Page 16 of All Too Well
“I really insist.”
“I really deny your insistence. How about we make a deal? I’ll let you in and you let me interview you.”
“No.”
I shrug. “Then, I’m sorry, Chief West, now is not a good time for your fireinspection.”
He huffs. “Fine. I’ll have someone come by in a day or two. Do either of those days work?”
“Any time after today would be perfect. I can’t wait to meet some of your firemen.”
“I’ll be here—not them.”
“Even better.”
He starts to walk away, muttering under his breath, and I realize I might have overplayed my hand a bit. This story doesn’t exist if I can’t get him to participate in this interview, so I have to try to get things back to the way they used to be, even if they can never really be the same. “Lach?”
“Yeah?”
“It was good to see you,” I say, my voice even and calm. “I hope Rose is good?”
The last time I saw her she was just two years old, but I think about her all the time, and my brother shows me photos.
He smiles at the mention of his daughter. “She’s great. She’s in school now and is discovering all the fun things that go with that.”
It’s hard to picture what she must be like now. She was just learning how to talk and was seriously the cutest kid, who loved everyone.
“So she’s dealing with the horrors of boys?” I ask with a grin.
“Ironically, yes. A boy is stealing her crayons.”
“And you haven’t beat him up yet? Wow. You really have matured.”
He laughs. “I did tell her to punch him and offered to do it if she wasn’t up for it.”
Of course he did. “Hopefully she can punch better than you could.”
His head jerks back. “I punched just fine, thank you very much.”
“Not what I remember. You tried to beat up that one kid in middle school, and he totally kicked your ass,” I remind him.
I’m not sure it really went that way, but it’s still fun to be the annoying girl I’ve always been to him.
“If I remember, he had to go to the hospital because I broke his nose,” Lachlan counters.
I shrug, not caring about the details. “Maybe have Caspian do the instructing either way. He packs a really mean right hook.”
My brother was the best at landing a punch. One too many times I got in the middle of the two of them fighting, and one time I took the end of the punch. I thought my dad was going to murder my brother for hitting me, which was totally an accident. I did my best to hide it, but it was impossible when the black eye came. Caspian was beside himself, and the Admiral thought the punishment of him having to look at the bruise was enough since he would practically break down and cry each time he saw it.
“Does your brother know you’re here and staying in this shithole?”
I cross my arms over my chest. “I’m a grown-ass woman who doesn’t need to tell my brother where I’m going.”
“So that’s a no. I doubt he’ll be happy when he finds out.”
“I doubt I care.”
That sounded so much better in my head.
