Caleb:
Yes.
Lilah:
No!
Caleb:
Your sister just punched me and told me to apologize to the dog. So that’s where we’re at.
My sister was a lot of things, but a delicate petal wasn’t one of them. If anyone could hold their own with my XO, it was her.
Hudson:
Sounds about right.
Lilah:
What Caleb MEANT to say was that she’s an angel and we love having her.
Wait, we? The two of them had been together when I’d dropped CB off that morning, but I’d assumed since Lilah was on duty at The Sweet Spot, Caleb would take the dog to the cabin with him while he continued working on the place.
I only managed to feel a tinge of guilt at the fact that my buddy had been doing as much—if not more—work on the cabinthan I’d been doing myself. But then I reminded myself that this was exactly what Caleb had needed and why he’d come home with me in the first place instead of going to his empty apartment.
Hudson:
We?
I sent the text and then waited for several minutes before a reply came in—the dancing dots would appear and then disappear before reappearing again. Someone was working up quite a story.
Lilah:
I went to the cabin with Caleb so he could finish up the shingles like y’all talked about. Nash had to repair damage from a leaky pipe, so I needed to be gone anyway.
And yet she didn’t just keep CB at her apartment…
Like the freaky little sister she was, it was as if she had heard my thoughts, because it took only a couple seconds for another text to come in from her.
Lilah:
The noise has been driving me crazy, so I needed a little peace.
Something was going on, and I would bet my pocketknife collection it had to do with my partner and my baby sister getting together right under my nose.
I poised my phone to begin typing out a response to ask just that when Kenna blew through the outer office where the assistant’s desk sat, a stack of papers in her hand and her hair all askew.
We’d spent two days in the wilderness and then half a day stuck in a hospital, and yet her hair hadn’t looked crazier than it did right then.
“Everything all right?” I asked, standing and slipping my phone into my back pocket.
She barked out a humorless laugh. “No. No, everything is absolutely not all right. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doin’, Hud, but I still have to do it, right? I still have to figure out what the hell is needed because I’m the only one here to do it, and everyone’s countin’ on me.” Her voice rose with each word until she was really on a roll, yelling into the room empty save for the two of us. “Doesn’t matter that me doin’ this job was a complete afterthought—it’s not like I’m not used to that. And besides, it’s the least I can do since I so epically failed at bein’ a good daughter by runnin’ off to a freakin’ mountain while my family went through hell.”
“Hey…” I gently took the stack of papers out of her arms—a stack she’d managed to wrangle into an orderly pile, I noted—and set them on the already cluttered desk. Then I propped my ass against the edge and tugged her between my spread knees. “You’re not a failure because you were gone, Kenna. I mean, what’s your solution to that? Never leave town? Walk around wearin’ a walkie-talkie so you’re available 24/7/365?”
“So what if I do?”
“C’mon, you know that’s not realistic.”
