Chapter 24

 

Connor

 

I’m genuinely proud of Whitney for being offered such a great position. And I am genuinely happy she’ll be doing something that gives her tender heart a break. I mean, it’s good news, right? So why aren’t I happy about it? Not only am I not happy about it, every time I think about it, I get a little sick to my stomach.

Or, that might be because I’ve decided to keep my promise to Whitney today. I promised I’d tell my siblings I’m staying. I promised. I have to do it. I can’t put it off anymore, even though Rayce is once again being kind of an ass today and I don’t really want to talk to him more than I have to.

But maybe he’ll relax once this isn’t hanging over his head anymore.

And, I’ve given some thought to what Whitney asked me about. Is this just a sign that he’s not handling Mom and Dad’s deaths very well?

But are any of us? I still get this hot ache in my heart if I think about them too much, and I think about them every day.

But, that’s not something I can worry about right now. Regardless of what’s going on with Rayce, today’s the day I have to tell them.

I wait until the last minute though. It’s after six o’clock and Lizzy’s stopping at the door to my office to see if I need anything before she leaves for the day.

“Uh, wait,” I say.

She looks at me expectantly.

“Um, is Rayce still here?” I kind of hope he’s not. Then I’ll have to wait until tomorrow. But she peaks her head around the corner, then looks back at me.

“Yep.”

“Uh. Okay. Um, will you have him come in here? I have something I want to tell you guys.”

A slightly fearful expression comes over her face. Then she looks resolute. “All right.”

She disappears and I hear her talking to Rayce, conveying the message. I remember what she said to me all those weeks ago. That they’re scared I’m going to leave and they wanted time to prepare for it.

At least I won’t be breaking their hearts. That’s good.

Too soon, they’re both coming into my office and settling into the chairs opposite me. I wish I didn’t feel so nervous. I wish I knew why I do. I do want this, don’t I?

“Well, I’ve made a decision.”

“Okay,” Lizzy says nervously. Rayce is watching me, looking like he’s bracing himself for a blow.

I take a deep breath and decide to just spit it out. “I’m staying.”

Her mouth flies open and her eyes light up. “Really?”

Rayce frowns. “Really?”

“Uh, yes. Really.”

“Oh, I’m so glad!” She gets up and comes around to give me a hug. I stand up and hug her back but my eyes are on Rayce. He’s looking at me like he can’t decide whether or not to believe me.

“You’re sure?” Rayce asks.

Lizzy pulls away and I nod. She beams at me. “Wait till Corrine hears. Oh my god, we have to celebrate.” She turns to Rayce and sees the expression on his face. Her face falls a bit. “Don’t even start. He’s decided.”

“And you’re sure?” he asks again, ignoring her and keeping his eyes on me.

I nod. I can’t seem to say it again. But it’s out there and I’ve told them, like I said I would.

“See?” Lizzy says to him with a surprisingly stern tone in her voice. “He’s sure so let’s be happy. I say this calls for chocolate. Rayce, do you have your keys?” Meaning his set of master hotel keys, for those areas that don’t use key cards.

We all three have sets but Lizzy tends to keep hers in her purse in her office. Rayce always has his keys. Hell, I’ve always got my keys on me too, but I think when Lizzy said, “Do you have your keys?” she meant “So stop looking like that and let’s go do something nice together.”

He stands up obediently and she claps her hands. “That’s more like it.”

She leads the way out and I follow her, with Rayce behind me. We leave the administrative offices and cross the hall at an angle, heading for Sweetbrew, which is closed for the day. Rayce comes up so he’s walking right next to me.

He’s watching me, but I ignore him.

We get to the door and Lizzy holds out her hand.

Still looking at me, Rayce digs into his pocket and hands his keys to her. “You’re sure?” he asks again.

“God, Rayce,” Lizzy says, obviously irritated. “He said he was. What more do you want?”

She turns to unlock the door.

“He just doesn’t seem too excited.”

“I’m right here,” I say, as Lizzy lets us in and locks the door behind us. “You don’t have to talk about me in the third person.”

“Stop being so sensitive,” he says.

“Knock it off, you two.” She leads us past the little round tables and front counter with its glass display cases, and into the back kitchen where she flips on the light.

The kitchen of Sweetbrew is as familiar to me as anywhere else in the hotel. There’s a small bank of griddles and a stove, an oven, a few industrial floor-mixers, a fridge, a sink, and a grouping of stainless steel work stations that are used most often for chocolate making. We’ve been sneaking in here after hours ever since we were kids, and the chocolate is the primary reason.

