Page 45 of One and Only

I pinched my eyes shut. “You cannot tell anyone what I’m about to tell you,” I whispered.

His frame went still as stone.

I turned to Cameron with pleading eyes. “Cameron, you swear to me that you won’t say anything.”

Cameron slicked his tongue over his teeth, weighing the massive thing I’d just asked of him. He nodded. “On my mother’s grave.”

My shoulders slumped in relief. “Okay. Come on, let’s go for a walk. We need a little bit of privacy for this one.”

Chapter9

Beckett

Greer: Are you home?

Me: Yeah. What’s up?

She didn’t answer right away, and because I had to get Olive’s bags ready for Josie to pick her up, I set my phone down on the kitchen counter and didn’t think much of it.

The knock on the front door came less than five minutes later.

Greer breezed into the house when I pulled open the door. “You’re … here,” I said.

She was pacing the kitchen, one hand tore at the bright red tie holding her hair together, and Greer shoved a hand through the tangled mess that fell around her shoulders. “I know I should have called or something.”

I glanced toward the back deck, verifying that Olive was still coloring at the outside table. “What happened?”

“My brother Cameron knows,” she said. She stopped, rolled her lips together and widened her eyes to an almost comically apologetic degree.

“What do you mean?”

“Heknows. While my mom and sister and I were doing some planning for the ceremony, he pulled me outside and did not hesitate to call me out on what we were doing.” She crossed her arms tightly over her chest, and I swore I could see her entire frame vibrate from the energy pulsing into the room. “He was swearing, and then I didn’t back down because I hate it when he swears at me.”

“What did he say to you?” I asked, voice quiet and dangerous.

Greer stopped, eyebrows popping high on her forehead when she registered my tone. A smile, slow and sweet, broke open across her face, and she took a step closer. “Nothing I don’t hear on the jobsite every single day I’m at work,” she said. “He was just … thrown. And he knew something else was going on.”

My jaw clenched. “So you told him.”

“I’m sorry. I know this isn’t what we decided, but Cameron knows me so well. Maybe even better than any of my other siblings.” She deflated, slumping against the island, rubbing a weary hand over her forehead. “When it came down to it, I couldn’t lie to him. He’s the first person to look me in the eye and say something wasn’t adding up.”

The ramifications had my stomach tight with nerves.

If Cameron told anyone else in the family, they’d step in. They’d stop the ceremony.

And I’d be back at square one.

Greer wouldn’t be able to give her dad the thing he wanted.

Suddenly, both of those felt like equally horrible options. I’d met him now. Looked him in the eye as I shook his hand, so I didn’t particularly want to let Tim down either.

On the back deck, I could see Olive’s legs swinging happily as she hunched over her new coloring book.

“Now what?” I asked.

Greer pulled one of the stools away from the island and perched on the edge, fixing her hair with a few simple swoops of the hair tie.

“He promised me he wouldn’t tell,” she said next.

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