“Nothing. Just—” I cleared my throat. Perfect Kelsey mode, already sliding back into place like a mask I couldn’t stop wearing. “Just looking.”
I couldn’t tell if the sudden tension crackling between us was leftover from last night’s confessions or something new—something charged by the discovery of what his life had become without me.
His hand came to rest on my shoulder, squeezing gently. “C’mon, Kels. Talk to me.”
I turned around to find Teddy in nothing but the sweatpants he’d gone to bed in, his long hair falling in loose waves around his shoulders. Even now—furious and hurt and feeling like the world’s biggest idiot—I couldn’t help but notice how beautiful he was. Couldn’t help but notice the swirls of ink covering his skin, my name scarred over his heart.
Teddy’s attention went from my face to the kutte and back again. Whatever he saw made him take a step forward, mouth opening to say something I wasn’t ready to hear.
Before he could speak, his phone erupted from somewhere nearby, the buzzing aggressive and insistent.
He located it on the coffee table and glanced at the screen before silencing it. “My mom. I’ll call her back later.”
The phone immediately started vibrating again.
“Jesus,” Teddy muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose.
A cold knot formed in my stomach. Lucy Riggs had nerves of steel—she’d raised four boys in the MC, held down the fort when Paul was locked up in the eighties, survived raids and lockdowns, and God knew what else. She wouldn’t be calling unless something was wrong. I’d learned that over the past 30-plus years of being part of the family. Or formerly part of the family.
Whatever the hell I was now.
“You should get that,” I said, my voice coming out steadier than I felt. Anything to delay the inevitable. Anything to give me time to reassemble the careful walls that had crumbled so spectacularly last night.
I moved to hang the kutte back on its hook, trying to make it seem like I hadn’t been standing there memorizing every patch like they were tea leaves that could tell me our future. “Just answer it. It could be important.”
He hesitated, his gaze flicking between me and the phonelike he was trying to decide which crisis to handle first. The phone buzzed again, more insistent somehow.
“Sorry.” Teddy sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Just... give me a minute. If I don’t answer, she’ll just keep calling until I do.”
I nodded, and he grabbed the phone before disappearing back into the bedroom. “Timing is impeccable as usual, Ma,” he drawled, closing the door behind him with a soft click.
Alone again, I smoothed my fingers over the leather one final time before forcing myself to step away. The smart thing would be to leave it alone. To pretend I hadn’t seen it, hadn’t understood what it meant. To finish out the remainder of my stay with grace and dignity, and all the other things I was supposedly good at.
With that in mind, I knelt in front of the hearth and worked on coaxing the fire back to life, eager to have something to focus on besides the weird fluttery feeling in my chest that, for once, I couldn’t blame on AFib.
Through the bedroom door, I could hear the low rumble of Teddy’s voice—too muffled to make out what he was saying, but his tone was reassuring. Seemed whatever crisis Lucy had called about wasn’t much of a crisis at all.
Once the fire was blazing again, I moved into the kitchen and poured myself a cup of coffee, doctoring it with cream and sugar before taking a careful sip.
The rational part of my brain—the part that had gotten me through the past two years—knew I should be happy for him. Proud, even. But the rest of me—the messy, irrational, still-in-love-with-him part—felt like I’d been gutted.
My phone chimed on the counter where I’d left it last night. I wiped my hands on a towel before reaching for it, unsurprised to see a string of messages from Addie and Sky.
The girls were not early risers. Never had been. During breaks from school, they kept what Teddy had always referred to as ‘brunch hours’—lounging around in bed until ten or eleven o’clock in the morning.
But when faced with the possibility of reuniting their divorcedparents, they had no trouble getting up before the sun and texting the next phase in the Parent Trap Playbook they’d been running all week.
Sky
morning mama!!
how are things going??
Addie
How’d those gingerbread cookies turn out?
Sky
