There weren’t enough donuts or homemade lunches in the world to make this worth it. That was for freaking sure.
Chapter 26
The news that Mr. Cooper,our beloved boss, had suffered a heart attack had shaken up everyone at the shop. It hadn’t been a major one, but it had been severe enough that his doctors had insisted that he take his time coming back. That herested. That he manage his stress levels better.
Lydia had been kind enough to call me soon after I’d left the hospital—in the process asking why I hadn’t waited for her—and then kept me up to date on how he was doing. The next day, I went to visit him again just as Grandpa Gus was leaving the hospital.
“You saved me, honey,” my boss had whispered when I’d made it over to his bed the day after his heart attack.
I had reached out to take his hand, giving it a gentle squeeze as I smiled down at the lined, still too pale face, trying not to think about what could have happened to him if ithadn’tbeen a minor attack. I’d made the mistake of reading that heart disease was the leading cause of deaths in the country. “All I did was give you an aspirin,” I told him, trying my best to ignore the sting of pain when I thought about the things he had kept from me for so long.
“You told me to buy a new bottle of aspirin when the last one had expired, do you remember? You insisted I get aspirin, ‘just in case, Mr. C,’”he tried to argue in his weaker-than-usual voice, giving my hand another squeeze.
I had been thinking about him specifically when I’d insisted he buy more aspirin. When he first told me he had high blood pressure, I had done a little research, not that I ever brought that up. But he mattered to me, and I wanted to make sure to take care of him any way I could so that he wouldn’t get worse. Because that was what you did when you cared about people. “Well, I’m glad you listened,” I told him.
The smile he gave me in return, as he laid in the hospital bed, was weak. “I don’t know when I’ll get back to the shop.”
The first thing I thought of was Ripley.
“You’ll hold down the fort for me until then, won’t you?” he asked.
Emotion had clogged my throat as I looked down at him, and it was my turn to give his hand a squeeze. “I’d hold down the world for you, if you want me to, Mr. C. Don’t worry about the shop. We’ll all be fine.”
I specifically didn’t let myself think about Ripley and what Mr. Cooper being gone would mean for the rest of us.
The day had been hard enough as it was. Tense and awkward and even a little charged weren’t good descriptions about how all of us had been. All of us minus Rip, who I hadn’t spoken to, made eye contact with or even been in the same room as. Over time, all of my coworkers had filtered into my room to ask about our favorite boss.
Well, besides Jason, who hadn’t shown up for work, and who I’d bet never would again. But I didn’t give a single crap about that twerp anymore anyway. I could get his addresslike that. But luckily for him, all that seemed unimportant compared to Mr. C’s heart attack. And if I had to choose between kicking his butt or my cousin’s, I would always choose my cousin. Always.
This man I loved and loved me back, gave me a gentle, warm smile that further put things into perspective for me.Life was too short to hang yourself up loving someone who would never love you back,I finally saw that clearly now. “I know you would, Luna,” Mr. Cooper told me. Then he sighed, and his eyes narrowed a little and he said, “I’m sorry about Jason. You have no idea—”
Oh, hell. We were back to him. “Don’t worry about him or my cousin. It’s fine,” I tried to assure him, even giving him a smile so he would know I wasn’t saying it for the sake of it. “It’s not the first time my cousin has tried to jump me, but it’ll be the last.”
Miguel had made sure to tell me they had made it clear whatever they had done or said had settled things. I hadn’t asked for specifics because that had been good enough for me.
Hopefully he would give my message to my dad so he would know too that I wasn’t screwing around. I knew enough to get him into trouble still, and if I didn’t, I would have no problem digging up what would. Because going that far wasn’t out of the realm of possibility if they tried to do something again, and he had to be smart enough to realize that.
“It’s not fine, but I am sorry,” the older man argued. His eyes slid in the direction of where Lydia was sitting before coming back to me. His throat bobbed softly, and he let out another deep sigh. “There are some things I want to tell you… some things I should have told you before….” He trailed off, the expression he was making almost like he was trying to tell me something.
He was confirming it, wasn’t he?
He was trying to tell me that he really was Rip’s father and they had kept the secret to themselves.
He hadn’t lied. Not technically. He just hadn’t… told me or anyone else the truth.
The man who had worked with us for the last three years was his son. A son from the wife he’d had before the one a few feet away from us. A son from the same woman he had told me was, or had been, the love of his life.
And that son happened to be the man who he couldn’t talk to for two minutes without getting into an argument with.
The same one who had made it real clear twenty-four hours ago that he held me in the same regard as just about everyone else who had ever really hurt me did.
Man, that didn’t feel nice to think about.
“I’ll come and see you tomorrow,” I promised, giving him a smile of reassurance so he would know that if I had put things together, I was fine with what he had kept from me.
I wasn’t. Not totally.
But I wouldn’t hold it against him. He had his reasons. He had to. And I would just deal with the small sense of betrayal I felt from this not-a-lie until then.
