“Get someone else to do your dirty work.If it’s true, I want nothing to do with it.”
Leo approached the table to take their dinner orders but stopped when he seemed to sense the tension was still strong.“Should I come back?”
“Give us a few minutes, Leo,” Julian said.“Thanks.”
“You got it, Counselor.No rush.”
After Leo walked away, the silence persisted, which was so unusual when they were together that it put Julian’s nerves on edge.“You guys, listen… While I appreciate that the evidence might point toward a reconciliation, there’s no way they’re back together.They’re barely civil to each other when theyaretogether, which is hardly ever.It’s been three years since they saw each other at Rome’s graduation.”
“They see each other at bar association stuff,” Jordan said.
“They do?”Julian asked.“Since when is Dad going to those meetings?”
“He rarely misses one,” Gillian said.
“How did we not know that?”Julian asked his brothers.
“Maybe he’s checking out for something else because he doesn’t want us to know he’s going to be somewhere that she is,” Ethan said.
Again, the siblings were silent as they pondered the possibility…
“Are we going to eat?”Carson asked.“Cuz I’ve got other shit to do tonight.”He signaled for Leo to come take their orders.
“Everything all right, family?”Leo asked.
“Yeah, all good,” Julian said.“Let’s order.”
After dinner, which Jackson paid for with much bitching and moaning, they parted with hugs and promises to set a date for the next one on the girls’ side of town.
“Do you think it’s true?”Griffin asked Julian the second they walked away from their sisters to head back to the office.
“No, I don’t.”Eating dinner had been a chore thanks to the huge knot of anxiety that’d settled in his chest at the mere mention of their parents rekindling a romance that had wrecked their lives for a time.Julian had taken most of his lobster pappardelle to go for lunch tomorrow.Hopefully, the sick feeling would pass when one of his siblings produced proof that Kaidan’s theory was nonsense.
They’d agreed to be on alert for clues.Well, everyone but Carson had agreed to that.He’d reiterated his earlier statement that he’d have nothing to do with it either way.
It had to be nonsense.
There was no way…
“Jules,” Roman said, “did you hear me?”
“No, sorry.What?”
“What if it’s true?”
“It’s not, so let’s move on.”
It couldn’t be.
That was the end of it as far as he was concerned.
After she’d puther kids to bed, Isla poured a glass of the wine she’d gotten at the grocery store, where she’d stocked up on the way to the rental.She figured she’d earned the wine after the two days she’d just had.Since emerging from her closet hideout, she’d been waiting to feel heartbroken that her marriage to Gabriel was finally over.She’d thought she might feel regret or a longing for what used to be.
Rather, her prevailing emotion was relief.
It was over.
Done.