She heads to the refrigerator where the manager keeps a stash of the occasional chocolates that are too misshapen or imperfect to sell.

Rayce and I come down the row between the work tables. “I’m not the one who’s being sensitive,” I say. “You can’t seem to keep your cool about anything these days.”

“Boys,” Lizzy says, in a warning tone. She’s stopped right where she is, not quite to the refrigerator yet. Her back’s to us and she’s braced both arms on the edge of the stainless steel sink, her head hanging down.

“At least I’m not lying about my intentions here,” Rayce says hotly, and I spin on him.

“Oh, you haven’t lied to me about anything at all recently.”

Rayce’s eyes sharpen on me and he opens his mouth to say something. He doesn’t get a chance to say whatever it was though, because in the next minute, two things happen: Lizzy lets out an exasperated “Arrgh!” and Rayce gets blasted straight in the face with a stream of water from the sprayer Lizzy’s now holding in her hand.

Rayce hollers and puts his hands up. I glance at Lizzy in just enough time to see the determined and infuriated expression on her face, before the blast of water comes right at me. Now we’re both throwing our hands up and desperately looking for cover and saying, “Hey Lizzy!”

“Shut up both of you!” she yells, but I barely hear her because she’s not letting up with the water. We both scramble to crouch behind the work station, safe for the moment. The water stops.

“I’m so sick of your petty bickering and constant sniping and—” Rayce and I stay crouched low, looking at each other wide-eyed and wondering if our sister’s lost her mind, “and your stupid childish behavior,” she finishes. She doesn’t sound done, though. She sounds raging mad.

Rayce’s suit is soaked and water’s dripping from his hair and into his face. I’m not much better off. We both wipe the water out of our eyes and look at each other as if to say, Which one of us is going out there?

I shake my head. Not me, dude.

“Uh, Lizzy?” he says tentatively, raising his head just a bit to peek over the top of the counter at her. His eyes widen and he ducks back down. A spray of water goes over his head.

I’d laugh if I weren’t so stunned.

“Don’t Lizzy me! You’ve been a royal fucking pain in the ass for months and I am over it. And as for you.” Even though I can’t see her I know she means me and I cringe. “You just can’t resist feeding into it, can you? Can you?”

Neither one of us says a word. Nope, not us. We’re just two grown men in suits, looking at each other in astonishment, and crouching behind steel tables in sheer terror of their sister and her water hose.

“I’m so sick of it. I’m so—” her voice breaks “so—”

A sob breaks loose and the mood of the room changes instantly. The weight of our sister’s heartbreaking sob drapes over us. The silence is thick, and neither one of us moves. I don’t think either one of us are breathing.

“It was bad enough losing Mom and Dad,” she says firmly, anger and tears still trembling in her voice. “I don’t need to lose you, too.”

Ouch. Rayce and I look at each other, more openly than we have in months.

A reverberating clang tells us she’s thrown the nozzle back into the sink, but we still don’t move. We aren’t looking at each other with shock or fear anymore. The only thing I see on Rayce’s face is exactly the one thing I feel: regret.

“I want my brothers back!” With that, she storms past us, her heels clicking furiously on the tile, and slams the kitchen door behind her.

We both hold our breath in the silence that follows. We’re frozen for a second. Then he pinches his eyes closed and I exhale heavily. We slowly sink the rest of the way to the floor, our backs against the table and our knees drawn up.

His arms are resting on his bent knees. “Shit,” he says quietly.

I run my hand through my wet hair. “Yeah.”

“Well, that was fun.” But there’s not a hint of malice in his voice. In fact, he sounds like my brother again, and it makes my heart hurt. I’ve really missed him.

I look at him. He looks like he’s hurting too, but like he doesn’t want to be hurting. Like he’s trying to stomp it all back in. With my anger sprayed clean out of me, it’s easier to see what Whitney was trying to tell me. I think my brother might be really suffering. I wish I’d been willing to see it sooner. I wish I’d been there for him, instead of pushing his buttons all the time.

“Sorry,” I say.

“Oh…” He sighs again and rubs his forehead. “I’m the one who should be sorry. I’m not mad at you. I’m really not. It’s just… it’s just been a lot, you know? Trying to keep it all going.”

