Page 78 of Hold

Zahra nodded. “It’s a lot for you, working and school and the kids.”

She’d done it for more than two years. Was she going to fall now, when the end was in sight, because Gabe made her feel like not trying?

The rest of them came in, and they’d been chatting for several minutes before Chloe said, “Liam’s awfully late.”

Thea swallowed the lump that appeared in her throat and said, in what she hoped was an even voice, “He’s not coming.”

Fail. She only had to see the immediate concern on Zahra’s face for the tears to start in her eyes. “Oh, honey,” Chloe said, and she leaped over the coffee table to sit next to her and hug her.

Thea flapped her away, not wanting to cry in front of the twins. “It’s okay. Not a big deal.” She grabbed a paper napkin to stem the not-a-big-deal tears that wouldn’t quit.

“What happened?” Chloe asked at the same time as Zahra said, “You want to talk about it?”

When she hesitated, Seth said, “You don’t have to.” Obviously, he wasn’t up for girly details.

“There’s not much to tell,” she finally said, grabbing her wine and taking a swig, hoping it would burn the tears away. “My ex is back.”

A stunned silence followed.

“Bugger,” Seth said.

In spite of the situation, Thea smiled. “That’s what my sister-in-law would say. Will say when she finds out.” Which was another thing. She thought she would have heard from Cat or Kane by now. Had Jake really not told his cousins yet? She wasn’t sure what that meant.

“Our mom’s English,” David said. “So what about your ex? You’re taking him back?”

“No.” She didn’t say anything else. She was so tired of explaining herself all over again.

“So did you tell Liam that?” said Chloe.

Had she? She thought so. But it was the hurt she’d done to him that she couldn’t ask him to get past. Maybe one day, when his divorce wasn’t so new, when the image had had a chance to fade… but by then he’d probably have found someone else.

She sighed. A big chunk of her future, one she’d only just begun to hope for, dissolved in front of her. “It’s complicated.”

“Not from what I saw,” Chloe, ever the spade-caller, said. “And besides, what’s he going to do about the class? He has to finish it, doesn’t he?”

“He’s not taking the class,” David said.

“What?” the women all said together.

“Yes, he is,” Zahra said. “I saw him on his laptop.”

“He was faking it so he could be here. He wasn’t enrolled in the master’s program at all.” David looked at his iced coffee, into which he’d poured a shot of Bailey’s when they’d arrived. “After his divorce, he didn’t have the money to go back to school. He was only auditing the language immersion class because he was going to be teaching in Zahra’s neighborhood.” He nodded at her. “Then he did the technology class so he could keep seeing Thea. ’Course, then he just started seeing her anyway.”

Thea’s mouth was open, her tears forgotten. “How do you know all this?”

“He asked me about loans that night we were out at his truck. I think he’s found a way to get back to class, but he’s going to be doing a… I can’t remember what it’s called, but it’s for supervisory positions. You all said it when we first met him: he knows this stuff already. He’s looking to be a principal, maybe a superintendent one day.”

She’d known that much, at least.

“So…” Chloe said, shooting her green eyes at Thea. “The only reason he was here, all summer, was for you.”

Thea gripped her glass’s stem hard. “Oh.”

“All. Summer,” Chloe repeated.

“Yeah.” Technically, they still had a month of summer to go. But there was only one class left after tonight, so it felt like the end was here.

“So tell me again why it matters that your ex is back?”

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