Months of starvation and being left to sit crying for hours in her own mess had done the kind of harm she would probably struggle with for the rest of her life.

And me? I’d taken one look at that whimpering, pitiful child and watched how her cries stopped when she saw me. I knew what had to be done. It had taken another six months, but with Captain Price’s help and Adam’s support, we added Amber to the household right alongside Colin, and I never regretted it for a moment.

“Hi, sweet girl,” I said softly, immediately crouching and holding out my hands. With the same complete lack of hesitation, she darted toward me and hopped up to wrap her arms around my neck as I stood. “Are you being good to Aunt Bri?”

She held her hand to her mouth still. It was her replacement for sucking her thumb, which had been an on-again, off-again struggle. This at least wouldn’t hurt her teeth, but I also knew it didn’t comfort her quite as much. The result was she was clingier with the people she trusted, me most of all.

Bri snorted. “Well, so much for that. You’re back around her finger.”

“Where I belong,” I said, pulling Amber close. “How’s she been?”

Bri glanced at the little girl in my arms and shrugged. “She’s been doing better. She likes Keith better than me, but from what you told me?—”

I nodded to show I understood but said nothing that might fall on little ears. They might be too young to understand, but they still didn’t need to hear that Amber’s biological father had killed her biological mother in a fit of meth-induced psychosis. Or that it had been her mother who had acted out the abuse while the father had simply tuned her out. People could claim that kids didn’tremember those early months, but she’d been in my house for two years and wasstillwary and slow to trust most women.

“Papa Bennett!” Colin exclaimed when I appeared in the living room, a grin on his face as I saw the child-safe version of Legos he’d pulled out of the bag and dumped in the middle of the floor. “I’m gonna build just like Dad.”

“What was it last week?” I asked Bri.

“He was going to wear suits and yell at bad guys.”

“Hmm, so he went from his mother to his father’s career in a week. You have to give him credit for ambition, lacking in planning and execution, but plenty of drive.”

Bri rolled her eyes. “I love that Adam gets ‘build stuff,’ and my job is simplified to yelling at people.”

“I distinctly remember you saying that yelling at people was the best part of your job,” I said as I retrieved an energy drink from the fridge and cracked it open.

“You get less of it around here,” she admitted.

I peered out the front kitchen window and raised a brow at a familiar truck sitting in the driveway across the road. “Huh, I thought Adam was at the shop.”

Bri leaned forward to follow my gaze, looking across the street to find Adam standing outside talking to his parents. “He mentioned he’d be there all day. Asked me, practically pleaded, if I’d take an extra hour or two to watch all three.”

Technically, Brendon was her and Keith’s son, but considering Colin was his half-brother and Amber was around constantly, he was looped in to make it a trio. Adam and I kept Amber with us, while she and Keith kept Brendon, and Colin looped back and forth smoothly. That didn’t mean there weren’t plenty of times that swapping occurred or someone ended up with three kids, which was precisely why there were enough beds in the kids' rooms to accommodate them.

“He hasn’t noticed your car,” I said, sipping my drink. “I bet.”

“It’s…right there,” Bri said, unbelieving. “I mean, he can be dense, but…oh God, his mom is pointing over here.”

“That she is,” I said as, sure enough, Diane gestured toward our driveway. Only to see Adam’s eyes go wide. “And there’s the love of my life realizing he might have made a mistake.”

I couldn’t help but smile when I saw him wave his mom off quickly, kissing her on the cheek and not even bothering to get into his truck. Instead, he hurried across the road, making for our house rapidly. Even from a distance, I could see the exasperation on Diane’s face as she shook her head. I knew full well she would go in and tell her husband what a fool of a son they raised…fondly, of course.

Adam made it to the path leading to our front door before he stopped and stared at the window. I tilted my head and then glanced down at Amber. “Well, look who it is.”

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