Page 67 of Baby for My Ex's Brother

It took me a while to understand that this is not a small thing for him. Most of what he does, he does alone. I understand that now. I understand it well enough that it makes tonight harder, not easier.

The kitchen is quiet. Outside, someone is parallel parking badly and has been for three minutes. I clean the cuts with antiseptic, and he doesn’t flinch, even though I know it burns like hell. I fold a piece of gauze over the worst one, tape it down, and feel him watching me as I do it.

I sigh. “The vandalism was Hugo.”

“Yes. And it was business. Not personal.”

A beat. “Mostly?”

He doesn’t respond.

I smooth the tape down at the edges and check my work and decide it’ll do, and I don’t push on it. Mostly because I already know the answer to that question and pushing on it isn’t going to change what happened to my window. I’m still holding his hand. The gauze is clean, the tape is flat, and I have no medical reason to still be holding his hand.

I’m about to lean across the table—because he’s coiled up tight with bad energy and I know exactly one reliable method for unwinding it—when the knock comes.

Three quick raps. “That’s Mike.” I don’t want to let go of Ivan’s hand to answer the door, but I have to. His hand lingers in mine for a beat, like he doesn’t want me to let go.

I open the door. Mike is standing there with my spare shop keys and a six-pack of seltzer he was apparently planning to offer as payment for the key loan, and the expression of a man who has walked into a room and immediately understood that he has made a catastrophic miscalculation.

His eyes go to Ivan at my kitchen table. To the first aid kit. To Ivan’s taped hand. Back to me. The seltzer lowers about an inch.

Then he begins reversing. Slowly, carefully, maintaining eye contact the entire time, keys extended in one hand and the slowly lowering seltzer in the other, like a man backing away from something he has correctly identified as an apex predator. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah. It’ll be fine,” I lie.

“Alright then. Good seeing you again, Ivan.”

A gruff “And you” comes from Ivan behind me.

I take the keys from his hand as Mike passes me. He nearly goes down the top step. He catches the railing, though, and he doesn’t stop moving.

I close the door.

Ivan says, from the kitchen, “He left the seltzer.”

“He’ll be back for it.”

“How do you know?”

“Because it’s Mike.” I sit back down across from him.

My phone buzzes two minutes later with the reliability of a Swiss watch, because Cherry has a network and Mike is her primary source.

Mike says your boyfriend looks like a Bond villain.

Also he left his seltzer here. Is he coming back for it?

I show Ivan the first message without saying anything. He reads it. His mouth does the thing that is not quite a smile but is adjacent to it—the small compression at the corner that I have learned to read as the closest he gets to delight in mixed company. He looks up at me.

“Tell Mike I appreciate the endorsement.”

I send the message, and Cherry responds with a string of emojis I choose not to analyze. I put my phone face-down on the table.

Ivan’s hand is still on the table between us, the taped knuckles up, and I look at it while the warmth of the last two minutes starts to settle into something else underneath. Something that has been sitting in my chest since he walked in, and I saw his hand and understood what it meant.

I have been keeping it at arm’s length while I dealt with the antiseptic, the gauze, Mike, and Cherry. The words… I can’t stop them from coming out. “You went to see Hugo.”

“Yes.”