Wes strides toward us, and Thea jumps like a spooked animal. “Can I be excused to my room?” She mumbles again, but with the silence around us, Wes hears her easily.
His eyebrows draw together, lines etching across his forehead. “Thea, we need to talk about what happened today.”
“But maybe tomorrow?” I chime in, hoping that my suggesting it wouldn’t render it an automatic rejection. “It’s been a long day.”
Thea raises her head to look at Wes. “Tomorrow,” she repeats.
“All right,” he grumbles with obvious reluctance. Maybe he sees beyond his annoyance to the obvious pain on his niece’s face. “Want your usual tea?”
“Duh,” she says with a peek of a smile. “The lemon, with—”
“Honey.” Wes finishes her sentence. “I know. I’ll bring it up in a few.”
Wes walks into the kitchen, beelining for the cabinet to the left of the oven. He gets a tea bag from the box before striding to the opposite side of the kitchen.
“I’ll drive you home if you can wait until she gets settled,” he says as he places a mug in the Keurig. “Shouldn’t be long.”
“Okay,” I say, dumbfounded at this version of Wes, one who doesn’t hold a trace of grumpiness in his tone while talking to me.
When the stream of water ends, he steeps the tea bag before letting it rest in the cup and adds a heathy dose of honey. He walks toward me, so I step to the side to let him pass. But he doesn’t, remaining at my side, the scent of lemon tea brewing in the air surrounding us. There’s alsohim, a combination of sunscreen and sweat and spice, peeking through the lemon.
I swallow hard when he leans in closer to whisper in my ear, “You were my first kiss, too, Red.”
Chapter 12
Wes
Isla’sbreathhitches,herbody tensing, then freezing at my confession.
“How long were you listening to us?” she whispers, but the words maintain her signature bite.
I glance over my shoulder. “Long enough to know that you remember me.”
I didn’t intend to eavesdrop on their conversation, but when I made it halfway up the stairs, the vague voices crystallized into words I couldn’t turn away from. My blood boiled listening to Thea recount how some piece of shit kid was bullying her. I was about to make my presence known when I heard Isla’s confession.
No one thought I was beautiful when I was a teenager.
She reminded me of that sad girl I met, with fiery eyes and an iron will. She resisted opening up with every fiber of her being, but it didn’t last. Listening to her rip open her heart to comfort Thea tonight makes me wonder if that part still exists somewhere deep inside her.
I gesture toward the staircase. “I’ll be back in a few.”
I rush up the steps, two at a time, and power walk down the hall to Thea’s room. The door’s open, so I walk in and deposit the tea on the coaster on her nightstand. She glances up at me from her phone, eyes filled with wariness.
“I’m going to drive Isla home,” I say while backing up toward the door. I point toward her and add, “Don’t get into any trouble while I'm gone. It’s been a long day, and I’ve already got one pain in the ass downstairs to deal with.”
Thea snorts. “Right. You’resoooobroken up about Isla being here.”
I freeze.
“Face it,” she adds, jutting out her chin. “I did you a favor.”
“That’s not—” My sentence abruptly cuts off when I bump into the door frame.
She chuckles before her attention slides to her phone.
Before heading downstairs, I detour to my bedroom for a change of clothes and do a once-over in the mirror. After a day of moving my dad’s belongings and driving hours through the North Carolina heat, I’m in desperate need of a shower, but that’ll need to wait. Spencer offered to drive her home, but he needs his rest before jumping into training early tomorrow. I can handle a simple fifteen-minute car ride.
“You ready to—” My words cut off when Isla comes into view again. She’s thrown her hair into a messy bun, strands falling in multiple directions to the bare skin of her upper back. A loose, light blue tank top reaches the top of her thighs, clad in black leggings.She’s dressed for relaxation, not to impress, but it does nothing to curb the direction of my thoughts.