“I know.” I think maybe, as the oldest, Rayce has felt even more keenly than Lizzy and I have the weight of protecting Mom and Dad’s legacy. But… as I really look at him now, I don’t think that’s what’s making his face look so weary and drawn. I think back over the past several months, and what his behavior’s been like.

Now I’m even more sure of what’s going on with him. God, it’s so obvious. Now that I see it, I don’t know how I was missing it. “It’s okay to miss them.”

He blinks, almost like I struck him. But otherwise, his expression is unchanged and he’s still looking straight ahead. “Don’t get all Dr. Phil on me.” His voice is tight, I don’t think from anger, but from suppressed sorrow. He’s been all locked up, and it’s killing him.

“It is.”

“I mean it, Connor.”

“It’s eating you alive.”

He looks at me suddenly, his eyes sharp and miserable. “I’ll tell you what’s eating me alive. Mom called me that day. At exactly 3:04 p.m. she called and I didn’t answer because I was in a meeting.”

Now it’s my turn to feel like I’ve been punched. She called from the boat.

“I didn’t call back until almost five. Because I had the meeting and emails to respond to and a stupid, fucking coffee to get from—”

“Rayce—”

“She called me and I wasn’t there.” Then his anger breaks and his face twists into agony. I can’t move. I’m held fast by the wrenching look on his face. I’ve never seen him look so raw. “What if she was calling for help? What if I could’ve got to them?”

I exhale slowly. Is this what it’s been? “Shit, Rayce,” I say quietly. “It wasn’t your fault.”

He laughs humorlessly, leaning his head back against the table and closing his eyes. “You don’t know that,” he says dully.

“Well, you don’t know that it was but you’re over there blaming yourself? God, I really wish Dad was here to knock some sense into you.”

Before the whole Lizzy-spraying-us-with-water thing, a comment like that would’ve pissed him the hell off. But he doesn’t get mad. Instead he does something I haven’t seen him do since we were kids. He drops his head onto his arms and starts to cry. It’s silent at first, the only sign the trembling of his shoulders. Then I hear it, and it intensifies, like a great dam has been let loose. It rips right through me.

Ultimately, I’m glad he said something, and I’m glad he’s finally letting this out because I think he’s really needed to, but God, it’s killing me to watch. I put my arm on his back, my palm cupping the back of his head. I keep it there, trying to offer my big brother some small measure of comfort. He doesn’t move. He just grips my hand and hangs on while he weeps and weeps.

 

 

Eventually he stops, and we start talking. For an hour we talk, moving from the floor to sitting on the tables eating chocolate, and it’s much more like the way things used to be between us. We talk a lot about Mom and Dad, and old memories, and what life looks like now without them. We even end things with a hug that lingers awhile.

We agree to make things up to Lizzy right away, and are surprised to find her still in her office instead of at home. She’s sitting behind her desk, and watches us warily as we approach her. We each have one hand behind our backs.

I carefully bring my hand out and put a square of dark chocolate in front of her. “I brought you a piece of chocolate.”

Her wary expression is unchanged as she frowns at the little square, molded with a fleur de lis on top.

Rayce puts his offering in front of her, an oversized pecan turtle that’s one of her favorites. “And I brought you a bigger piece of chocolate.”

Her expression breaks and she kind of laughs, looking up at us. We’re both smiling.

“We’re sorry,” I say.

She looks at Rayce, hopeful.

“I’m really sorry,” he says, in a tone of voice that gets me right in the chest. There’s still so much raw tenderness about him. Now that he’s cracked open, it may take a while to close him back up again.

His apology must have hit Lizzy in the heart too because she immediately gets up and comes around to give him a hug, starting to cry.

“Don’t cry,” he says, holding her. “I’ll be better, I promise.” She keeps crying and he just holds her tighter. “God, I’m sorry.”

“You just had to one-up me in the apology department, didn’t you?”

He smiles at me and Lizzy laughs, pulling back. “I do want my brothers back,” she says sternly, wiping her tears away. She said brothers, but she’s only looking at him.

“We’ll be here,” he says. “We promise.”

She looks at me to confirm and I wink at her.

She leans back against her desk and takes a deep breath. “Okay.” Calmer now, she looks us both over, taking in the big wet spots all over our clothes. “I would apologize for spraying you, but it was pretty gratifying, actually.”

“Don’t get too comfortable with that,” Rayce says, grinning. “You get one free pass. Anything beyond that is open for paybacks.”