“He fuckedusover,” I pointed out. “All of us Wags! That was his mistake. We won’t catch up with him today, but he’s a dead man walking, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t know how, yet, but we’re getting those rings back.”
It was one thing to believe that in a moment of fury and hurt. Another thing to keep believing it when you’re stuck in a Land Rover for hours on the ride back home, scratching mosquito bites, and everyone’s mental states are sinking. I think we all blazed through several stages of grief during the return trip, each for ourown reasons. And when our perfect summer day took a turn for the worse, and dark clouds formed over Lake Michigan, it was the cherry on top of the whole shit sundae.
We dropped off Jazmine at the marina first. Her mom met us at the Land Rover and helped Jazmine carry her stuff inside. When she asked what was wrong with all of us, Seb said, “You’re looking at a crew of fools right now, Mrs. Neely. Once we get over the feeling of being duped, we’ll be okay.”
“Well, can you get over it by tomorrow? We’re having our first Sunday brunch of the summer. I want you all there, okay?”
Sunday brunch was an honored Neely tradition. Anyone who was important in town had showed up for mimosas and eggs over the years. What could we say but yes?
I hugged Jazmine hard and repeated Seb’s assurance that everything would turn out all right eventually. But at the moment, we were all going through the motions.
Benny dropped off Seb and me at the cottage next, and he was so down, I begged him to stay with us instead of going back to an empty house. But he declined. “I’m terrible company right now,” he told me. “Let me lick my wounds.”
After unloading our stuff, Seb and I watched Benny pull out of the driveaway right as the darkening skies lit up with lightning. A summer storm was here. Nothing to do but round up Punkin after she took a long pee on Mr. Legs and hunker down inside.
Seb dropped our bags in the middle of the living room floor as rain began falling against the roof. “Welp. This was not the homecoming I fantasized about,” he said.
“Same.” I dragged the cooler into the kitchen and unloaded the remnants of our food into the fridge. “Never in a million years would I have thought I’d have a gun pointed at me.”
“Unfortunately, I’ve already had the pleasure on more than one occasion. Not a good feeling. I’m sorry, Paige. I know I keep saying it, but Christ.”
“And I’ll keep saying that it’s not your fault. You can’t control another person’s behavior. Paul chose to be dick.”
“It’s his fucking father. Paul would be a different person if it weren’t for Big Burg.”
I closed the refrigerator door. “Paul’s in his twenties. He can make decisions for himself. You grew up. Why can’t he?”
Seb puffed out his cheeks and exhaled heavily, crossing his arms behind his head as he leaned back on the sofa. “Don’t know the answer to that, but I can only see one solution to this problem right now, and that’s breaking into Big Burg’s compound and stealing the rings back.”
I slammed the refrigerator door. “Absolutely not. And if you do try to sneak off and do that, and you get yourself killed, I will be furious at you for the rest of my life.”
“Damn, Paige,” he said. “You look a little furious now.”
“Aren’t you?”
“I’m just sad, I guess. The past forty-eight hours have been a roller coaster.”
He wasn’t wrong. I closed the cooler. There was still a lot of mostly melted ice inside, but it was too big to dump in the sink.
Thunder struck near the cottage. It was really coming down out there.
“What a mess,” Seb said, looking out the window as Punkin settled herself on the rug in front of the fireplace. “Guess our no-clothes rule is going to have to wait.”
I hesitated at the kitchen island, pretending to look through the mail as a wild thrill zipped through me. “Does it?”
I couldn’t see his face from where I stood. But something in the air between us shifted radically, and the cottage suddenly felt a lot smaller.
A floorboard creaked behind me. “I suppose, on one hand,” his voice said, a little closer than it had been, “it feels disrespectful to be thinking selfish thoughts when Jaz and Benny are sitting home alone, depressed.”
“Invite them over, then.”
Another step. “Eh, I’m all for experimentation, but I’m a one-woman kind of guy.”
I smiled to myself and straightened the bills. “You said, ‘On one hand it feels disrespectful.’ What’s on the other?”
“Well,” he said behind me, very close now. “On the other hand, maybe getting naked would cheer us both up. You know, like being on an airplane when you’re about to crash—everyone knows you don’t help others until you put an oxygen mask on yourself.”
“Sure, yep. That’s logical,” I said as my stomach took a nervous dip.
